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<\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n A federal judge on Wednesday gave Harvard University a landmark victory in its fight against the Trump administration<\/a>, siding with the Ivy League school in its effort to restore more than $2 billion in federal funding for research frozen by the White House.\n <\/p>\n \n The decision from US District Judge Allison Burroughs rejects the administration\u2019s argument that it was targeting the university due to antisemitism on the school\u2019s campus.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cA review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country\u2019s premier universities,\u201d wrote Burroughs, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTheir actions have 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,\u201d Burroughs added.\n <\/p>\n \n The decision is a major victory for Harvard, the only university targeted by the Trump administration to take on the White House directly in court. The administration has argued it is cracking down on antisemitism on campus, but Harvard has become the epicenter of a broader fight over academic freedom, federal spending and campus oversight.\n <\/p>\n \n While Wednesday\u2019s ruling is a major win for the school, the Trump administration is almost certain to escalate its fight against the elite academic institution, prompting longer-term questions about the school\u2019s financial future. Already, the White House said it plans to appeal.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis activist Obama-appointed judge was always going to rule in Harvard\u2019s favor, regardless of the facts,\u201d White House spokesperson Liz Huston told CNN on Wednesday. \u201cTo 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.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Burroughs pointed to some of the research projects impacted by the administration\u2019s cuts, including efforts to create a predictive model to help emergency room physicians at the Department of Veterans Affairs determine whether suicidal veterans should be hospitalized, research on Lou Gehrig\u2019s Disease, the development of a chip to measure NASA astronauts\u2019 radiation exposure on an upcoming excursion to the moon and support for a government program on emerging biological threats.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThere is no obvious link between the affected projects and antisemitism,\u201d the judge said.\n <\/p>\n \n When the funding was frozen, Burroughs added, there was no investigation into whether any particular research labs, she said, \u201cwere engaging in antisemitic behavior, were employing Jews, were run by Jewish scientists, or were investigating issues or diseases particularly pertinent to Jews, \u2026 meaning the funding freezes could and likely will harm the very people Defendants professed to be protecting.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n She also took aim at numerous Trump social media posts. His concerns about Harvard, she said, \u201cwere untethered from antisemitism,\u201d quoting many of them directly.\n <\/p>\n \n In her ruling, Burroughs wiped away a \u201cFreeze Order\u201d the administration issued in April that would have held up more than $2 billion multi-year grants to the university and barred the government from withholding any additional federal funds \u201cto Harvard in retaliation for the exercise of its First Amendment rights, or on any purported grounds of discrimination without compliance with the terms of Title VI.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Burroughs made clear in her opinion that she viewed combating antisemitism as an important goal. Harvard, she wrote, \u201cwas wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was defendants\u2019 true aim in acting against Harvard and, even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,\u201d she wrote.\n <\/p>\n \n Officials from Harvard and the White House this summer have been in discussion toward a high-dollar deal<\/a> to restore all federal funding and eliminate ongoing lawsuits \u2013 including a separate lawsuit with the Trump administration over the university\u2019s ability to enroll international students. Burroughs ruled in Harvard\u2019s favor in that case, though the decision didn\u2019t preclude the administration from undertaking a formal review process that could eventually result in the university being unable to host foreign students and scholars.\n <\/p>\n \n Last week, Trump publicly called<\/a> for Harvard to pay \u201cnothing less than $500 million,\u201d telling his Education Secretary Linda McMahon, \u201cThey\u2019ve been very bad. Don\u2019t negotiate.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Other schools targeted by the administration this year, many of which are experiencing acute financial pressure, have taken less confrontational approaches than Harvard.\n <\/p>\n \n In a deal reached in July, Columbia University agreed<\/a> to pay the US Treasury a $200 billion settlement to restore all federal funding. The school also agreed that an independent monitor will oversee implementation. Days later, Brown University reached a deal<\/a> in which it would pay Rhode Island workforce development organizations $50 million.\n <\/p>\n \n The White House remains in negotiation with Cornell University and Northwestern University, and in early August, CNN learned that the Trump administration is seeking a $1 billion deal<\/a> with the University of California, Los Angeles. The school\u2019s leadership said at the time that sum would devastate the university.\n <\/p>\n
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