A United States federal judge has ruled that US President Donald Trump’s administration unlawfully terminated about $2.2 billion in grants awarded to Harvard University and can no longer cut off research funding to the prestigious Ivy League school, Reuters reports.
The decision by US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston marked a major legal victory for Harvard as it seeks to cut a deal that could bring an end to the White House’s multi-front conflict with the nation’s oldest and richest university.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school became a central focus of the administration’s broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at US universities, which Trump says are gripped by anti-Semitic and “radical left” ideologies.
The administration cancelled hundreds of grants awarded to Harvard researchers on the grounds the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
Harvard sued, arguing the Trump administration was retaliating against it in violation of its free-speech rights after it refused to meet officials’ demands that it overhaul its governance, hiring and academic programs to align with their ideological agenda.
Read more here.
