Harvard v. US Department of Health and Human Services, et al.

In April 2025, Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s freeze of roughly $2.2 to $2.3 billion in federal research funding, arguing the action was politically motivated and violated the First Amendment and federal administrative procedures. The freeze followed accusations from a federal task force that Harvard had not sufficiently addressed antisemitism and racial discrimination on campus, and subsequent agency actions sought to terminate additional grants across multiple agencies, disrupting research in medicine, climate science, artificial intelligence, and other fields.

Harvard responded by committing roughly $250 million from its endowment to sustain ongoing research and sought private partnerships to fill funding gaps, though university officials acknowledged private funding could not replace federal support. Faculty and administrators argued the funding cuts were meant to pressure universities over speech, diversity, and governance, and Harvard’s court filings contended that allegations of discrimination were being used as a pretext for punitive action.

On June 4, 2025, the National Institutes of Health briefly lifted a freeze on new grants to Harvard before reinstating it hours later amid negotiations, leaving more than 170 projects uncertain. On June 12, the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights issued a Notice of Violation finding Harvard had acted with deliberate indifference toward harassment of Jewish and Israeli students, and on September 24 referred the university to federal suspension and debarment proceedings that could jeopardize future funding.

On July 21, 2025, a federal court heard arguments on Harvard’s challenge to the funding cuts, raising questions about executive authority, due process, and the legality of using funding leverage to influence university policy. Soon after, President Donald Trump attacked the presiding judge on social media, calling the jurist a “Trump hating Judge” and a “TOTAL DISASTER.” On September 3, the court ruled the government had unlawfully terminated roughly $2.2 billion in funding, finding the administration’s actions politically motivated and inconsistent with federal law. On December 12, the Department of Justice filed notices of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, keeping the litigation active.

Settlement negotiations continued into early 2026. On February 3, 2026, President Trump publicly reversed course after signaling privately he might drop a proposed $200 million fine tied to settlement talks, instead posting late at night on Truth Social that he would demand $1 billion “in damages,” threaten a criminal investigation, and warn the dispute “should be a Criminal, not Civil, event.”

On February 13, 2026, the Justice Department filed a separate lawsuit seeking to compel Harvard to produce admissions records as part of a federal civil rights compliance investigation, alleging the university failed to fully comply with document requests tied to federal funding conditions. Harvard maintains it has cooperated in good faith and views the action as further retaliation.

Additional pressure has included the Department of Defense ending certain graduate level military education programs at Harvard’s Harvard Kennedy School, while similar federal pressure campaigns have also appeared in disputes involving Columbia University and demands directed at University of California, Los Angeles.