Judge presses Trump administration on Harvard funding cuts

A federal choose on Monday (July 21, 2025) challenged the Trump administration’s causes for slashing billions of {dollars} in federal funding to Harvard University, triggering a livid response from the U.S. President.

Judge Allison Burroughs pressed the administration’s lawyer to clarify how reducing grants to numerous analysis budgets would assist defend college students from alleged campus anti-Semitism, U.S. media reported.

Mr. Trump preemptively fired off a submit on his Truth Social platform blasting Judge Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic president Barack Obama, claiming with out proof that she had already determined towards his authorities — and vowing to enchantment.

The Ivy League establishment sued in April to revive greater than $2 billion in frozen funds. The administration insists its transfer is legally justified over Harvard’s failure to guard Jewish and Israeli college students, notably amid campus protests towards Israel’s warfare in Gaza.

The menace to Harvard’s funding stream compelled it to implement a hiring freeze whereas pausing bold analysis packages, notably within the public well being and medical spheres, that specialists warned risked American lives.

Harvard has argued that the administration is pursuing “unconstitutional retaliation” towards it and a number of other different universities focused by Mr. Trump early in his second time period.

Both sides have sought a abstract judgment to keep away from trial, but it surely was unclear if Judge Burroughs would grant one both manner.

The choose pressed the lone lawyer representing Mr. Trump’s administration to clarify how reducing funding to Harvard’s broad spectrum of analysis associated to combatting anti-Semitism, the Harvard Crimson scholar newspaper reported from court docket.

“The Harvard case was just tried in Massachusetts before an Obama appointed Judge. She is a TOTAL DISASTER, which I say even before hearing her Ruling,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Harvard has $52 Billion Dollars sitting in the Bank, and yet they are anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and anti-America,” he claimed, pointing to the college’s world-leading endowment.

Both Harvard and the American Association of University Professors introduced circumstances towards the Trump administration’s measures which had been mixed and heard Monday (July 21, 2025).

‘Control of educational choice making’

Mr. Trump has sought to have the case heard within the Court of Federal Claims as an alternative of within the federal court docket in Boston, simply miles away from the center of the college’s Cambridge campus.

“This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard,” Harvard mentioned in its preliminary submitting.

The Ivy League establishment has been on the forefront of Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign towards high universities after it defied his calls to undergo oversight of its curriculum, staffing, scholar recruitment and “viewpoint diversity.”

Mr. Trump and his allies declare that Harvard and different prestigious universities are unaccountable bastions of liberal, anti-conservative bias and anti-Semitism, notably surrounding protests towards Israel’s warfare in Gaza.

The authorities has additionally focused Harvard’s skill to host worldwide college students, an necessary supply of earnings who accounted for 27% of complete enrolment within the 2024-2025 educational 12 months.

A proclamation issued in June declared that the doorway of worldwide college students to start a course at Harvard could be “suspended and limited” for six months and that current abroad enrolees might have their visas terminated.

The transfer has been halted by a choose.

The U.S. authorities earlier this month subpoenaed Harvard University for data linked to college students allegedly concerned in a wave of pro-Palestinian scholar protests that the Trump administration labelled anti-Semitic.

Washington has additionally informed a college accrediting physique that Harvard’s certification ought to be revoked after it allegedly failed to guard Jewish college students in violation of federal civil rights regulation.