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The Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors sued the Trump administration on Friday to end its ongoing review of the University’s federal funding, alleging the review was coercive and unlawfully undermined academic freedom.
The complaint argued that the review was illegally “exploiting” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded institutions, to silence dissent on campus by putting more than $255 million in federal contracts and more than $8 billion in multi-year grants under review.
“Threats like these are an existential ‘gun to the head’ for a university,” read the suit, which was filed alongside a motion for a temporary restraining order. “They overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech.”
Earlier this month, the Trump administration demanded that Harvard eliminate all its diversity, equity, and inclusion programming and ban masks on campus to keep funds under review. Though the government’s letter demanded “immediate cooperation,” the University has yet to announce any developments in its negotiations with the White House.
The Harvard AAUP’s lawsuit is its latest legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s attack on higher education. Last month, the faculty group sued his administration over its arrests of noncitizen university affiliates for their association with pro-Palestine protests, arguing that the arrests violated their rights to hear from noncitizen students and professors.
The lawsuit filed Friday argued that the review of Harvard’s funding violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which regulates federal agencies, by failing to follow the legal procedures for escalating a Title VI investigation to a threat to terminate federal funding. The plaintiffs further argued that the review was “arbitrary or capricious” because the administration didn’t provide a reasoned explanation for threatening to pull funding.
The Trump administration has made Title VI a signature tool in its pressure campaign against universities, citing the 1964 law to justify slashing hundreds of millions from peer institutions and launching its review of Harvard’s own federal funding.
“These tactics amount to exploiting Title VI to coerce universities into undermining free speech and academic inquiry in service of the government’s political or policy preferences,” the suit read.
The lawsuit also contends that Trump violated the plaintiffs’ rights to academic freedom and freedom of speech. The plaintiffs argued that Harvard has already changed policies preemptively in anticipation of cuts to its funding, citing a wave of administrative changes across Harvard at programs studying the Middle East.
Two faculty leaders at the Center for Middle Eastern studies were dismissed from their posts in early April for allegedly unbalanced programming about Palestine, and the University bowed to longstanding calls to sever ties with Birzeit University in the West Bank. The Harvard Divinity School also suspended the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative following allegations that the program presented a one-sided view of the war in Gaza.
“These were all programs criticized by the congressional Committee on Education & the Workforce as being antisemitic. The fact they were all shut down around the same time raises grave concerns that Harvard is suppressing legitimate inquiry regarding Israel and Palestine in response to Defendants’ threats,” the statement read.
A University spokesperson declined to comment on the statement.
Harvard Law School professor Nikolas Bowie, the secretary-treasurer of Harvard’s AAUP, said in a press release that “no law in this country permits President Trump to suspend billions of dollars from universities” because Trump dislikes their policies on transgender athletes or faculty or student speech.
“Eliminating discrimination and protecting all students is important. But Trump is defying the Civil Rights Act, terrifying students, and illegally holding hostage grants for hospitals and scientific research so he can accomplish his real goal of punishing academics for our politics,” Bowie said.
In the motion for a temporary restraining order, the plaintiffs wrote that Harvard faced “an impossible choice” in the face of the Trump administration’s review of its federal funding without the Court’s interjection.
“Either commit to ‘reforms’ that sacrifice the university’s independence to government control, punish disfavored speech in deference to government orthodoxy, and turn over hiring and admissions systems to the policy preferences of the Trump administration; or face the immediate loss of up to nine billion dollars in federal funding,” the motion read.
“Under any scenario, the livelihoods and the constitutional rights of Plaintiffs and their members are at stake absent the Court’s immediate intervention,” it continued.
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.
