3 dozen of Harvard’s peers back its court fight against the Trump administration

Dive Brief:

Three dozen colleges and universities have backed Harvard University in its lawsuit against the Trump administration over federal grant cancellations and freezes that followed the Ivy League institution’s rejection of sweeping policy demands. 
Harvard sued the administration in April 2025 after multiple government agencies cut research grants to the university over allegations of campus antisemitism. A federal court vacated the grant terminations and freezes in September, which the administration appealed in December. 
In a joint amicus brief filed last week, Harvard’s peers decried the funding disruption at the institution, arguing that “wholesale termination of federal research funding at just one leading university can have devastating effects on scientific progress and the public welfare.”

Dive Insight:

The institutions coming to Harvard’s defense mentioned the university only a handful of times and largely sidestepped the Trump administration’s allegations. The government’s claims are similar to those used to justify funding cuts at several other institutions. 

Instead, the colleges and universities defended the entire federal research funding system and argued “arbitrary” and even temporary funding cuts could deal significant damage to it. 

“Federal funding has underwritten American security, prosperity and leadership at home and abroad,” the institutions said in their amicus brief filed July 22 with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

They warned, “Draconian cuts to federal research funding endanger this longstanding, mutually beneficial relationship between institutions of higher learning and the American public — especially when funding is terminated or withheld for reasons wholly unrelated to the merits of funded research.”

They contended that even temporary funding disruptions can permanently derail experiments, ruin budding careers and otherwise damage the country’s larger research infrastructure. 

The institutions signing the amicus brief include a handful of universities that the Trump administration has targeted with investigations and funding cuts. 

Among them are Brown, Columbia and Cornell universities, and the University of Pennsylvania, all of which have inked deals with the Trump administration to restore research funding that the government had suspended.

Yale University is also among the signers. That institution is facing allegations from the U.S. Department of Justice that its medical school illegally gave admissions advantages to Black and Hispanic applicants. The New York Times reported in June that Yale officials had proposed a deal with the Trump administration to resolve the widening probe. Yale President Maurie McInnis later confirmed the investigations as well as the talks with the government. 

The American Association of University Professors and other faculty groups have called on Yale to “stand firm” and reject any deal that would compromise its independence or academic freedom. Lawyers hired by the Yale AAUP wrote a scathing analysis of the government’s findings, calling its evidence “cherry-picked” and “statistically weak.”

In a separate amicus brief last week, nearly 30 higher education organizations — including the American Council on Education, Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Association of American Universities — offered a more direct defense of Harvard. 

“The Administration’s retaliation against Harvard is unconstitutional,” the organizations argued.

Harvard was one of 60 colleges that the Trump administration warned in March 2025 of possible federal action if they didn’t adequately protect Jewish students. The administration’s allegations have typically focused on the protests that swept campuses in 2024 amid the Israel-Hamas war that has killed over 70,000 Palestinians in Gaza after Hamas killed roughly 1,200 Israelis and took about 250 hostages in a surprise attack on Oct. 7, 2023. 

A month after the March warning, the administration froze $2.2 billion of Harvard’s research funding. That came after the university refused to accept the Trump administration’s unprecedented slate of demands that Harvard President Alan Garber said would have imperiled the institution’s independence. 

Roughly a week later, Harvard sued the government, setting off a legal fight and an aggressive campaign against the university by the Trump administration. The government has threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and its ownership of patents stemming from federal grants, as well as attempted to nix the university’s ability to enroll foreign students. A federal district judge in September ruled the administration’s funding freezes and grant terminations were illegal and vacated them.

In March, DOJ sued Harvard over similar antisemitism allegations, and the agency has also opened an investigation into the university’s financial aid practices.