Is Harvard justified in suing the Trump administration? That’s what U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs has to decide. Reconvening on July 21 for oral arguments, the trial will debate whether political ideology should influence American higher education or whether Trump’s restrictions of federal funding are viewpoint-based conditions.
The Trump administration is threatening to withhold $2 billion in federal funding from Harvard University in an effort to force them to address on-campus antisemitism. The administration wants to change both academic programs and disciplinary practices to have more viewpoint diversity. Harvard responded that these changes jeopardize their academic independence. They filed a lawsuit against the administration on Monday, April 28.
“No government – regardless of which party is in power – should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” wrote Harvard President Alan Garber in an online post to the Harvard community.
The Trump administration sent a letter on Friday, April 11, saying Harvard needed to satisfy specific requirements in order to maintain its funding relationship with the federal government. These demands include audits of academic programs and departments along with the viewpoints of students, faculty and staff, and changes to the university’s governance structure and hiring practices. At the center of these requests are allegations that anti-semitism on campus has gone unchecked.
“At Harvard we have a real problem with anti-semitism, we take it very seriously, and we’re trying to address it. There is no doubt about the severity of that problem,” Harvard’s president said in an exclusive interview with NBC.
The Trump administration is adamant on combating the surge of anti-semitism on America’s higher education college campuses. They are critical in addressing Harvard’s lack of handling the harassment and discrimination against Jewish students in the wake of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The long awaited 311 page Harvard report titled “Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias” was recently published writing, “No other group was constantly told that their history was a sham, that they or their co-religionists or co-ethnics were supremacists and oppressors, and that they had no right to the protections offered by anti-bias norms.”
Yet, Harvard consistently argues that the threat of rescinding Harvard’s tax-exempt status would risk the excellence of higher education in the United States, and their contributions to research, medicine and innovation.
The Anti-Defamation League is a non-governmental organization dedicated to combating antisemitism and other forms of discrimination. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said efforts by the government to combat anti-semitism after October 7 are “long overdue.” However, he also stated, “The Trump administration’s aggressive response to campus antisemitism risks doing significant damage to America’s higher education system,” which he said fuels innovation and is the “envy of the world.”
Before filing their lawsuit, Harvard hired two attorneys with deep Republican connections, William Buck and Robert Hur, who “have credibility within the Trump administration.” Harvard believes that suspending federal medical and scientific research funding as a way to combat anti-semitism doesn’t make sense, and upends official procedure without warning.
The university’s lawyers wrote in a court filing that asked for an expedited hearing, “While Harvard is diligently seeking to mitigate the effects of these funding cuts, critical research efforts will be scaled back or even terminated.”
Harvard says the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires the government to give a university a chance to fix any violations they have before taking away federal money. Whether the lawsuit will make its way to the Supreme Court is still up in the air.
After being asked “Is this a fight you can win?” Harvard President Alan Garber responded with, “I don’t know the answer to this question, but the stakes are so high that we have no choice.”
