Judge voids $2.2 billion Harvard funding freeze by Trump administration [View all]

Source: CNBC

Published Wed, Sep 3 2025 4:30 PM EDT Updated 2 Min Ago


A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration’s freeze of $2.2 billion in grant funds for Harvard University over concerns about antisemitism on campus and other issues was illegal.

Judge Allison Burroughs agreed with Harvard’s arguments that the administration imposed the funding freeze in retaliation for the Ivy League university’s refusal to capitulate to demands for reforms that violated First Amendment protections under the Constitution.

Burroughs’ ruling in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts vacates freezing orders affecting Harvard and bars anyone in the Trump administration from enforcing those orders. The administration froze the grants to Harvard on April 14, hours after the university flatly rejected demands that it end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and screen international students for ideological biases, including antisemitism.

“The fact that Defendants’ swift and sudden decision to terminate funding, ostensibly motivated by antisemitism, was made before they learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response, leads the Court to conclude that the sudden focus on antisemitism was, at best ... arbitrary and, at worst, pretextual,” Burroughs wrote in her ruling.

Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/03/trump-harvard-funding-freeze-court.html