Judge says Trump administration unlawfully blocked $2 billion from Harvard

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday gave Harvard University a landmark victory in its fight against the Trump administration, siding with the Ivy League school in its effort to restore more than $2 billion in federal funding for research frozen by the White House.

The decision from US District Judge Allison Burroughs rejects the administration’s argument that it was targeting the university due to antisemitism on the school’s campus.

“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” wrote Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.

“Their actions have jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes,” Burroughs added.

The decision is a major victory for Harvard, the only university targeted by the Trump administration to take on the White House directly in court. The administration has argued it is cracking down on antisemitism on campus, but Harvard has become the epicenter of a broader fight over academic freedom, federal spending and campus oversight.

While Wednesday’s ruling is a major win for the school, the Trump administration is almost certain to escalate its fight against the elite academic institution, prompting longer-term questions about the school’s financial future. Already, the White House said it plans to appeal.

“This activist Obama-appointed judge was always going to rule in Harvard’s favor, regardless of the facts,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told CNN on Wednesday. “To any fair-minded observer, it is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years.”

In a statement to the Harvard community on Wednesday evening, Harvard President Alan Garber said the ruling “validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom, critical scientific research, and the core principles of American higher education,” but acknowledged some uncertainty ahead.

“Even as we acknowledge the important principles affirmed in today’s ruling, we will continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape in which we seek to fulfill our mission,” Garber said.

Burroughs pointed to some of the research projects impacted by the administration’s cuts, including efforts to create a predictive model to help emergency room physicians at the Department of Veterans Affairs determine whether suicidal veterans should be hospitalized, research on Lou Gehrig’s Disease, the development of a chip to measure NASA astronauts’ radiation exposure on an upcoming excursion to the moon and support for a government program on emerging biological threats.

“There is no obvious link between the affected projects and antisemitism,” the judge said.

When the funding was frozen, Burroughs added, there was no investigation into whether any particular research labs, she said, “were engaging in antisemitic behavior, were employing Jews, were run by Jewish scientists, or were investigating issues or diseases particularly pertinent to Jews, ... meaning the funding freezes could and likely will harm the very people Defendants professed to be protecting.”

She also took aim at numerous Trump social media posts. His concerns about Harvard, she said, “were untethered from antisemitism,” quoting many of them directly.

In her ruling, Burroughs wiped away a “Freeze Order” the administration issued in April that would have held up more than $2 billion multi-year grants to the university and barred the government from withholding any additional federal funds “to Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights, or on any purported grounds of discrimination without compliance with the terms of Title VI.”

Burroughs made clear in her opinion that she viewed combating antisemitism as an important goal. Harvard, she wrote, “was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did.”

“The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was defendants’ true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,” she wrote.

Officials from Harvard and the White House this summer have been in discussion toward a high-dollar deal to restore all federal funding and eliminate ongoing lawsuits – including a separate lawsuit with the Trump administration over the university’s ability to enroll international students. Burroughs ruled in Harvard’s favor in that case, though the decision didn’t preclude the administration from undertaking a formal review process that could eventually result in the university being unable to host foreign students and scholars.

Last week, Trump publicly called for Harvard to pay “nothing less than $500 million,” telling his Education Secretary Linda McMahon, “They’ve been very bad. Don’t negotiate.”

Other schools targeted by the administration this year, many of which are experiencing acute financial pressure, have taken less confrontational approaches than Harvard.

In a deal reached in July, Columbia University agreed to pay the US Treasury a $200 million settlement to restore all federal funding. The school also agreed that an independent monitor will oversee implementation. Days later, Brown University reached a deal in which it would pay Rhode Island workforce development organizations $50 million.

The White House remains in negotiation with Cornell University and Northwestern University, and in early August, CNN learned that the Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion deal with the University of California, Los Angeles. The school’s leadership said at the time that sum would devastate the university.

The Trump administration has also been seeking new and creative ways to pressure Harvard, including by targeting the school’s patents.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pointed to those efforts as a way Trump’s team works together across agencies.

“I mean, we just have a blast, you know? Because Linda’s hitting Harvard, and she says, ‘What can we do?’ Now we send them a patent letter and hit them again. So we’re having fun together,” Lutnick said. — CNN