Harvard University urged a federal judge on Monday to order U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to restore about $2.5 billion in cancelled federal grants and cease efforts to cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school.
However, a lawyer for the Trump administration told the judge the cancelled grants reflect a government priority not to send money to institutions that practice antisemitism.
“Harvard prioritised campus protestors over cancer research,” said Michael Velchik, a senior lawyer at the U.S. 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 in the White House’s escalating conflict with Harvard, which has been in the administration’s crosshairs after it rejected a list of demands to make changes to its governance, hiring and admissions practices in April.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university says hundreds of research projects, including ones concerning cancer treatments, infectious diseases and Parkinson’s disease, will be in jeopardy unless the judge declares the grant cancellations 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 U.S. 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 administration has given no consideration to patients, the public at large and the harm of all this research being cut off,” Lehotsky told the court.
Among the earliest actions the administration took against Harvard was the cancellation of hundreds of grants awarded to researchers because the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
The Trump administration has since sought to bar international students from attending the school; threatened Harvard’s accreditation status; and opened the door to cutting off more funds by finding it violated federal civil rights law.
Reuters
