Harvard is hoping court rules Trump administration’s $2.6B research cuts were illegal

Harvard University will appear in federal court Monday to make the event that the Trump administration illegally cut billion from the storied college a pivotal moment in its battle against the federal administration If U S District Judge Allison Burroughs decides in the university s favor the ruling would reverse a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation s oldest and wealthiest university Such a ruling if it stands would revive Harvard s sprawling scientific and health research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money This situation involves the Establishment s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decisionmaking at Harvard the university stated in its complaint All stated the tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear Allow the Leadership to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution s ability to pursue diagnostic breakthroughs scientific discoveries and innovative solutions A second lawsuit over the cuts filed by the American Association of University Professors and its Harvard faculty chapter has been consolidated with the university s Harvard s lawsuit accuses President Donald Trump s administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an April letter from a federal antisemitism task force The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests academics and admissions For example the letter notified Harvard to audit the viewpoints of students and faculty and admit more students or hire new professors if the campus was identified to lack diverse points of view The letter was meant to address administration accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus Harvard President Alan Garber pledged to fight antisemitism but declared no authorities should dictate what private universities can teach whom they can admit and hire and which areas of analysis and inquiry they can pursue The same day Harvard rejected the demands Trump executives moved to freeze billion in research grants Guidance Secretary Linda McMahon declared in May that Harvard would no longer be eligible for new grants and weeks later the administration began canceling contracts with Harvard As Harvard fought the funding freeze in court individual agencies began sending letters announcing that the frozen research grants were being terminated They cited a clause that allows grants to be scrapped if they no longer align with ruling body policies Harvard which has the nation s largest endowment at billion has moved to self-fund specific of its research but warned it can t absorb the full cost of the federal cuts In court filings the school noted the governing body fails to explain how the termination of funding for research to treat cancer promotion veterans and improve national safeguard addresses antisemitism The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation saying the grants were under review even before the April demand letter was sent It argues the cabinet has wide discretion to cancel contracts for approach reasons It is the strategy of the United States under the Trump Administration not to fund institutions that fail to adequately address antisemitism in their programs it declared in court documents The research funding is only one front in Harvard s fight with the federal authorities The Trump administration also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students and Trump has threatened to revoke Harvard s tax-exempt status Definitively last month the Trump administration formally issued a finding that the school tolerated antisemitism a step that eventually could jeopardize all of Harvard s federal funding including federal pupil loans or grants The penalty is typically referred to as a death sentence