The court hearing in Boston marked a key moment in the escalating dispute with Harvard University in the White House.
Judges suspend Trump’s plans and block foreign students from attending Harvard
The judge ruled that the Trump administration could not block international students from attending Harvard University.
Scripps News
BOSTON – Harvard University has halted efforts to cut off research funding for well-known Ivy League schools, urging federal judges to order the Trump administration to recover about $2.5 billion in cancelled federal grants.
But a Trump administration lawyer told the judge that the cancelled grants reflect the government’s priorities of not sending money to institutions that practice anti-Semitism.
“Harvard University has prioritized campus protesters over cancer research,” said Michael Werzik, a senior U.S. Department of Justice lawyer. He told the judge that he should not hear the case in the first place, and argued that the matter belongs to the federal claims court that handles US disputes.
The previous court hearing of US District Judge Alison Burrows on July 21 lasted more than two hours but ended without a ruling. The incident marks a key moment in the escalating conflict with Harvard, which was on the administration’s crosshair after rejecting a list of requests to change governance, employment and admissions practices in April.
A university in Cambridge, nearby Massachusetts, says hundreds of research projects, including those related to cancer treatment, infectious diseases and Parkinson’s disease, are at risk unless a judge declares Grant’s cancellation illegal.
The country’s oldest and wealthiest universities are the central focus of the administration’s wide campaign to leverage federal funds to force change in universities.
Harvard lawyer Stephen Lehotsky said the government has cut wholesale for research under the guise of fighting anti-Semitism, but has not identified a relationship between the two.
“The administration has not taken into consideration the harm of patients, the public and all of this research being blocked,” Lehotsky told the court.
“The Trump administration’s proposition is simple and common sense. Anti-Semitism and Day run your campus, don’t break the law, don’t protect civil liberties for all students,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement.
Among the earliest actions the administration had made against Harvard was to cancel hundreds of grants awarded to researchers under the premise that the school had not done enough to deal with the harassment of Jewish students on campus.
The Trump administration has since opened the door to block international students from attending school, threatening Harvard’s accreditation status, and realising that they had violated federal civil rights laws.
Trump’s management actions have made demonstrators disappointed, shocked and disgusted
There is a “visceral effect” on Salini Pillai, considering how different her life would be if her parents didn’t come to the US decades ago.
Harvard Rising Junior was one of dozens of people gathered outside the Boston Courthouse after the day’s lawsuit ended. Although she was born in the United States, her parents moved to the country to pursue higher education.
“They came here for all the ideals this country promises, and the fact that people can choose and choose who has those freedoms and whom I fundamentally disagree with is very scary,” she said.
The administration’s actions had a prominent impact on campus, she said, adding that her international friends believe they are “used as a kind of pawn,” and that university research is suffering without supporting federal funds.
While some may question Harvard, where Harvard University, which has more than $50 billion in donations, needs financial support, Pillay often relies on government funding for “a certain amount of basics and the amount of capital needed to conduct research.”
She added that universities will function more widely as a litmus test of higher education.
“Even if Harvard is least affected by this precedent, the downstream impact of Harvard being exposed to this type of funding cut is… immeasurable,” she said.
Several people at the meeting were partnering with Crimson Courage, a Harvard graduate that was established in April.
Among them was Helen Fairman, a 1991 graduate. He said that members of the organization benefit from pursuing higher education in their respective lives, and that they hope others have the same opportunity.
“We know how important it is. We’re all just united to save what we can do at Harvard,” she said.
Evelyn Kim, a 1995 graduate class who is also involved in the Courage of Crimson, said higher education is in a “existential battle” against the Trump administration, and that she remains “disappointed, shocked (and) disgusting.”
Like Pillai, Kim said her activism is more than supportive of her alma mater.
“This isn’t just Harvard’s story,” Kim said. “It’s a national story, a local story, an international story.”
Judge: Stopping grants for any reason is a “major stumbling”
Burrows said the government’s claim that the government could terminate Harvard’s federal funding grants for policy reasons is problematic.
“That’s a huge obstacle for me,” the judge said.
Burrows also questioned the government’s stance that there is no need for a hostile process to assess whether Harvard has taken steps to eradicate anti-Semitism on campus.
“If I can make this decision, then withdrawing all of this funds for speech-oriented reasons is phenomenal to me, from a constitutional law perspective,” Burroughs said.
Meanwhile, as part of Trump’s spending and tax bills, the Republican-led Congress has raised the federal excise tax on Harvard’s revenues from $53 billion to 8% from 1.4% to 8%. Proceeds from donations cover 40% of Harvard’s operating budget.
Harvard President Alan Gerber said last week that various federal lawsuits could remove nearly $1 billion in schools a year, laying off staff and enforce employment since Trump took office in January.
Harvard says it has taken steps to ensure that Jews and Israeli students are welcome after the onset of Israeli war with Hamas in Gaza in October 2023.
But Gerber says the administration’s demands are illegally seeking to regulate the “intellectual conditions” of campus by dealing with anti-Semitism and controlling those who hire and teach.
These requests were outlined in a letter from the Management Task Force on April 11, calling for private universities to restructure governance, change employment and admissions practices, balance perspective ideology, and terminate certain academic programs.
After Harvard rejected these requests, university officials say they began retaliating against campus for violating free speech protections under the First Amendment by suddenly cutting funds that authorities say are essential to supporting scientific and medical research.
Barrows, the Democratic Presidential appointee of Barack Obama, has already banned the administration in another incident from halting its ability to host international students. She is expected to issue written rulings on fundraising cases in the coming weeks.
Trump expressed optimism that Harvard would eventually settle in his administration. Fields on Friday said a considerable deal is likely and the administration “is confident Harvard will ultimately support the president’s vision.”
In the court, the administration argued that Burrows had no jurisdiction to hear the challenges and that if the funded project does not implement federal policy goals, they could cancel.
Reuters contributed.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
