Harvard and more than 150 universities fight back against Trump administration
The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it would respond to Harvard’s lawsuit against them in court after the Ivy League university filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging a $2.2bn federal funding freeze.
Harvard’s lawsuit marks an escalation in Harvard’s fight to maintain academic autonomy in the face of US President Donald Trump's administration's demands.
In a letter to the Harvard community, the university's President Alan M. Garber said the administration’s “illegal demands” would impose “unprecedented and improper control over the university”.
Garber also said the administration’s threats would have “stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world”.
In its complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief, the university said that within hours of receiving a funding freeze, the university began receiving stop work orders which “put vital medical, scientific, technological, and other research at risk”, as well as news that the government was planning to pull an additional $1bn of funding for health research.
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The complaint also said the government had threatened to terminate $8.7bn in federal funding to five hospitals in Boston – “independent corporate entities” that are “not under Harvard’s control”, calling it an arbitrary decision.
More critically, it said that the government “has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation”.
Medical research said to be in jeopardy includes improving the prospects of children who survive cancer, understanding at the molecular level how cancer spreads throughout the body, and predicting the spread of infectious disease outbreaks.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday that the elite research institution had put itself in the position to lose federal funding.
150 universities protest government interference
Harvard’s stand seems to have galvanised other universities into action as more than 150 presidents of US colleges and universities co-signed a letter denouncing the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education”.
The letter is perhaps the greatest sign yet that US educational institutions are uniting to tackle the government’s attack on their independence.
The letter, published early on Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), comes the day after Harvard University became the first school to sue the government over threats to its funding and a few months into the administration’s escalating campaign against higher education.
Signatories are from both large state schools, small liberal arts colleges, and all the Ivy League universities, except Columbia University and Dartmouth.
In the statement, the university presidents, as well as the leaders of several scholarly societies, say they speak with “one voice” and call for “constructive engagement” with the administration.
“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight,” they write. “However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses… we must reject the coercive use of public research funding," the letter added.
Commenting on the letter, AAC&U President Lynn Pasquerella said in a statement: “The widespread support this statement has garnered demonstrates that despite differences in our respective missions, there is a willingness to speak collectively and act in solidarity to defend the core principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and institutional autonomy foundational to America’s distinctive tradition of liberal education and to our nation’s historic mission of educating for democracy.”
In a comment to the Guardian, Pasquerella said the flood-the-zone strategy was “a strategy designed to overwhelm campus leaders with a constant barrage of directives, executive orders and policy announcements that make it impossible to respond to everything all at once”, explaining why it has taken so long for a joint response.
Trump has sought to bring several prestigious universities to heel over claims they tolerated campus antisemitism, threatening their budgets and tax-exempt status and the enrollment of foreign students if they did not comply with demands.
Threatening research funding
The largest funder of medical and biological research in the world, the National Institute of Health (NIH), says it will pull medical research funding from universities boycotting Israeli companies or operating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, in an announcement released on Monday.
NIH is a government body that is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services and termed "the nation's medical research agency".
The NIH says it “reserves the right to terminate financial assistance awards and recover all funds” if grant recipients do not comply with federal guidelines barring diversity and equity research and prohibited boycotts, the notice stated.
It defined a prohibited boycott as one that refuses “to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorised by, licensed by, or organised under the laws of Israel to do business”.
The NIH awards around 60,000 research grants every year to approximately 3,000 universities and hospitals. Over 80 percent of its $48bn annual budget goes towards funding these grants.
The student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported over the weekend that the university received $488m in NIH funding in 2024, the majority of its total $686m in federal research funding.
Harvard Medical School, which received more than $171m in NIH grants during that period, will probably get hit the hardest, the newspaper reported.
The policy applies to domestic recipients of new or existing awards and came into effect on Monday.
The policy mirrors funding freezes the Trump administration has placed on Harvard and other universities over DEI programmes and schools’ responses to claims of antisemitism on campus.
The latest policy change could have broad implications for research universities across the US, which are already being hit hard by these cuts to federal grants.
In a report on Monday, S&P Global Ratings said that “heightened credit risks for US colleges and universities with significant federally funded research are growing, given evolving policies that might reduce or delay the funding, or potentially limit indirect cost recovery rates”.
“We believe the universities affected by these announcements have adequate reserves to provide flexibility should material cuts transpire, especially as they could be phased in over several years,” S&P said, adding that it would continue to monitor federal policy changes on a case-by-case basis.
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