6/10/25 Reposted from wbur.org
A broad coalition of outside parties has voiced support for Harvard in its legal battle against the Trump administration to recover billions of dollars in slashed federal funding.
Civil liberties groups, nearly two dozen universities, the attorneys general of roughly 20 states and more than 12,000 Harvard alumni submitted amicus briefs on behalf of the Cambridge university.
The swell of support comes as the campus quiets for the summer, but the school’s legal clash with the federal government heats up.
Over the past several months the Trump administration has waged an escalating campaign against Harvard, after the school refused to agree to a set of demands relating to its admissions, curriculum and hiring practices. Those penalties include yanking over $2 billion of federal funding and revoking the school’s ability to enroll international students, though a judge has temporarily ordered a pause to that latter action.
The university, which sued the government over the funding loss in late April, seeks a summary judgment to restore terminated and frozen federal funds, claiming the government’s actions violated its First Amendment right and federal procedures. A hearing in the case is set for July 21.
Roughly a dozen amicus briefs posted to the court docket Monday reveal the alarm felt by state leaders, medical staff and university administrators around the country and describe how the impact of funding cuts will reach beyond Harvard’s gates.
“The Trump Administration’s attack on Harvard is an attack on the Commonwealth itself,” Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell said in a press release. “The President cannot strong-arm universities into abandoning their core values or relinquishing their independence.”
The attorneys general of 20 other states joined Campbell in signing an amicus brief that laid out the impact of federal funding on local economies that rely on Harvard and other academic research institutions.
Harvard is a key player in the local biotech industry, according to the brief. Shares for area firms that supply research materials to the school have “plummeted” following the cuts to Harvard’s funding.
Additionally, scientific discoveries made at Harvard have led to the formation of 160 start-ups in the last 12 years, according to the brief.
“Beyond threatening current jobs and businesses, such a freeze would halt career development for promising new scientists and debilitate the pipeline for future innovators,” the brief states.
Twenty-four universities, including Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University, signed onto an amicus brief in support of Harvard.
“Although the value to the public of federally funded university research feels obvious to us at MIT, we felt compelled to make the case for its countless benefits to the court and, in effect, to the American people,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a June 9 update to the MIT community.
Other universities that signed onto the brief include Stanford, Georgetown and all the Ivy League schools except Cornell and Columbia, both of which have also been the target of the Trump administration. The government froze $1 billion of Cornell’s federal funding and suspended $400 million at Columbia.
Columbia conceded to demands relating to administrative and academic functions, though the university’s acting president Claire Shipman later said the school would reject any “heavy-handed orchestration from the government” that would damage the university or dictate what the school teaches or whom they hire. The government most recently has threatened the school’s accreditation.
Columbia Alumni for Academic Freedom — a group formed in March — submitted a separate amicus brief.
The University of Pennsylvania also signed onto the universities’ amicus brief. The government suspended roughly $175 million dollars of federal funding for the school for allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports.
Universities in the amicus brief stressed the importance of backing academic research with federal money. In some cases, the scope of a project is so ambitious that significant funding is needed to get it off the ground, the brief stated.
Past research that relied on federal funding led to the invention of the telephone, the computer, the first liver transplant and GPS navigation, the brief added.
Loss of funding at Harvard will also impact other universities, since “scientists work across institutions,” according to the brief. “Grants issued to one university frequently support researchers from others. And cutting-edge research is often conducted via collaboration.”
The brief pointed to a collaboration between Harvard, Princeton and MIT that studies memory dysfunction and could lead to treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.
Twelve Boston-area hospitals also signed onto an amicus brief detailing the role federal funding plays in medical innovation.
Slashing Harvard’s funding will “stunt” medical discoveries that lead to breakthroughs in patient care, according to the brief signed by the Coalition of Boston Teaching Hospitals. It could also increase the cost of clinical trials for hospitals that receive indirect support from Harvard’s federal grants in the form of lab space and training.
Alumni groups also voiced support for the institution. Harvard alumni spanning every graduating class since 1950 signed onto an amicus brief that denounced the “attack” on the school’s curriculum and values.
“We support Harvard’s refusal to accede to the Government’s unconstitutional and unlawful demands to usurp the university’s independence and abrogate its academic freedom,” the brief states. “The escalating campaign against Harvard threatens the very foundation of who we are as a nation.”
The 12,041 Harvard alumni who signed on to the brief include graduates from all 50 states and from countries around the world.
Hundreds of alumni submitted testimonials that spoke to the impact of a Harvard education on their lives, according to a press release from the non-partisan alumni group Crimson Courage. Patrick Henry, a 1960 graduate of Harvard College, used the opportunity to draw a parallel to another era.
“Nathan Pusey, president of Harvard (1953-1971) when I was a student, stood firm against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on the university and its faculty,” Henry wrote. “I am proud and honored, these many decades later, to support (Harvard) President Alan Garber in his resolute resistance.”
Other organizations that voiced support for Harvard include the American Civil Liberties Union, Jewish Scholars of Jewish Studies, the American Council on Education and the Muslim Legal Fund of America.
