From the NY Times: Harvard University won a crucial legal victory in its clash with the Trump administration on Wednesday, when a federal judge said that the government had broken the law by freezing billions of dollars in research funds in the name of stamping out antisemitism. The ruling may not be the final word on the matter, but the decision by Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston was an interim rebuff of the Trump administration’s campaign to remake elite higher education by force...
Although the ruling was a milestone for Harvard, the only university to sue over the administration’s targeted assault on its research funding, President Trump had vowed to appeal any decision that went against him. His administration has spent months seeking to pressure Harvard in ways beyond research money, and while Judge Burroughs’s ruling may not put an end to that campaign, her opinion was a bracing rebuke...
The White House condemned the ruling. “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,” said Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman. “Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.” She added that the government would “appeal this egregious decision, and we are confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable.”* ...
The administration... hoped that Judge Burroughs would not issue much of a ruling at all. Its lawyers argued that an 1887 law meant that the suit, which the Justice Department depicted as a contractual matter, needed to be heard by a specialized court in Washington. More recently, it urged the judge to consider the implications of an August decision by the Supreme Court in a different case. In that case, which also concerned federal grants, the court ruled that challenges to individual terminations should be brought in the Court of Federal Claims. But it was a muddled ruling that left the door open for policy challenges in federal district courts. Judge Burroughs acknowledged the Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday and said she was “endeavoring” to follow it, but she largely asserted her own court’s jurisdiction...
Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/03/us/harvard-trump-funding-ruling.html.
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*It might be noted that Judge Burroughs was the judge who initially ruled for Harvard in its defense of affirmative action in admissions that the US Supreme Court later reversed.
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