Harvard Beats Trump Admin—Judge's 5 Key Takeaways

 https://www.newsweek.com/harvard-trump-admin-judges-takeaways-2124329

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in funding for Harvard University.

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard's rejection of the Trump administration's demands for changes to its governance and policies.

The Trump administration had tied the funding freezes to Harvard's delays in dealing with antisemitism. But Burroughs, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said in her ruling that there was "little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism."

She wrote: "In fact, a review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that (the government) used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities."

Burroughs said it resulted in the government terminating Harvard's grants without complying with the law and retaliating against the school in violation of its free speech rights under the First Amendment.

Burroughs said that it was "clear, even based solely on Harvard's own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by antisemitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue."