Trump’s Halting of Harvard’s Funding Ruled Illegal


Yesterday, Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston vacated the Trump administration’s orders to freeze or terminate billions of dollars in federal funding to Harvard University, calling them “arbitrary and capricious” and “violative of the First Amendment.”

Harvard Campus

The judge also ruled that the administration and its agents are forbidden from

a.  Implementing, instituting, maintaining, or giving any force or effect to Defendants’ Freeze Orders, Termination Letters, and attendant unconstitutional conditions, as well as any terminations of, freezes of, or refusing to grant or to continue federal funding undertaken pursuant to the Freeze Orders and Termination Letters…

b. Issuing any other termination, fund freezes, stop work orders, or otherwise withholding payment on existing grants or other federal funding, or refusing to award future grants, contracts, or other federal funding to Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights, or on any purported grounds of discrimination without compliance with the terms of Title VI.

For background on this story, see here and here.

The full ruling can be read below, or here.


Coverage of the decision in Inside Higher Ed and The New York Times

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Matthew H
Matthew H
8 months ago

This is good news as far as it goes. Unfortunately, the Trump administration tends to appeal and/or ignore inconvenient court rulings. But it’s still good. Just wish other universities had been as staunch as Harvard.