Harvard has challenged the administration’s move to slash billions of dollars in federal research funding. Photo / Josh Reynolds, The Washington Post
Attorneys for the nation’s oldest university sparred with a Government lawyer on Monday local time in a legal showdown that could determine whether the administration’s attempts to cut billions of dollars in research funding are legal.
A federal judge heard arguments from a team of attorneys for Harvard University and its chapter of the American Association of University Professors and from one lawyer for the federal Government, peppering them with questions as Harvard cast its arguments as a First Amendment case and the Government sought to frame it as simply a dispute over money and contracts.
The hearing represents a pivotal moment in the battle between Harvard and the Trump administration in an unprecedented case that is being watched by all of higher education.
Harvard has challenged the administration’s move to slash billions of dollars in federal research funding, calling it unlawful and unconstitutional, with critical scientific research and the autonomy of the nearly 400-year-old university on the line. The administration’s lawyer said the Government froze the funding because the school had not done enough to combat anti-Semitism.
Both sides had asked the judge to issue a ruling in the case without a trial, but US District Judge Allison Burroughs ended the hearing without a decision. Burroughs acknowledged that both sides want a rapid resolution; Harvard, in particular, has pleaded urgency in hopes that the funding terminations will not become final.
Steven P. Lehotsky, who argued for Harvard, called the Government’s actions a blatant, unrepentant violation of the First Amendment, touching a “constitutional third rail” that threatened the academic freedom of private universities.
The attorney for the Government cast the case as a fight over billions of dollars. “Harvard is here because it wants the money,” said Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer. But the Government can choke the flow of taxpayer dollars to institutions that show a “deliberate indifference to anti-Semitism”, he said.
President Donald Trump reacted to the hearing on Monday afternoon with a post on social media about the judge. “She is a TOTAL DISASTER, which I say even before hearing her Ruling.” He called Harvard “anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America”.
“How did this Trump-hating Judge get these cases? When she rules against us, we will IMMEDIATELY appeal, and WIN. Also, the Government will stop the practice of giving many Billions of Dollars to Harvard,” he said.
Spokespeople for Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday about the President’s remarks.
Peter McDonough, vice-president and general counsel at the American Council on Education, said all of higher education could be impacted by the case. “And I don’t think it is too dramatic to say that Americans and the constitutional protections that they value are in court,” he said.
“Freedom of speech is on trial, due process is on trial,” he said, with the executive branch of the Government essentially charged with having violated those rights.
The administration has engaged in intense efforts to force changes in higher education, which it has said has been captured by leftist ideology and has not done enough to combat antisemitism in the wake of protests at some colleges over the Israel-Gaza war.
Its biggest target has been Harvard.
The administration announced earlier this year that it would review nearly US$9 billion ($15b) in federal funding to the school and its affiliates, including local hospitals whose physicians teach at Harvard Medical School. In April, a letter from a federal anti-Semitism task force, alluding to civil rights law, demanded that the university upend its governance, hiring, student discipline and admissions, and submit to years-long federal oversight over multiple aspects of its operations.
Harvard refused to comply.
Hours later, the administration announced it would freeze more than US$2 billion in federal research grants to Harvard. It has also launched multiple investigations into the Ivy League institution’s operations, threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status and moved to block its ability to enrol international students.
Harvard filed a lawsuit challenging the funding cuts, and later filed another to counter the administration’s effort to block international students and scholars from Harvard. In the latter case, Burroughs twice ruled swiftly in Harvard’s favour, allowing the university to continue welcoming non-US students while the case proceeds.
On Monday, Harvard’s lawyers argued that the Government violated the school’s First Amendment rights and ignored the requirements of federal civil rights law, and that its actions were unlawfully arbitrary and capricious.
Any claim that Harvard is simply interested in getting money back is “just false”, Lehotsky said. “We’re here for our constitutional rights.”
He called the Government’s actions an end-run around Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and compared it to the scene in Alice in Wonderland in which the queen orders that the sentence comes first then the verdict afterwards, with the funding freeze preceding the investigation required by statute.
“The Government now says Title VI is totally irrelevant,” he said, arguing it had cooked up a post hoc rationale.
Harvard had asked the judge to grant a summary judgment, set aside the funding freezes and terminations, and block any similar actions as soon as possible before September 3, after which the university believes the Government will take the position that restoration of the funds is not possible.
