On Wednesday, September 3, 2025, Harvard University secured a major legal victory in its high-profile battle with the Trump administration over the freezing of billions of dollars in federal research funding. In a sweeping 84-page decision, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that the administration’s attempt to cut off more than $2 billion in grants—citing alleged antisemitism on campus—was not only illegal but also a violation of the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
The funding freeze, imposed in April 2025, came just hours after Harvard’s leadership rebuffed what it described as sweeping federal demands to overhaul its admissions, hiring, governance, and campus policies. The Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism had insisted that the Ivy League institution failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students, particularly amid heated protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. Yet, Harvard maintained that the administration’s real aim was to exert control over the university’s inner workings—its hiring, admissions, and curriculum—rather than to address antisemitism.
Judge Burroughs was unequivocal in her assessment. “A 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’s premier universities,” she wrote, according to AFP and JTA. She further noted that, while Harvard “could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with” antisemitism on campus, the administration’s funding cuts had little to do with the issue at hand. “There is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism,” Burroughs stated in her order.
The judge’s ruling vacated and set aside all freezes and terminations of funding to Harvard made on or after April 14, 2025, and permanently barred the administration from using similar reasoning to cut funding in the future. The decision also blocked a May 5 letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon that sought to cut Harvard off from all future research grants. Burroughs made clear that “combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.”
For Harvard, the consequences of the freeze were immediate and severe. The university was forced to implement a hiring freeze and pause ambitious research programs, particularly in public health and medical fields—pauses that, experts warned, risked American lives and stymied progress in critical areas. International students, who accounted for 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollment in the 2024-2025 academic year, were also caught in the crossfire as the administration moved to restrict the university’s ability to enroll them, a matter still being litigated in federal court.
Harvard President Alan Garber, in a letter to the campus community, acknowledged the significance of the ruling but cautioned that the legal battle was not yet over. “Even as we acknowledge the important principles affirmed in today’s ruling, we will continue to assess the implications of the opinion, monitor further legal developments, and be mindful of the changing landscape in which we seek to fulfill our mission,” Garber wrote. Harvard had chosen to sue, he explained, because the administration’s demands to reinstate federal grants were unreasonable and amounted to an attempt “to control whom we hire and what we teach,” rather than a good-faith effort to address antisemitism.
The Trump administration, for its part, wasted no time in announcing plans to appeal. White House Assistant Press Secretary Liz Huston dismissed the judge’s decision as the work of an “activist Obama-appointed judge” who “was always going to rule in Harvard’s favor, regardless of the facts.” Huston doubled down on the administration’s stance, stating, “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. Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.”
Judge Burroughs’s ruling came after a month in which the Trump administration had found Harvard in violation of the civil rights of its Jewish and Israeli students for its response to alleged antisemitism. In late April, Harvard published two long-awaited reports—one on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, and another on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian bias—detailing that students and employees from all these groups at times felt shunned or harassed during the 2023-24 academic year. “Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did,” Burroughs observed, but she also noted that the university “is currently, even if belatedly, taking steps it needs to take to combat antisemitism and seems willing to do even more if need be.”
Despite Harvard’s efforts, Burroughs found that the federal agencies had failed to consider the university’s policy changes—or the importance of particular grants—before cutting off critical research funding. “The agencies considered little, if any, data regarding the antisemitism problem at Harvard” and disregarded “substantial policy and other changes” the university enacted to address the issue, she wrote.
The ruling may also influence ongoing settlement talks between Harvard and the White House. According to AFP and France 24, there has been discussion of a potential $500 million settlement acknowledging the administration’s claims in exchange for the restoration of federal funding. Other universities, including Columbia and Brown, have already reached multi-million dollar settlements under similar circumstances, even when they believed their legal positions were strong. “People settle cases all the time for lots of reasons, even if they think they are 100 percent right,” Albany Law School Professor Ray Brescia told AFP.
The legal dispute has also reignited the longstanding debate over academic freedom and federal oversight of higher education. The Trump administration and its allies have repeatedly accused Harvard and other elite institutions of being unaccountable bastions of liberal bias and antisemitism, especially in the context of campus protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza. The government’s demands included hiring third-party auditors to review programs allegedly fueling “antisemitic harassment” and instituting governance reforms to reduce the influence of activist faculty—a set of requirements Harvard called “unreasonable” and “untethered from antisemitism.”
Judge Burroughs’s opinion was clear on this point: “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.”
As the legal wrangling continues, the implications of this case are likely to reverberate far beyond Harvard’s campus. The balance between fighting discrimination and protecting free speech, the scope of federal power over academic institutions, and the politicization of university governance are all now front and center in the national debate.
For now, Harvard’s victory stands as a forceful reminder that, even in the midst of heated political battles, the courts remain a crucial check on executive power and a defender of constitutional rights.
