Judge reverses Trump administration's cuts of billions of dollars to Harvard University

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to the Ivy League school in its battle with the White House.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands for changes to Harvard’s governance and policies.

The government had tied the funding freezes to Harvard’s delays in dealing with antisemitism, but the judge said the university’s federally backed research had little connection to discrimination against Jews.

“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that (the government) used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote. The country must fight antisemitism, she wrote, but it also must protect the right to free speech.

https://apnews.com/article/harvard-trump-federal-funding-bdde8f529f01b96d5521d0e248e8fc6c