A federal judge delivered a sweeping victory for academic freedom Wednesday, ruling that the Trump administration's freeze of $2.2 billion in federal grant funds to Harvard University was illegal and unconstitutional.
The ruling vacates all freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars Trump administration officials from enforcing those orders going forward.
The administration froze Harvard's federal grants on April 14, just hours after the university rejected a list of ten demands. While only one demand related to antisemitism concerns, six others targeted ideological and pedagogical issues, including restrictions on who could lead, teach, and be admitted to the university, as well as what could be taught.
Judge Burroughs noted that the "swift termination" of funding occurred before the administration had learned anything substantive about antisemitism on campus or Harvard's response efforts, suggesting the antisemitism concerns were "at best arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual."
The funding freeze halted work on critical research projects spanning multiple fields, including studies on tuberculosis, NASA astronauts' radiation exposure, Lou Gehrig's disease, and a predictive model to help Veterans Administration emergency room physicians assess suicidal veterans. Burroughs ruled that none of these affected projects had any connection to antisemitism.
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) celebrated the ruling as a landmark victory for higher education.
"This is a huge win for all of American higher education, for science, and for free and critical thought in this country," said Dr. Todd Wolfson, National AAUP President. "Time and again, Trump has tried to restrict speech and cripple lifesaving university research. As today's victory shows, Trump's war on higher education is unconstitutional."
Veena Dubal, National AAUP General Counsel, characterized the administration's actions as "cynical and lawless, leveraging claims of discrimination to bludgeon critical research and debate."
The Harvard AAUP chapter also praised the outcome. "This historic ruling underscores the importance of free inquiry, truth, and the rule of law in a democratic society," said Kirsten Weld, AAUP-Harvard Faculty Chapter President.
Harvard President Dr. Alan Garber had previously stated that "no government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
The Education Department pushed back against the ruling through spokesperson Madi Biedermann, who criticized Burroughs as "the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard's illegal race-based admissions practices" before the Supreme Court ultimately overturned those practices.
"Cleaning up our nation's universities will be a long road, but worth it," Biedermann said, suggesting the administration may continue its broader efforts to reshape higher education policies.
The ruling establishes important precedent for protecting academic freedom and research independence from political interference. Legal experts note that the decision reinforces constitutional limits on government retaliation against educational institutions for their speech, curriculum choices, and admissions policies.
AAUP leaders said that the victory demonstrates the importance of collective action in defending academic freedom, with faculty and administrators standing together against what they characterize as authoritarian overreach into university governance and research priorities.
