Harvard funding freeze by Trump administration reversed by judge

A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grant funds for Harvard University over concerns about antisemitism on campus and other issues was illegal.

Judge Allison Burroughs agreed with Harvard’s arguments that the administration imposed the funding freeze in retaliation for the Ivy League university’s refusal to capitulate to demands for reforms that violated First Amendment protections under the Constitution.

Burroughs’ ruling in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts vacates freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars anyone in the Trump administration from enforcing those orders.

The administration froze the grants to Harvard on April 14, hours after the university flatly rejected demands that it end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and screen international students for ideological biases, including antisemitism.

Burroughs said that the fact that the administration swiftly terminated Harvard’s funding “was made before they learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response, leads the Court to conclude that the sudden focus on antisemitism was, at best … arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual.”

She also noted that the administration, in a letter in April, “specifically conditioned funding on agreeing to its ten terms, only one of which related to antisemitism.”

Six other terms, she noted, “related to ideological and pedagogical concerns, including who may lead and teach at Harvard, who may be admitted, and what may be taught.”

As a result of the freeze, work was ordered stopped “on a vast number of research projects across fields that are critical both nationally and worldwide,” Burroughs wrote. “There is no link between the affected projects and antisemitism.”

The projects affected by the freeze include research on tuberculosis, NASA astronauts’ radiation exposure, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and a “predictive model to help [Veterans Administration] emergency room physicians decide whether suicidal veterans should be hospitalized,” the judge wrote.

“Combatting antisemitism is, without question, a laudable and important goal,” Burroughs wrote.

“Even an indisputably worthy goal, however, does not allow Defendants to change course on decades of federal funding for critical research without providing a reasoned explanation as to how the agency determined that freezing funding would advance that goal, or, in other words, help combat antisemitism.”

Harvard President Alan Garber, at the time of the funding freeze, said in a note to the university community, “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.”

Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the U.S. Education Department, in a statement said, “In an unsurprising turn of events, the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices – which was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court – just ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to hold Harvard accountable for rampant discrimination on campus.”

“Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it,” Biedermann said.

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this story.