Trump administration and Harvard face crucial court test

The Trump administration and Harvard University will appear before a federal judge Monday as each party seeks outright victory in their clash over billions of dollars in research money that the government has taken from the school.

The hearing is likely to be a milestone in a lawsuit that partly hinges on what the government's role in higher education should be.

Both Harvard and the government are asking Judge Allison Burroughs for summary judgment -- a ruling that would decide the lawsuit, at least in Burroughs' court, without a trial.

Harvard will argue Monday that the Trump administration is trying to curb its First Amendment rights. Burroughs sided with the university in another significant case, when she ruled on several interim matters related to the government's effort to block the school from enrolling international students.

But Monday's hearing will be the judge's first substantive opportunity to signal her thinking on Harvard's signature lawsuit against the federal government.

Harvard and the administration have been at odds for months, frequently sparring over whether the nation's oldest and richest university tolerated antisemitism on its campus or defied a Supreme Court ruling about race-conscious admissions. Their dispute escalated in April, when the government inadvertently emailed Harvard a set of demands that university leaders believed threatened the school's independence.

They included a review for "viewpoint diversity" and outside scrutiny of "those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture." Other demands included diluting the faculty's influence over the university and the establishment of "merit based" hiring and admissions policies.

The school filed its lawsuit in April, after it rejected the demands and the Trump administration swiftly said it would cancel billions in federal funds for research.

The White House and Harvard have worked in recent weeks to strike a deal that could end the dispute, and the outcome of the proceedings Monday is expected to shape any future talks.

Even as they negotiate, the administration has continued to pursue Harvard with other tactics, such as a challenge to its accreditation and accusations that it violated Title VI, a part of federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin. This month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement also subpoenaed the university for troves of information, including payroll records, years of disciplinary files and any videos Harvard had of international students protesting on campus since 2020.

The university's lawyers argued in a court filing last month that the government's tactics amounted to "unconstitutional retaliation against Harvard for exercising its First Amendment rights to decide what to teach, to express certain views and to petition the courts to defend itself."

Harvard also said that the Trump administration's hurried approach to cutting funding defied federal law and regulations, and that its actions were "arbitrary and capricious." The school has argued that the government's decision to cancel funding across disciplines has little connection to the problems it wants to address, including antisemitism.

In the Justice Department's submissions to Burroughs, officials have argued that the administration had clear authority to halt research funding to Harvard because of what it perceived as rampant campus antisemitism.

"As much as Harvard would like to receive these tax dollars with no strings attached, they are not charitable gratuities," the government wrote in one of its filings.

The administration's lawyers argued that contracts include conditions that Harvard has not met. Justice Department lawyers also asserted that a different court, one dealing with financial disputes, should be hearing the case instead of Burroughs'.

It is not clear when Burroughs will issue a ruling.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.