Judge Rules Trump Administration's Harvard Funding Freeze Unlawful

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration's decision to freeze 2.2 billion dollars in funding to Harvard University was unlawful. The judge, Allison Burroughs, agreed with Harvard's argument that the government's action was retaliatory, as it was in response to the university's refusal to comply with reforms that would violate the First Amendment.

The ruling, made in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, vacated the freeze order and prohibited any officials in the Trump administration from enforcing it. The administration had frozen the funds on April 14, after Harvard rejected demands to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and to screen international students for ideological bias, including anti-Semitism.

Judge Burroughs stated that the government's abrupt termination of funding for Harvard was done without a proper understanding of the anti-Semitism on campus or the measures taken to address it. This led the court to conclude that the sudden focus on anti-Semitism was, at best, arbitrary, and at worst, a pretext.

In an April letter, the government had explicitly stated that Harvard must agree to ten conditions to receive the funds, with only one of them related to anti-Semitism. The other six terms were found to be related to ideological and pedagogical issues, including who could lead and teach at Harvard, who could be admitted, and what could be taught.

The judge noted that the freeze resulted in a halt to numerous interdisciplinary research projects that were crucial to the U.S. and the world. These projects, she pointed out, had no connection to anti-Semitism. Some of the affected projects included research on tuberculosis, NASA astronauts' radiation exposure, Lou Gehrig's disease, and a predictive model to assist Veterans Affairs emergency room doctors in deciding whether to hospitalize veterans at risk of suicide.

While acknowledging that combating anti-Semitism is a commendable and important goal, Judge Burroughs wrote that even an indisputably valuable goal does not allow the defendant to change the direction of federal funding for key research, which has been in place for decades, without providing a reasonable explanation. She emphasized that the institution must demonstrate how the freeze on funds would advance this goal or, in other words, help combat anti-Semitism.