The Ivy League agency challenged the funds freeze as a violation of the First Amendment.
Harvard expanded its Trump administration’s lawsuit on May 13 against federal funding cuts, including an additional $450 million in grants that it announced administrative officials had ended earlier that day.
That grant, which will come from eight different federal agencies, has already been added to the $2.2 billion cancellation federal grant. According to one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, it was announced to fight anti-Semitism, including representatives from the Department of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services, and was designed to “eradicate anti-Semitic harassment on school and university campuses.”
“Harvard University has repeatedly failed to confront the prevalent racism and anti-Semite harassment that plagues its campus,” the task force said in a statement.
“The Jewish students were exposed to widespread insults, physical assault and threats without any meaningful responses from Harvard leaders.”
The federally funded Ivy League facility challenged the funding freeze as a violation of the First Amendment. It asked us to block District Judge Alison Burrows from termination of the grant. Burrows was scheduled to discuss a hearing on July 21st.
“The government has not identified or is unable to identify any reasonable relationships between anti-Semitism concerns and medical, scientific, technical, and other research that it has frozen or terminated,” the lawsuit said.
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Education Secretary Linda E. McMahon accused Harvard of “engaging in a systematic pattern of violating federal law,” and argued other issues, including supporting an admission process on campus that is not based on political bias or merit.
“The administration’s priorities have not changed, and today’s letter marks the end of the university’s new grant,” McMahon said in a May 5 letter.
“Harvard shouldn’t seek federal grants because no one will provide them.”
In one instance, Harvard was criticized when a pro-Hamas protester who faced criminal charges allegedly assaulting a Jewish student on campus was awarded a $65,000 fellowship grant by Harvard Legal Review.
Harvard argued that he was committed to fighting anti-Semitism and ensuring that the campus was safe for Israeli and Jewish students, calling the administration’s actions a threat to the academic freedom of the system.
In a letter issued on May 12, Harvard President Alan M. Gerber reaffirmed the school’s stance and denounced the Trump administration of “going too far into constitutional freedom at private universities” and “continuing to ignore Harvard’s laws.”
“Harvard will not be at its core on legally protected principles from fears of unfounded federal retaliation,” he said.
Reuters and Naveen Aspllie contributed to this report.
