Ruling against Trump, US judge says ‘antisemitism used as smokescreen’ to cut Harvard’s funding

BOSTON — A federal judge in Boston orders the reversal of cuts of more than $2.6 billion in federal funding for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to the Ivy League school in its battle with the Trump administration.

US District Judge Allison Burroughs rules the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of White House demands for changes to its governance and policies.

The government had tied the freezes at Harvard to delays in dealing with antisemitism on its campus, but the judge says the federally funded research had little connection to antisemitism. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs writes.

The ruling reverses a series of funding freezes that later became outright cuts as the Trump administration escalated its fight with the nation’s wealthiest university. The administration also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status in a clash watched widely across higher education.

Whether Harvard actually receives the money remains to be seen. If the ruling stands, it promises to revive Harvard’s sprawling research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.

Neither the White House nor Harvard respond immediately to requests for comment.

Beyond the courthouse, the Trump administration and Harvard officials have been discussing a potential agreement that would end investigations and allow the university to regain access to federal funding. US President Donald Trump has said he wants Harvard to pay no less than $500 million, but no deal has materialized, even as the administration has struck agreements with Columbia and Brown.

Harvard’s lawsuit accused the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an April 11 letter from a federal antisemitism task force.

The letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. It was meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment on campus.