By Michael T. Neitzel
A group of the nation’s leading research universities has requested that a federal judge allow them to file a legal brief supporting Harvard University’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over more than $2 billion in frozen federal grant money.
The 18 institutions requesting permission to file an amicus curiae (or “friend of the court”) brief are:
Boston University; Brown University; California Institute of Technology; Colorado State University; Dartmouth College; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Michigan State University; Oregon State University; Princeton University; Rice University; Rutgers University; Tufts University; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Oregon; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; and Yale University.
The request was granted on Friday by Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who is presiding over the federal lawsuit. The schools have not yet filed the brief, but in their request they state that each of them “has received millions of dollars in federal investments in scientific research over the decades.”
The universities claim that “the federal funding terminations challenged in this lawsuit inflict grievous harm that extends well beyond Harvard University,” arguing that academic research is an interconnected enterprise. The elimination of funding at Harvard negatively impacts the entire ecosystem. The cuts will disrupt ongoing research, ruin experiments and datasets, destroy the careers of aspiring scientists, and deter long-term investments at universities across the country.”
Harvard filed its lawsuit against the Trump administration on April 21, contending that the government’s suspension of its research funding was “unlawful.” The freeze on approximately $2.2 billion in federal funds came after the university had forcefully rejected an April 11 letter in which the administration listed a set of sweeping demands that Trump officials said Harvard had to meet if it wanted to maintain financial funding from the federal government.
The administration has criticized Harvard’s response to student protests over the war in Gaza, accusing it of failing to adequately confront campus antisemitism and harassment, and it also accused the university of using discriminatory admission practices.
But Harvard drew a line in the sand when its president, Alan Garber, wrote a letter to the campus community stating that the institution had “informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement. The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” Instead, Harvard filed its lawsuit.
That lawsuit set up what many higher education leaders had been calling for — a high-profile, principled stand against what they believe is the illegitimate attempt by the federal government to control how private universities conduct their business.
While Harvard has been the leader of this resistance, this new request by both public and private universities to file the amicus brief shows a willingness of more institutions to join the fray. Noteworthy is that all but two of Harvard’s Ivy League peers — Cornell University and Columbia University — were included in the group of petitioners.
The action is significant because it broadens the issues in dispute beyond just an increasingly acrimonious fight between Trump officials and the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university. Indeed, as the universities contend, the federal government’s actions against Harvard undermines the “longstanding mutually beneficial partnership between the government and academia that has powered American innovation and ensured American leadership for over eighty years.”