Harvard scientists laud federal court ruling in war with Trump administration

Harvard scientists applauded a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully canceled nearly $3 billion in grants.Cassandra Klos/Bloomberg

Harvard University scientists on Thursday applauded a federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully canceled nearly $3 billion in grants to the school, calling it a victory for the First Amendment and due process rights.

Scientists, graduate students, and others at Harvard said the decision should embolden the university to break with other Ivy League schools and refuse to negotiate a settlement with the federal government over allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.

“There’s nothing to negotiate,” said George Church, a renowned geneticist, molecular engineer, and serial entrepreneur whose laboratory had received a grant of about $3 million from the Department of Energy that was frozen. “The lower court has weighed in that [the funding freeze is] not legal.”

The Trump administration vowed to appeal the Wednesday ruling by US District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who concluded that the government crackdown on alleged antisemitism during campus protests of Israel’s war in Gaza was a “smokescreen” for an assault on Harvard.

Even if the case winds up before the Supreme Court, Church said he he is reasonably confident that the high court would side with Harvard.

“I don’t know of any reason why the lower court would be wrong in this,” he said. “Scientists had nothing to do with this. If a handful of undergraduates, or more than that, were protesting and exercising their freedom of speech, why would you punish scientists that are not involved at all?”

As a practical matter, said David Super, a Georgetown University law professor, funding could be restored very quickly. But the Trump administration will likely seek a stay from either Burroughs or the court of appeals that would delay the release of funding while the case proceeds.

Still, the administration faces a hard task to win on appeal, said Super, who characterized Burroughs’s decision as “very, very meticulous.”

“She took everything that the Supreme Court and the courts of appeals have been saying very carefully,” said Super. “Because it’s such a careful opinion, it’s going to be quite difficult for the administration to dislodge on appeal.”

Administration officials, however, said in statement Wednesday that they were “confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable.”

“To any fair-minded observer, it is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years,” said White House spokesperson Liz Huston.

Harvard has been locked for months in negotiations with the Trump administration over changes President Trump wants the nation’s oldest and richest school to make. Trump recently exhorted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to accept “nothing less than $500 million from Harvard” in a settlement.

Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said she hopes “this legal victory will make a stiffening of spine for standing up against these endless assaults against public health.”

Krieger is among the hundreds of researchers whose grants from the National Institutes of Health were terminated earlier this year by the Trump administration because of restrictions on funding anything perceived to be related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and transgender rights. A federal judge in Boston reversed the NIH actions in June, but Krieger’s grant remained in limbo because of the administration’s freeze on federal funding to Harvard.

“Those funds that were illegally terminated for me in the first place,” Krieger said, “now they [have] a chance to go forward.”

She said she wrote to Harvard president Alan Garber earlier this year, urging him not to settle with the Trump administration before a resolution in the lawsuit. Burroughs’s ruling, she said, appeared to give Harvard leverage with Trump.

”It’s better to have that in one’s pocket than not, right?” she said.

Scott Delaney, a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said he also hopes Burroughs’s ruling prompted Harvard to forgo negotiating a settlement. He acknowledged that the Supreme Court has given Trump wide latitude in other cases, but he said he believes Harvard would ultimately prevail.

“Yes, we should be concerned about an activist Supreme Court that’s constantly changing the law in ways that favor the Trump administration,” he said, but “I still think [Harvard is] going to win.”

Scott Delaney, a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, acknowledged that the Supreme Court has given President Trump wide latitude in other cases, but he said he believes Harvard University would ultimately prevail.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

In her strongly worded decision, Burroughs expressed skepticism about the administration’s justification for the cuts — Harvard’s handling of alleged antisemitism on campus. The funding cuts, she noted, began immediately after Harvard announced its intent to defy changes in governance, hiring, and admissions sought by the Trump administration

Those cuts, Burroughs wrote, “jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research, as well as reflect a disregard for the rights protected by the Constitution and federal statutes.”

Marc Weisskopf, a Harvard professor of epidemiology and physiology, was particularly pleased that Burroughs, in her decision, described Trump’s claims of antisemitism at Harvard as a “smokescreen.”

“Seems like the administration’s real interest is to silence voices that may say things they don’t like,” Weisskopf said.

Researchers at Harvard Medical School said they have received little word on how, when, and whether funds for their grants will return.

Dr. Philip Cole, a professor who researches new therapies for cancer at the intersection of chemistry and biology at Harvard Medical School, said he lost two grants, one for research and another for training graduate students. His lab cobbled enough funding together to keep going for now, but Cole doesn’t expect to see his NIH money return anytime soon.

“There’s no guidance [from the school or NIH leadership], because nobody knows,” Cole said. “At least, I don’t know.”

Kevin Struhl, a Harvard Medical School professor and molecular biologist, said he can operate his lab until the end of next June because of supplemental funding from Harvard and his lab’s rainy day fund. He said he expects his federal funding to be withheld while the administration appeals Burroughs’s ruling.

“Yes, this is a great decision from our point of view. It reinforces what everybody has thought,” Struhl said. “But that doesn’t have any practical consequences yet.”

Harvard’s Graduate Student Union, which represents 5,000 graduate students, rejoiced in the win “but that doesn’t make these last few months any less difficult,” said Rachel Petherbridge, chief steward of the union and a biology PhD candidate. Graduate students rely heavily on federal funding for their research.

Petherbridge recalled the stretch from May to June, when the Trump administration canceled some $8.2 billion in grants and barred international students from attending Harvard. Some graduate workers lost jobs; others had contracts shortened to four months from a year.

“All this flurry of activity was really hard,” she said. “It felt like the sky was falling.”

By filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration, Harvard broke with other universities, including Brown and Columbia, which negotiated multimillion-dollar settlements with the administration.

Kenneth Wong, an education research professor at Brown, said Burroughs’s decision highlights the importance of due process. But, he added, he didn’t regret that Brown agreed to pay $50 million over 10 years to state workforce development organizations in a settlement.

That settlement, Wong said, “avoids a long-drawn litigation process and eliminates any uncertain outcomes from that process.”