Trump's Harvard funding freeze blocked: Judge rips antisemitism "smokescreen"
The real goal of the $2 billion funding freeze is an "ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities," the judge found
Some historic rulings are fiery documents of the burning issues of our time.
Journalism should capture their urgency beyond the “cold record.”
Harvard scored a major victory in its fight to restore more than $2 billion in frozen funding on Wednesday, as a federal judge rejected the legal underpinnings of Donald Trump’s war against the oldest university in the United States.
The Trump administration used antisemitism as a “smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” wrote U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, whose grandfather fled anti-Jewish persecution in Russian pogroms.
“Antisemitism, like other types of discrimination or prejudice, is intolerable,” Burroughs wrote in her order’s conclusion.
Despite finding that Harvard could have done a “better job” of handling that problem, Boroughs added: “That said, there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism.”
On top of violating the First Amendment and multiple federal laws, the Trump administration “jeopardized decades of research and the welfare of all those who could stand to benefit from that research,” the ruling says.
Judge Burroughs ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze the money and refrain from terminating any future grants in retaliation for the university’s protected speech.
On Tuesday, the Boston Globe reported that the Justice Department’s lawyer Michael Velchik, who defended the Trump administration’s funding freeze in court, “unnerved” his instructor as a Harvard undergraduate by submitting a paper written from the perspective of Adolf Hitler. The Globe obtained an email showing Velchik telling a peer that one of his favorite reads was “Mein Kampf.”
In court, Velchik argued that federal taxpayer money should not go to institutions that display a deliberate indifference to antisemitism, but the ruling is silent on the new revelations about the government attorney’s undergraduate remarks.
For Judge Burroughs, the targets of the Trump administration’s funding freeze gave away their motive.
“The idea that fighting antisemitism is Defendants’ true aim is belied by the fact that the majority of the demands they are making of Harvard to restore its research funding are directed, on their face, at Harvard’s governance, staffing and hiring practices, and admissions policies—all of which have little to do with antisemitism and everything to do with Defendants’ power and political views,” she wrote.
Burroughs noted that the Trump administration slashed funds for research into Alzheimer’s, heart disease, autism and Tay-Sachs disease, a hereditary condition which disproportionately affects Ashkenazi Jewish people.
Describing free speech as a “hallmark of our democracy,” Burroughs wrote: “We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other.”
In July, Trump attacked Burroughs as a “TOTAL DISASTER,” in part of his longstanding campaign against judges who ruled against him.
Without commenting on those swipes directly, the judge alluded indirectly to Trump’s attacks on the courts in the ruling’s final lines.
“Now it is the job of the courts to similarly step up, to act to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost,” she wrote.
White House spokesperson Liz Huston took a personal swipe at Burroughs following the ruling, labeling her in a statement to CNN as an “activist” appointed by Obama.
Read the full ruling here.
hoist by their own petard!
Thank you Adam. Helps clarify some of the questions I had and emphasizes some implications I missed. As always, your analysis and writing is super helpful!