Harvard's Legal Victory and Trump's Push for Fed Oversight

Wendy Schiller, professor at Brown University, joins to discuss the latest DC headlines and recent court rulings not falling in President Trump's favor.

Harvard University scored a major legal victory in its battle with the Trump administration after a court ruled that the US illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding.

The US government violated Harvard’s free speech rights and didn’t follow proper procedures when it suspended a wide range of research grants in April, according to a federal judge. The ruling on Wednesday paves the way for the funding to be released to the school, but the judge didn’t order it.

Harvard has been the main target of President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape elite higher education, a campaign that started by accusing schools of fostering antisemitism, but has grown into a much broader attack on diversity programs and perceived political bias. The administration said it was withholding federal funding because the school failed to protect Jewish students on campus following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, among other issues.

In her ruling, US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston said the Trump administration violated Harvard’s free-speech protections as well as US civil rights and administrative laws.

The Trump administration “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul” of the law, Burroughs wrote in an 84-page opinion. She said the focus on antisemitism at Harvard was at best “arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual.”

The US, she wrote, “impermissibly retaliated against Harvard for refusing to capitulate to the government’s demands.” She issued the ruling as a so-called summary judgment after deciding a trial was unnecessary.

White House Spokeswoman Liz Huston called the decision “egregious” and said the administration would appeal.

“To any fair-minded observer, it is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years,” Huston said. “Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.”

In a recent report, Harvard acknowledged incidents of both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim bias on campus, along with an apology from Harvard President Alan Garber and a commitment to make more changes.

The ruling “validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom, critical scientific research, and the core principles of American higher education,” Garber said in a statement.

“We will continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape in which we seek to fulfill our mission,” he added.

Although the ruling is a win for Harvard and Garber, the school’s broader clash with the administration continues. Trump has also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status. As part of a separate lawsuit, Burroughs temporarily paused the government’s efforts to bar enrollment of international students and prevent them from entering the US to study at the college. The US appealed that decision.

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