Court hands Harvard a win in Trump funding battle

Protesters at federal courthouse in Boston support Harvard against its funding cuts by the Trump administration

President Donald Trump launched an assault on Harvard after the university rejected his demands

(Image credit: Scott Eisen / Getty Images)

What happened

A federal judge in Boston Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration's revocation of more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard violated the university's First Amendment rights and federal civil rights and procedural laws. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ordered the administration to restore Harvard's research grants and barred future cuts that violate her guidance.

Who said what

President Donald Trump launched a government-wide assault on Harvard in April, after the private university rejected his demands for broad internal changes. The White House argued that terminating "nearly a thousand federal grants" for everything from cancer research to efforts to alleviate battlefield injuries was "necessary to compel the university to do more to combat antisemitism," The Washington Post said.

In her ruling, Burroughs said a "review of the administrative record" made it clear the Trump administration "used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country's premier universities." The funding cuts and other punitive measures did not target antisemitism, she added, and amounted to "retaliation, unconstitutional conditions and unconstitutional coercion."

What next?

Harvard's "significant victory" in court could "revive" its "sprawling research operation," The Associated Press said, but whether the university "actually receives the federal money remains to be seen." The White House said it would "immediately move to appeal this egregious decision" and insisted Harvard "remains ineligible for grants in the future." Still, the ruling was "an interim rebuff" of Trump's "campaign to remake elite higher education by force," The New York Times said, and it "could give Harvard new leverage" in "parallel settlement talks" with the White House.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.