A court in the United States found illegal the Trump administration’s decision to cut Harvard’s funding
The federal court in Boston recognized as illegal the decision of the Donald Trump administration to stop funding Harvard University’s scientific projects in the amount of about 2.2 billion dollars. reports Reuters.
Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the White House does not have the authority to block a grant from one of the top Ivy League universities. It was an important legal victory for Harvard, which has been in a long-running conflict with the Trump administration. The latter accused the university of insufficiently fighting anti-Semitism on campus, especially after the start of the war in Gaza in 2023.
The Trump administration demanded that Harvard pay at least $500 million as part of the settlement and meet a number of conditions, including changes to its governance system, a review of its student and faculty selection policies to ensure “ideological balance,” and the abandonment of certain academic programs. Hundreds of research grants were canceled after the university refused to comply.
Harvard University has said it is taking steps to protect Jewish and Israeli students who have been subjected to “offensive and unacceptable” treatment. At the same time, the university’s president, Alan Garber, emphasized that the conditions proposed by the Trump administration went far beyond the fight against anti-Semitism and actually constituted an attempt to control the intellectual life of the university.
Recall that on June 21, Judge Allison Burroughs prohibited the Trump administration from indefinitely depriving Harvard of the opportunity to admit foreign students and scientists until the end of the legal proceedings.
