Harvard University appeared in federal court on Monday, July 21, 2025, over research grant cuts in a pivotal case in its battle with the Trump administration, as the institution argued that the government illegally cut $2.6 billion in federal funding.
President Donald Trump’s administration has heaped the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university with sanctions for months as it presses a series of demands on the Ivy League school, which it decries as a hotbed of liberalism and antisemitism.
Harvard has resisted, and the lawsuit over the cuts to its research grants represents the primary challenge to the administration in a standoff that is being widely watched across higher education and beyond.
A lawyer for Harvard, Steven Lehotsky, said at the hearing that the case is about the government trying to control the “inner workings” of Harvard. He added that ghe funding cuts, if not reversed, could lead to the loss of research, damaged careers and the closing of labs.
The case is before US District Judge, Allison Burroughs, who is presiding over lawsuits brought by Harvard against the administration’s efforts to keep it from hosting international students. In that case, she temporarily blocked the administration’s efforts.
Harvard’s lawsuit accuses the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university after it rejected a series of demands in an April 11 letter from a federal antisemitism task force.
A second lawsuit over the cuts filed by the American Association of University Professors and its Harvard faculty chapter has been consolidated with the university’s.
The April letter demanded sweeping changes related to campus protests, academics and admissions. For example, the letter told Harvard to audit the viewpoints of students and faculty and admit more students or hire new professors if the campus was found to lack diverse points of view.
Harvard President Alan Garber has said that the university has made changes to combat antisemitism but said no government “should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
The same day Harvard rejected the demands, Trump officials moved to freeze $2.2 billion in research grants.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared in May that Harvard would no longer be eligible for new grants, and weeks later the administration began canceling contracts with Harvard.
As Harvard fought the funding freeze in court, individual agencies began sending letters announcing the frozen research grants were being terminated.
They cited a clause that allows grants to be scrapped if they no longer align with government policies.
Harvard, which has the nation’s largest endowment at $53 billion, has moved to self-fund some of its research, but warned it can’t absorb the full cost of the federal cuts.
Harvard Requests Funding Freeze Reversal
At the hearing, Harvard asked the judge to reverse a series of funding freezes. Such a ruling, if it stands, would revive Harvard’s sprawling scientific and medical research operation and hundreds of projects that lost federal money.
A lawyer for the government, Michael Velchik, said that the government has authority to cancel research grants when an institution is out of compliance with the President’s directives.
He said episodes at Harvard violated Trump’s order combating antisemitism.
Burroughs pushed back, questioning how the government could make “ad-hoc” decisions to cancel grants and do so across Harvard without offering evidence that any of the research is antisemitic.
She also argued the government had provided “no documentation, no procedure” to “suss out” whether Harvard administrators “have taken enough steps or haven’t” to combat antisemitism.
Velchik said that the case comes down to the government’s choosing how best to spend billions of dollars in research funding.
“Harvard claims the government is anti-Harvard. I reject that. The government is pro-Jewish students at Harvard. The government is pro-Jewish faculty at Harvard.”
Michael Velchik, s
The research funding is only one front in Harvard’s fight with the federal government.
The Trump administration also has sought to prevent the school from hosting foreign students, and Trump has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
