The Trump administration said late Thursday that it would appeal a ruling that sided with Harvard University in its fight with the government over free speech and billions of dollars in research funding.

The government began blocking grant payments to Harvard on research projects in the spring, but restarted them soon after the Sept. 3 decision by Judge Allison D. Burroughs of U.S. District Court in Boston. On Thursday, the Justice Department, carrying out a pledge from the White House, said in a terse filing that it would pursue an appeal of that ruling before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

As is customary, the government did not use Thursday’s notice to explain the grounds for its appeal, which will also include a related case brought by the American Association of University Professors and other groups. The AAUP did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a statement on Friday, a Harvard spokesperson said the university was “confident that the Court of Appeals will affirm the district court’s opinion.”

The university sued the government in April, after the Trump administration started to choke off research money following Harvard’s refusal to accede to a list of demands. The list included an examination of “programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture” and the establishment of “merit-based” admissions and hiring policies, and the university argued the demands had violated its First Amendment rights.

Harvard Accusing Government of Moving Past Requirements

Harvard also accused the government of brushing past legal and regulatory requirements for cutting off federal money.

But the Trump administration has argued that it could cancel grants and contracts because, in its judgment, Harvard had not done enough to eradicate antisemitism on campus. Federal research dollars, the Justice Department said in a court filing, were “not charitable gratuities.”

Burroughs, however, ruled that the government had acted illegally.

It was difficult, she wrote in the blistering ruling in September, not to conclude the government had “used antisemitism as a smoke screen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”

The courts, she wrote, needed “to act to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost.”

Although Burroughs generally ruled in Harvard’s favor, she effectively acknowledged that there were ways for the government to reduce federal funding to the university. For example, she wrote that her court could not impede government officials “from acting within their constitutional, statutory or regulatory authority,” leaving open the possibility that the Trump administration could use the typical grant-making process to slow or stop the flow of federal money.

When Burroughs’ ruling came down, Harvard and the federal government were already in talks to settle their dispute. But the government’s demands of Harvard have shifted over time, and even though President Donald Trump has repeatedly declared that a deal was close at hand, no settlement has materialized.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Alan Blinder/Sophie Park
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