Harvard, Trump admin fight in court over funds axed due to antisemitism allegations

Harvard University urged a federal judge on Monday to order US President Donald Trump’s administration to restore about $2.5 billion in canceled federal grants and cease efforts to cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.

The administration canceled hundreds of grants awarded to researchers on the grounds that Harvard failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus. A lawyer for the Trump administration told the judge that the canceled grants reflect a government priority not to send money to institutions that practice antisemitism.

“Harvard prioritized campus protesters over cancer research,” said Michael Velchik, a senior lawyer at the US Justice Department. He told the judge she should not be hearing the case in the first place, arguing the matter belonged in the US Court of Federal Claims, which handles monetary disputes.

The court hearing before US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston lasted more than two hours, but ended without a ruling. The case marks a critical moment in the White House’s escalating conflict with Harvard, which is being widely watched across higher education and beyond.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university, the US’s oldest and richest, has become a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change on campuses, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideologies. Harvard has been in the administration’s crosshairs particularly since it rejected a list of demands to make changes to its governance, hiring, and admissions practices in April.

The administration’s effort comes in the wake of widespread anti-Israel — and in some cases antisemitic — protests on campuses across the US that saw frequent expressions of support for Hamas and its October 7, 2023, attack, as well as violations of school rules and local laws. It also echoes decades of criticism by conservatives who point to a lack of “viewpoint diversity” at colleges and universities.

Harvard says it has taken steps to ensure its campus is welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students, who it acknowledges experienced “vicious and reprehensible” treatment following the October 7 attack and the onset of the war in Gaza.

But Harvard President Alan Garber has said the administration’s demands have gone far beyond addressing antisemitism, and unlawfully seek to regulate the “intellectual conditions” on its campus by controlling who it hires and who it teaches.

Those demands, which came in an April 11 letter from an administration task force, included calls for the private university to restructure its governance, alter its hiring and admissions practices to ensure an ideological balance of viewpoints, and end certain academic programs.

After Harvard rejected those demands, it said the administration began retaliating against it in violation of the free speech protections of the US Constitution’s First Amendment by abruptly cutting funding the school says is vital to supporting scientific and medical research.

Harvard says hundreds of research projects, including ones concerning cancer treatments, infectious diseases, and Parkinson’s disease, will be in jeopardy, unless the judge declares the grant cancellations unlawful.

Steven Lehotsky, a lawyer for Harvard, said the government has made wholesale cuts to research under the guise of combating antisemitism, but has not identified any connection between the two.

“The administration has given no consideration to patients, the public at large, and the harm of all this research being cut off,” Lehotsky told the court.

In addition to the grant cancellations, the Trump administration sought to bar international students from attending the school; threatened Harvard’s accreditation status; and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.

Velchik said the government has authority to cancel research grants when an institution is out of compliance with the president’s directives. He said episodes at Harvard violated Trump’s order combating antisemitism.

Burroughs questioned how the government could make “ad hoc” decisions to cancel grants and do so across Harvard without offering evidence that any of the research is antisemitic.

She also argued the government had provided “no documentation, no procedure” to “suss out” whether Harvard administrators “have taken enough steps or haven’t” to combat antisemitism.

“The consequences of that in terms of constitutional law are staggering,” she said during Monday’s hearing. “I don’t think you can justify a contract action based on impermissible suppression of speech. Where do I have that wrong?”

Velchik said the case comes down to the government’s choosing how best to spend billions of dollars in research funding.

“Harvard claims the government is anti-Harvard. I reject that,” Velchik said. “The government is pro-Jewish students at Harvard. The government is pro-Jewish faculty at Harvard.”

Meanwhile, as part of Trump’s spending and tax bill, the Republican-led US Congress increased the federal excise tax on Harvard’s income from its $53 billion endowment to eight percent from 1.4%. Income from the endowment covers 40% of Harvard’s operating budget.

Garber said last week that the various federal actions since Trump returned to office in January could strip the school of nearly $1 billion annually, forcing it to lay off staff and freeze hiring. The amount includes the impact of the multi-year federal grants canceled by the Trump administration.

Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic former president Barack Obama, in a separate case has already barred the administration from halting Harvard’s ability to host international students. She is expected to issue a written ruling in the funding case in the coming weeks.

Following the hearing, Trump took aim at Burroughs in a post on his Truth Social platform. The president called her a “TOTAL DISASTER, which I say even before hearing her Ruling.”

“She has systematically taken over the various Harvard cases, and is an automatic ‘loss’ for the People of our Country! Harvard has $52 Billion Dollars sitting in the Bank, and yet they are anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America,” Trump wrote.

Luke Tress and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.