In a packed federal courtroom on Monday, lawyers for Harvard University argued that the federal government’s freeze of more than $2 billion in grants and contracts is illegal and should be reversed.
Harvard’s attorneys said the federal funding cuts imposed by the Trump Administration threaten vital research in medicine, science and technology. The school’s lawsuit aims to block the Trump administration from withholding federal funding “as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard.”
The Trump administration has said it froze the funding because Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to address antisemitism on campus.
At the hearing in the U.S. District Court in Boston, Judge Allison D. Burroughs appeared to push back on that argument, asking the administration’s lawyer about the relationship between cancer research and combating antisemitism.
The only lawyer in court for the Trump Administration, Michael Velchik, argued that the administration has the right to cancel government grants at any time if it decides that an institution doesn’t align with its priorities – and said that combating antisemitism is an administrative priority. Velchik framed the issue as one about finances and told the judge that the government has the ability to simply give the research funding to another institution.
“Harvard wants billions of dollars. That’s the only reason we are here. They want the government to write a check,” Velchik said, who is himself a Harvard alum.
The hearing concluded with Judge Burroughs saying she needed time to review the paperwork from both parties and would then issue a decision, though it’s unclear when that may come.
After the hearing President Trump took to social media saying, “The Harvard case was just tried in Massachusetts before an Obama appointed Judge. She is a TOTAL DISASTER, which I say even before hearing her Ruling.” He went on to say he intended to end the practice of giving Harvard billions, and instead to give it to other colleges and universities. “How did this Trump-hating Judge get these cases?” he wrote. “When she rules against us, we will IMMEDIATELY appeal, and WIN.”
Whichever way Judge Burroughs decides, legal experts NPR talked with don’t expect a full resolution anytime soon, given the likelihood that either side will appeal a ruling.
Outside the courthouse, about a hundred Harvard alumni, students and supporters gathered for a rally.
“What President Trump is doing is so clearly wrong,” said James McAffrey, a Harvard senior studying government. McAffrey is a co-founder of Students for Freedom, a student group that pushes the university to continue standing up to the federal government. “I’m from Oklahoma, a very red state, I’m a very proud American. I believe in freedom of speech. I believe in the American dream,” he said. “When you’re starting to attack freedom of speech, that’s anti-american.
He said the administration’s cuts to research funding at Harvard have ripple effects. “There’s research that echoes all the way back to Oklahoma and impacts my home city of Oklahoma City in major ways. This research is important.”
Colleges and universities around the country are watching this case closely. Dozens of other institutions have also had millions in federal grants frozen.
“Across the higher ed landscape, across the entire sector, institutions recognize that what happens in this case will really have a profound impact,” says Jodie Ferise, a lawyer in Indiana who specializes in higher education and represents colleges and universities.
“There is nothing different about Harvard University than there is about some Midwestern, smaller private college,” Ferise says. “Everyone is watching and worrying about the extent to which the federal government is seeking to control the higher education sector.”
Harvard’s arguments
In court documents and at Monday’s hearing, Harvard’s lawyers made several arguments. The first is that the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, known as APA, which says that federal agencies cannot abruptly change procedures without reason. They argue that there are procedures, established by Congress for “revoking federal funding based on discrimination concerns,” that the government did not follow.
They argue the government didn’t follow proper procedure when dealing with an alleged violation of federal civil rights law. This argument is a common complaint of groups suing the Trump administration, with more than 100 lawsuits citing alleged violations of the APA, according to the nonprofit Just Security, which tracks legal challenges to Trump administration actions.
Harvard also argues that there is no connection between alleged antisemitism and shutting down federal medical and scientific research.
“The Government has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation,” Harvard’s complaint says.
The complaint also charges that the government is violating the First Amendment, which, it says, “does not permit the Government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance.'”
Harvard claims the government is interfering with its academic freedom by telling the university how to hire, how to admit students and access student files without subpoenas.
The Trump administration’s arguments
The Trump administration accuses Harvard of failing to protect Jewish students. After Harvard refused to comply with a list of demands, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, a multiagency group within the administration that includes representatives of the Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services departments, announced it was freezing funds.
“The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families, is coming to an end,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement when the cuts were announced. “Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.”
The government argues that Harvard didn’t follow federal law – including allegedly fostering antisemitism on campus and engaging in Illegal discrimination through DEI efforts. As a result, the government argues, the university is not entitled to these research dollars.
“The Trump administration is looking at Harvard and saying, ‘you failed to do things,’ ” explains Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. ” ‘You failed to protect Jewish students. You failed to comply with a federal law. And as a result of those failures, we get to do something in return. We get to cut off the federal spigot of funding.’ “
And while Levinson and other legal experts NPR talked to say that federal power is there, the question for the court will be: Did the Trump administration go about using that power in the right way?
The research at stake
The more than $2 billion at stake in this case supports more than 900 research projects at Harvard and its affiliates. Those grants fund studies that include Alzheimer’s prevention, cancer treatment, military research critical for national security and the impact of school closures on mental health.
Kari Nadeau is a professor, physician and researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies ways of reducing the risk of near-fatal allergies in infants. When the government cancelled her grant, she says she lost about $12 million dollars for the study.
“We’ve had to stop our studies and our work,” Nadeau says, “and that has really had a huge ripple effect for everyone. Not just us, but the people we serve, the teams we work with, the trainees that we train, as well as many staff across the country.”
She’s especially concerned with families who signed up to participate in the clinical trial, which was supposed to last for 7 years. “When you take a therapy away from people, and especially in this case, children, and you put them at risk for a near fatal disease like food allergy, that is a safety issue,” she says. “These families could be put into additional harm.”
The future of her project may come down to the outcome of this case. She says she’s cautiously optimistic.
Legal experts NPR talked with suggested that Harvard may have a strong case.
“Will Harvard win in Boston? There’s a good chance of that,” says Ferise. “But is that gonna settle the matter? That’s probably not the case. It will go to an appeal, it will go to the Supreme Court. So a win, while it would be welcome to colleges, won’t feel like the end of the story.”
Credit: npr.org
