Cambridge, MA – May 29: Law school graduates raise gavels during Harvard University’s 374th Commencement on May 29, 2025.
Craig F. Walker | Boston Globe | Getty Images
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grant funds for Harvard University over concerns about antisemitism on campus and other issues was illegal.
Judge Allison Burroughs agreed with Harvard’s arguments that the administration imposed the funding freeze in retaliation for the Ivy League university’s refusal to capitulate to demands for reforms that violated First Amendment protections under the Constitution.
Burroughs’ ruling in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts vacates freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars anyone in the Trump administration from enforcing those orders.
The administration froze the grants to Harvard on April 14, hours after the university flatly rejected demands that it end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and screen international students for ideological biases, including antisemitism.
“The fact that Defendants’ swift and sudden decision to terminate funding, ostensibly motivated by antisemitism, was made before they learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response, leads the Court to conclude that the sudden focus on antisemitism was, at best … arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual,” Burroughs wrote in her ruling.
She also noted that the administration, in a letter in Apri,l “specifically conditioned funding on agreeing to its ten terms, only one of which related to antisemitism, while six related to ideological and pedagogical concerns, including who may lead and teach at Harvard, who may be admitted, and what may be taught.”
Harvard President Alan Garber at the time of the funding freeze said in a note to the university community, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
CNBC has requested comment on the ruling from Harvard.
Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the U.S. Education Department, in a statement said, “In an unsurprising turn of events, the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices – which was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court – just ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to hold Harvard accountable for rampant discrimination on campus.”
“Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it,” Biedermann said.
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