Harvard and Trump officials have sparred for months over the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze billions in federal research funds.
Lawyers for the Trump administration said Friday they are appealing a judge’s order to restore $2.7 billion in frozen federal research funding to Harvard University, the latest twist in a monthslong, high-profile court fight that has pitted the administration against the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university.
At issue is a ruling issued in September by U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs, which blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to terminate the more than $2 billion in federal funding for Harvard, which she said violated its First Amendment and due process protections.
„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“, Burroughs said in a blistering, 84-page order. She described the actions as tantamount to „an ideologically-motivated assault.“
„We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other“, she added.
News of the appeal revives a high-stakes court fight that has shaken, if not displaced, Harvard’s status at the uppermost echelons of higher education in the U.S. It comes as other private and public universities have also come under scrutiny by the administration, prompting fresh criticism that the administration is seeking to exercise undue influence over curriculum and leadership at major institutions.
Harvard sued the Trump administration in April over its attempt to freeze the federal funding and argued in court that the actions amounted to an unconstitutional „pressure campaign“ to influence and exert control over elite academic institutions.
