Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, sued the Trump administration on Monday, fighting back against its threats to slash billions of dollars from the school’s research funding as part of a crusade against the nation’s top colleges.
The lawsuit signaled a major escalation of the ongoing fight between higher education and President Trump, who has vowed to “reclaim” elite universities. The administration has cast its campaign as a fight against antisemitism, but has also targeted programs and teaching related to racial diversity and gender ideology.
Earlier this month, it sent Harvard a list of demands that included auditing professors for plagiarism, reporting to the federal government any international students accused of misconduct, and appointing an outside overseer to insure that academic departments were “viewpoint diverse.”
Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, accused the government in a statement on Monday of trying to wield “unprecedented and improper control.” Dr. Garber said the consequences of the government’s actions would be “severe and long lasting.”
The Trump administration has claimed that Harvard and other schools have allowed antisemitic language and harassment to remain unchecked on their campuses. Monday’s lawsuit noted that the government had cited the university’s response to antisemitism as justification for its “unlawful action.”
Dr. Garber, in his statement, said that “as a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism.” But he said that the government was legally required to engage with the university about the ways it was fighting antisemitism. Instead, he said, the government has sought to control “whom we hire and what we teach.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, accuses the government of unleashing a broad attack as “leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard.” It also references other major universities that have faced abrupt funding cuts.
The lawsuit names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary; Linda M. McMahon, the education secretary; Stephen Ehikian, acting administrator of the General Services Administration; Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi; and several other administration officials.
White House officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the past week, the Trump administration has also threatened to eliminate visas for international students at Harvard after the university refused to accede to administration demands.
And government officials are planning to freeze an additional $1 billion in research funding to Harvard, according to two administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The officials said the funding was mainly from the National Institutes of Health, which is the nation’s primary agency for biomedical and public health research.
Harvard officials have said the funding freeze will have a significant impact on the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which receives nearly half of its total budget from federal research grants. The school announced major budget cuts this past week.
Using claims of antisemitism as a cudgel, the Trump administration has threatened to investigate dozens of colleges, and has already moved to withhold billions in federal funding from several of them, including Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern and Princeton.
Harvard notified the administration in a letter on April 14 that it would refuse to comply with demands that it said were unlawful. That prompted the Trump administration to impose a funding freeze. The freeze resulted in immediate stop-work orders, affecting the school’s federally funded research projects on tuberculosis, A.L.S. and radiation poisoning.
“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Dr. Garber wrote in a message to the community this month.
Harvard’s letter on April 14 was in response to a list of demands that an antisemitism task force, appointed by the Trump administration, had submitted to Harvard three days earlier. Some members of the administration had said that the list of demands was sent by mistake, but on Monday Dr. Garber said that “their actions suggest otherwise.”
Vimal Patel and Michael C. Bender contributed reporting.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
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