{"id":6648,"date":"2025-09-04T07:57:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T07:57:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=6648"},"modified":"2025-09-04T07:57:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T07:57:49","slug":"judge-reverses-trump-administrations-cuts-of-billions-of-dollars-to-harvard-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=6648","title":{"rendered":"Judge reverses Trump administration\u2019s cuts of billions of dollars to Harvard University"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to the Ivy League school in its battle with the White House.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard\u2019s rejection of the Trump administration\u2019s demands for changes to Harvard\u2019s governance and policies.<\/p>\n

The government had tied the funding freezes to Harvard\u2019s delays in dealing with antisemitism, but the judge said the university\u2019s federally backed research had little connection to discrimination against Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cA review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that (the government) used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country\u2019s premier universities,\u201d Burroughs wrote. The country must fight antisemitism, she wrote, but it also must protect the right to free speech.<\/p>\n

The ruling reverses a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation\u2019s wealthiest university. The administration also has sought to prevent the school from\u00a0hosting foreign students<\/a><\/span> and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status in a clash watched widely across higher education.<\/p>\n

The restoration of federal money would revive Harvard\u2019s sprawling\u00a0research operation<\/a><\/span> and hundreds of projects that sustained cuts. But whether Harvard actually receives the federal money remains to be seen. The government plans an immediate appeal, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement, calling Burroughs an \u201cactivist Obama-appointed judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo 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,\u201d Huston said. \u201cHarvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Harvard President Alan Garber foreshadowed potential battles to come even as he said the ruling validates Harvard\u2019s fight for academic freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven as we acknowledge the important principles affirmed in today\u2019s 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,\u201d Garber wrote in a campus message.<\/p>\n

Harvard\u2019s research scientists said they had been watching the case closely but feared their funding would not be restored anytime soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us are worried that the federal government is going to appeal this decision or find other ways to obstruct the delivery of research dollars, despite the judge\u2019s clear statement that the funding terminations were illegal,\u201d said Rita Hamad, director of a center that researches the impact of social policies on health.<\/p>\n

Beyond the courthouse, the Trump administration and Harvard officials have been discussing a potential agreement that would end investigations and allow the university to regain access to federal funding. President Donald Trump has said he wants Harvard to pay no less than $500 million, but no deal has materialized, even as the administration has\u00a0struck agreements<\/a><\/span>\u00a0with Columbia and Brown.<\/p>\n

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Wednesday\u2019s federal court ruling should embolden Harvard\u2019s administration, said historian Kirsten Weld, president of Harvard\u2019s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which also prevailed in a lawsuit over the funding cuts. \u201cWe hope this decision makes clear to Harvard\u2019s administration that bargaining the Harvard community\u2019s rights away in a compromise with the government is unacceptable,\u201d Weld said.<\/p>\n

Harvard\u2019s lawsuit accused the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an April 11 letter from a federal antisemitism task force.<\/p>\n

The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. It was meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus.<\/p>\n

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Harvard President Alan Garber pledged to fight antisemitism. But, he said, no government \u201cshould dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump officials moved to freeze $2.2 billion in research grants the same day Harvard rejected the administration\u2019s demands. Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared in May that Harvard would\u00a0no longer be eligible for new grants<\/a><\/span>, and weeks later, the administration began\u00a0canceling contracts<\/a><\/span>\u00a0with Harvard.<\/p>\n

As Harvard fought the funding freeze in court, individual agencies began sending letters announcing that the frozen research grants were\u00a0being terminated<\/a><\/span>\u00a0under a clause allowing grants to be scrapped if they no longer align with government policies. Harvard has\u00a0moved to self-fund<\/a><\/span>\u00a0some of its research but warned it can\u2019t absorb the full cost of the federal cuts.<\/p>\n

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The judge\u2019s order reverses all of Harvard\u2019s federal funding freezes and cuts since April 14, and it bars the government from future cuts that violate Harvard\u2019s constitutional rights or run afoul of federal law.<\/p>\n

Burroughs sided with the university\u2019s argument that the cuts amounted to retaliation in violation of its First Amendment rights and that the government put unconstitutional conditions on Harvard\u2019s federal money.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs pertains to this case, it is important to recognize and remember that if speech can be curtailed in the name of the Jewish people today, then just as easily the speech of the Jews (and anyone else) can be curtailed when the political winds change direction,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

Burroughs also agreed with Harvard\u2019s claim that the government failed to follow steps prescribed by Congress to cut federal money under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, a federal law that forbids discrimination in education.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration denied the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the April demand letter was sent. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel contracts for policy reasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the policy of the United States under the Trump Administration not to fund institutions that fail to adequately address antisemitism in their programs,\u201d it said in court documents.<\/p>\n

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In a separate lawsuit filed by Harvard, Burroughs previously blocked the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to prevent the school from hosting international students.<\/p>\n

Binkley reported from Washington, D.C. AP reporter Aamer Madhani contributed from Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding\u00a0for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,257],"tags":[3268,3267,3266,1947],"views":34,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6651,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6648\/revisions\/6651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}