Harvard University has filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration for slashing billions of dollars from the university’s research funding and preventing them from enrolling international students.
Harvard filed the first lawsuit on April 21, after the White House announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to the university. The White House announced it would cut another $450 million on May 13. Federal funding provided 46% of Harvard’s total budget in 2025.
The White House announced these cuts just a few hours after Harvard refused to comply with a list of demands from the Trump administration. Harvard representatives wrote in a letter to the federal government that their demands infringed on the university’s academic independence and constitutional rights.
“The tradeoff put to Harvard and other universities is clear: Allow the Government to micromanage your academic institution or jeopardize the institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions,” the initial lawsuit states.
Harvard filed the second lawsuit on May 23, less than a day after the Trump administration announced it would block the university from enrolling international students and sponsoring international scholars. They also asked a federal judge to block this order.
Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a letter to the Harvard community that the White House’s decision “imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The federal government made similar threats to 60 U.S. higher education institutions in March. Harvard is the first to pursue legal action.
What exactly were the White House’s demands?
The Trump administration sent two letters to Harvard on April 3 and April 11 demanding that the university comply with a list of policy changes to continue receiving federal funds.
The first list asked Harvard to eliminate their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, ban masks on campus, change their admissions and hiring practices to disregard characteristics like race and gender, and commit to “full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to ensure all these changes are carried out.
The second list asked Harvard to audit its students, staff, and academic programs for any views that “fuel antisemitic harassment,” and to encourage people to report anyone who does not comply with these reforms to university leadership and the federal government.
The letter requested that the university dismantle any pro-Palestine student groups, suspend and expel certain students who were involved in pro-Palestine protests on campus, and promote faculty members whose perspectives align with the Trump administration’s agenda.
It also demanded that Harvard reform its admissions process to screen for international applicants who might be “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism,” and to immediately report international students to the federal authorities if they break any of the university’s conduct policies.
Harvard President Garber said the university would not accept these demands in a message to the Harvard community: “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.”
Why is Trump targeting universities?
Trump aims to eradicate “woke” ideology from higher education. He and his allies use “woke” as an umbrella term to describe progressive values that they don’t agree with.
The original meaning of “woke,” coined by progressives in the Black community during the early 1900s, is to be “informed, educated, and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality”.
Trump wants to withhold federal research money from “woke” institutions to pressure them into adopting policies and views that are more favorable to conservatism. His administration has prioritized fighting anti-Israel movements on college campuses, which became the epicenter for pro-Palestine demonstrations in the past year.
Trump signed an executive order during his second week in office to “combat antisemitism” in these schools, and announced a multi-agency task force to investigate them for alleged discrimination.
His administration is trying to force these universities into compliance by rescinding their funding, revoking the visas of international students, and warning them that the Internal Revenue Service could take away their tax-exempt status.
How have other universities responded to the White House’s demands?
The White House has already paused federal funds to Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and Northwestern as they carry out investigations.
They also suspended about $175 million from the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a transgender swimmer to compete for the school in 2022.
The Presidents of Princeton and Stanford Universities, which are also under investigation, have expressed their support for Harvard’s actions.
Columbia University, one of the first schools Trump targeted, agreed to the White House’s demands in March and implemented nearly all of them at the risk of losing billions of dollars in future funding. The Trump administration pulled $400 million from the school over their handling of on-campus pro-Palestine protests in 2024.
The university put its Middle East studies department under new supervision, revamped its disciplinary measures and rules for student protests, banned masks on campus without carrying proof of a health or religious exception, and said they would hire new public safety personnel who are empowered to make arrests on campus.
Claire Shipman, Acting President of Columbia since March 2025, expressed in a letter to the community that the school is still working on an agreement with the government to restore the funds that they lost.
“Though we seek to continue constructive dialogue with the government, we would reject any agreement that would require us to relinquish our independence and autonomy as an educational institution,” Shipman wrote.