Holding the Line: Harvard’s Unprecedented Legal Battle that is Keeping the Trump Administration at Bay
- WULR Team
- Mar 17
- 6 min read
An analysis of legal battles between Harvard and the Trump Administration
Published March 17th, 2026
Written by Max Goldberg
Marking a new development in an unprecedented legal case, US District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled in favor of Harvard University, restoring over 2.2 billion dollars of federal funding. Stated in Harvard’s official response to the Trump administration, the Obama appointee also protected 1.1 billion dollars of grants, the university's 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, enrollment of international students and blocked investigations into day to day operations at the University. While not the end of this legal dispute, this marks a key victory for not only Harvard, but offers hope to the many other universities in a legal battle with the current administration.
These demands mark a unique point in history, as it is the first time ever a president has taken direct action to influence the day to day operation of universities. The same can be said for the weaponization of federal funds, as they attempt to force the universities to bend to their demands. The only other similar attempt to quell specific ideas in universities was during the second red scare of the 1940s and 50s. According to Brandeis University, the state and federal governments attempted to silence communist ideas on campus by offering loyalty checks or demanding loyalty oaths. Some students believed this inhibited their free speech and marked an overstep of federal influence in higher education. The major difference between the two situations is no large scale federal funding was threatened and it was mostly a small program that did not have much effect on the schools.
While Harvard is the legal dispute getting the most attention by the media, other schools such as the University of Virginia, Columbia University, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Los Angeles find themselves in the middle of their own legal battles. Inside College Education explains four of these schools have already agreed to settlements with the Trump administration, with UCLA the only ones resisting the terms. On top of that, according to the London School of Economics, nine schools were offered Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” These seven out of the nine schools denied the administration's demands, with Vanderbilt and the University of Texas at Austin partially accepting some of the terms. Despite not being on the original list, the New College of Florida, a small liberal arts college in Sarasota, Florida, has expressed a desire to adopt this new conduct. According to the Guardian, the goal of these reforms is to “advance conservative ideas” on college campuses and in return receive substantial federal funding. If a university fails to comply with these agreements, the memo states that it will have their funding removed.
One aspect that makes the Trump administration's attack on both Harvard and the other universities a little more complicated is their stated end goal of helping to stop antisemitism on campuses. This comes in response to the mass anti-Israel protests following the onset of the war in Gaza on not only Harvard’s campus, but campus all around the country. In response to these protests, Trump is utilizing Title VI, a part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any program receiving government funding. This also comes a year after a settlement in a legal case against The Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education , in which the University had to implement a series of steps with the purpose of combatting antisemitism on campus, according to Harvard’s Press Release. On top of this, the American Enterprise Institute reports Jewish enrollment at Harvard has gone down from 25% to 5% in less than 20 years. This is a larger drop than what was seen when Harvard instated a Jewish Quota in the 1920s, which was overturned by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in 2023. The long history of antisemitism on Harvard campus leads many to believe the actions taken by the Trump administration to be necessary to eliminate hatred and bias on campus.
Even with the long well documented history of antisemitism at Harvard, Judge Burroughs still ruled in favor of the University, claiming in the official conclusion that the “Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen.” She ruled that the University's First Amendment rights were being violated and the list of demands in the administration's letter to Harvard do indeed have little to do with the actual problem of antisemitism. The rest of the letters nine bullet points have to do with the teachings of certain ideologies on campus and submission to third party review of on campus activities and are not directly tied in with action against antisemitism. On top of that, the withholding of funds from these research opportunities have no effect on antisemitism on campus whatsoever. Burroughs also cites the famous concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, in which Justice Brandeis stated: “[i]f there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Burroughs did state the University needed to do more against antisemitism, but viewed these demands as separate from the problem at hand.
The risks with cutting funds from these major institutions are plentiful, as the colleges and universities act as premier research and innovation hubs that provide key discoveries across many different fields. According to USAFacts, in 2023 the federal government supported over $59.6 billion of federal research and design grants. Overwhelmingly allocated to life sciences and engineering fields, these grants go toward cancer research, mental health studies or research aimed at reducing the spread of communicable diseases. The Department of Education even has a long standing relationship with Stanford University that allows ground breaking physics research to be done right on campus. In Harvard’s statement on the termination of the government grants, they shared how these grants were going toward research in combating children's cancer, reducing pain of multiple sclerosis, researching the spread of infectious disease and many other fields of study. If federal funding is cut not only does it eliminate integral research put toward saving millions of lives, but it risks the United States losing its spot as the pinnacle of scientific innovation.
On top of losing billions of dollars worth of research, Harvard and the other universities risk losing their free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment if the Trump administration’s probe into the day to day activities on campus is allowed to be upheld. In the lengthy letter from the Trump administration, one of the demands was that the University would allow a third party group on campus to monitor that Harvard is carrying out its activities in compliance with what is stated in the letter. This includes the hiring of professors, the admission of international students and the classes taught at the university. This is a major overstep by the federal government into the universities day to day activities, and as stated in Harvard's official letter to the Trump administration, violates the First Amendment rights of the University. They also cite the administration's blatant misuse of Title VI, as institutions are given not only proper warnings before termination of federal funding, but also given the right to a court hearing. If the administration is allowed to continue with these attacks on the universities, using federal funds as leverage for compliance, the operations of the university would come under threat as the government would have the ability to influence every aspect of the schools, from classes taught to students admitted.
While the risk of antisemitism on college campuses is growing and it is necessary for universities to take the necessary steps to stop it, Harvard’s settlement with the Brandeis Center and JAFE, show that the university has made meaningful steps to combat not only the prevalence of antisemitism, but islamophobia as well. Instead, the Trump Administration is using antisemitism and the protest against the war in the Middle East as an excuse to withhold funds with the goal to carry out their own, separate agenda. Through the misuse of Title VI and blatant violation of the universities’ First Amendment rights, the government has put in danger billions of dollars of life saving research, admission to international students and even affected the hiring of new professors and building projects on campus according to the LSE. This is not in an attempt to quell hate, but to determine what topics are taught and the day to day operations at the school to align with more conservative ideologies. If universities do not follow Harvard's lead and stand up to these probes, then the United States' role as the top global innovator and leader in education would be in jeopardy, as the lack of funding would cut billions of dollars of world changing research and severely limit what and how universities can teach.
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