Harvard battles Trump administration in court
By: Nate Raymond
and Tim McLaughlin
Reuters
BOSTON - Harvard University urged a federal judge on July 21 [2025] to order 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.
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But a lawyer for the Trump administration told the judge the canceled grants reflect a government priority not to send money to institutions that practice antisemitism.
..... "Harvard prioritized campus protests over cancer research," said Michael Velchik, a senior lawyer at the Justice Department. He told the judge she shouldn't be hearing the case in the first place, arguing the matter belonged in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which handles monetary disputes.
..... The court hearing before U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston lasted more than two hours, but ended without a ruling. The case marks a crucial moment with Harvard, which escalating conflict with Harvard, which has been in the administration's cross-hairs after it rejected a list of demands to make changes to its governance, hiring and admission practices in April. [2025]
..... Harvard says hundreds of search projects - including ones concerning cancer treatments, infectious diseases and Parkinson's disease - will be in jeopardy unless the judge declares the grant cancellation unlawful.
..... The country's oldest and richest university has become a central focus of the administration's broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at American universities, which Trump says are gripped by antisemitic and "radical left" ideologies.
..... Steven Lehotsky, a lawyer for Harvard, said the government has made wholesale cuts to research under the guise of combating antisemitism, but hasn't identified any connection between the two.
..... "The administrator has given no consideration to patients, the public at large and the harm of all this research being cut off," Lehotsky told the court.
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Meanwhile, as part of Trump's spending and tax bill, the Republican-led Congress increased the federal excise tax on Harvard's income form its $63 billion endowment to 8% from 1.4%. Income from the endowment covers 40% of Harvard's operating budget.
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Harvard President Alan Garber said last week [07/17/2025] that the various federal actions since Trump returned to office in January [2025] could strip the school of nearly $1 billion annually, forcing it to lay off staff and freeze hiring.
..... Harvard has said 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 onset of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza in October 2023. But, Garber has said the administration's demands have gone and unlawfully 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 [2025] 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 protection of the U.S. constitution's First Amendment.