Velchik, the Justice Department attorney – himself a Harvard alumnus – defended the Government’s decisions to slash the university’s funding in response to what he said was its failure to tackle anti-Semitism.
“Harvard does not have a monopoly on the truth,” he said. Those same funds would be “better spent going to HBCUs or community colleges”.
The Government cancelled the grants under an obscure regulation that allows it to terminate funding when they no longer align with agency priorities. “Harvard should have read the fine print,” Velchik said.
Although Burroughs pushed both sides to justify their arguments, she appeared sceptical of the administration’s rationale for the cuts.
She repeatedly pressed the Government on what process it had followed in deciding to terminate a major portion of Harvard’s federal funding.
“This is a big stumbling block for me,” she said, even as she acknowledged the Government had argued some of its points well. (“A Harvard education is paying off for you,” she told Velchik.)
Burroughs noted that the Government had apparently slashed Harvard’s funding without following any established procedure or even examining the steps Harvard itself had taken to combat anti-Semitism.
If the administration can base its decision on reasons connected to protected speech, Burroughs said, the consequences for “constitutional law are staggering”.
At one point, Velchik appeared to grow emotional. He spoke about wanting to go to Harvard since he was a child, then seeing the campus “besieged by protesters” and hearing about Jewish students wearing baseball caps to hide their kippot, a visible sign of their identity. “It’s sick. Federal taxpayers should not support this,” he said.
Burroughs also spoke about the case in unusually personal terms. “I am both Jewish and American,” she said. Harvard itself has acknowledged anti-Semitism as an issue, she said.
But “what is the connection to cutting off funding to Alzheimer’s or cancer research?” she asked. “One could argue it hurts Americans and Jews.”
A complaint by Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors against the administration, filed before the university took action, is being heard concurrently with Harvard’s case.
In its court filings, the Justice Department urged Burroughs to reject Harvard’s request for summary judgment.
Summary judgment is a motion in which a party in a civil suit asks a judge to decide a case before it goes to trial.
To win a summary judgment, the party filing the motion must show there is no genuine dispute over the central facts of the case and they would prevail on the legal merits if the case were to go to trial.
Harvard supporters, with crimson-coloured shirts, signs and hats along with American flag pins, crowded around the main entrance of the John Joseph Moakley federal courthouse on Monday afternoon. About 100 alumni, faculty, staff and students rallied in a joint protest with the Crimson Courage alumni group and supporters of the American Association of University Professors union.
“What the federal administration is doing is basically co-opting American values for their own political ends, and we are determined to say this is not what America is about,” said Evelyn J. Kim, a co-chair of the Crimson Courage communications team and a 1995 Harvard graduate. “America is about the values that allow for Harvard to exist.”
Walter Willett, 80, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, biked to the rally to deliver a speech to the group. In May, US$3.6 million of National Institutes of Health grant money that funded Willett’s research on breast cancer and women’s and men’s health was cut, he said. It is critical to push back against the administration, Willett said. “In this case, our basic freedom – what we’re fighting for – is also at stake.”
The stakes are high – and not just for Harvard.
More than a dozen amicus briefs filed in support of Harvard argue the administration is imperilling academic freedom, the autonomy of institutions of higher education and the decades-long research partnership between universities and the federal government.
Eighteen former officials who served in past Democratic and Republican administrations noted in a brief that they were aware of no instances in more than 40 years where federal funds had been terminated under Title VI, the provision of civil rights law that Trump officials have in some cases cited in slashing Harvard’s grants.
The administration received outside support in a brief filed by the attorneys general of 16 states, led by Iowa. “There are apparently three constant truths in American life: death, taxes, and Harvard University’s discrimination against Jews,” it said, citing Harvard’s own internal report on anti-Semitism on campus.
Harvard has taken numerous steps to address anti-Semitism after protests over the Israel-Gaza war in the 2023-24 academic year sparked concerns from some Jewish and Israeli students, but the administration has repeatedly said the problem persists and must be acted upon forcefully.
James McAffrey, 22, a senior and first-generation college student from Oklahoma, co-chairs the Harvard Students for Freedom, a student group that joined the rally on Monday to support the school.
He said the administration’s actions pose a threat to the nation’s wellbeing.
“I think the reality is it’s time for us to root out the evils of anti-Americanism in the Trump administration,” he said.