{shortcode-0fc19f5f63cfb8fc2364425e84dc2890ec014ee1}
In a courtroom showdown over nearly $3 billion in threatened funding, Harvard has drawn support from 21 states, two dozen universities, more than 12,000 alumni, and a host of civil liberties groups.
Before a Monday court deadline, dozens of outside groups — which also included Boston-area hospitals and former federal officials — submitted amici briefs backing Harvard in its lawsuit against 12 federal agencies.
The University first sued in April, when the Trump administration cut $2.2 billion in federal research funding over Harvard’s refusal to accede to demands that it screen international applicants for their beliefs, dismantle diversity offices, review its academic programs for “viewpoint diversity,” and crack down on protests and pro-Palestine student groups. Harvard called the conditions unconstitutional.
The outside filings argued that the Trump administration’s decision to cut off federal research funding over alleged Title VI violations amounted to a sweeping attempt to reshape Harvard and higher education. Many warned that the move threatened academic freedom, politicized civil rights enforcement, and aimed to silence dissent, especially around Palestine. Some were nonetheless critical of Harvard, too, claiming that it had stifled free speech in the past or suppressed pro-Palestine views in recent months.
Across ideological lines, the groups coalesced around one claim: that the federal government is using its purse strings to force Harvard to adopt its preferred stance on speech and protest.
Here’s who is supporting Harvard, and why.
Former Federal Officials
Eighteen former federal officials, including former leaders of the very agencies now cutting Harvard’s funding, argued that the Trump administration ignored the protections of Title VI in its rush to punish the University.
The officials — among them former Education Secretaries Miguel A. Cardona and Arne S. Duncan and former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna E. Shalala — argued that terminating funds under Title VI requires a clear four-step process: an investigation, attempts at voluntary compliance, a hearing, and a report to Congress.
In Harvard’s case, they wrote, “none of those steps were taken.”
The officials who signed the amicus brief served under the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden administrations, and in some cases during Donald Trump’s first term. Many are lawyers, and more than half served in their agencies’ civil rights offices — the units that have led investigations into Harvard. The second Trump administration’s handling of funding cuts, they wrote, was a sharp break from precedent.
“Fund termination is an option of last resort,” the officials wrote. “Defendants have violated Title VI’s procedural and remedial requirements as no administration has ever done.”
As a contrast, they pointed to the Department of Education’s handling of a 2023 antisemitism complaint at the University of Vermont under Cardona’s term. There, rather than threaten a funding cutoff, the agency met with Jewish students and administrators, conducted a full investigation, and negotiated reforms, according to the brief.
That process, they said, “was transformative for UVM’s Jewish students.”
Missing from the brief’s signatories was former Education Secretary John B. King Jr., who held his position at the end of Obama’s second term and has served on the Board of Overseers — Harvard’s second-highest governing body — since 2019.
Universities
Twenty-four top research universities warned that the Trump administration's move to cut off federal funding at Harvard could cripple the scientific infrastructure behind U.S. medical innovation.
The schools said the freeze jeopardized the university-based research ecosystem that has powered breakthroughs from gene therapy to cancer treatment. The universities — including Stanford University, Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins University — emphasized that cutting off grants to Harvard threatened basic science that underpins clinical research across the country.
Every Ivy League institution except Cornell University and Columbia University signed the brief — a rare move from Harvard’s peer institutions to wade into a politically charged battle together. (An alumni group from Columbia submitted a separate brief alleging the funding freeze would hurt Columbia and Harvard alike.)
Hospitals
Boston’s leading teaching hospitals also submitted an amicus brief arguing that the funding cuts put medical breakthroughs at risk.
In the brief, the Conference of Boston Teaching Hospitals said its members depend on research partnerships with Harvard to fuel clinical trials and translate discoveries into treatments. Programs like Harvard Catalyst, which supports hundreds of studies across multiple hospitals, are now at risk, the group wrote.
The member hospitals include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston Medical Center and its location in Brighton, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Mass General Brigham, Mass Eye and Ear, Massachusetts General Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Tufts Medical Center.
Each institution has an agreement with one of Boston’s medical schools at Harvard, Tufts, Boston University, or the University of Massachusetts.
Hospitals would face “collateral consequences” from the loss of subawards provided by Harvard from its federal grant funding, the brief argued, and the loss of basic research conducted at Harvard could have downstream effects on clinical trials.
The hospitals cited a study in JAMA Health Forum that found that nearly every drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019 was developed in part because of National Institutes of Health-funded basic research.
Harvard Affiliates
More than 12,000 Harvard alumni signed onto a brief defending the University’s independence, warning that the Trump administration’s actions posed “an unprecedented, existential threat” to higher education in America.
The alumni — from every graduating class from 1950 to 2015 and across all of Harvard’s schools — condemned the federal government’s “campaign of bullying, coercion, and extortion” as an attempt to control campus speech and punish ideological dissent.
The group argued that the abrupt termination of research funding was not just a policy dispute but “a brazen attempt to dictate and shape viewpoints at Harvard.”
Crimson Courage, the group that helped organize the brief, has claimed it is the largest known amicus brief submitted by alumni from a single university in U.S. history.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee — a student group that has led many of the protests on Harvard’s campus against the war in Gaza — also joined the fray on Monday. In its brief, the PSC argued that the federal government’s funding freeze punished the University for protected political advocacy and punished it to suppress speech in support of Palestinian rights.
The group warned that Harvard’s response — including disciplinary action against Palestine-focused student groups and events — risked violating Title VI by discriminating against Palestinian students and their allies.
Jewish Groups
Twenty-seven Jewish studies scholars and the progressive Jewish advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace filed briefs warning that the Trump administration's approach to antisemitism risked marginalizing Jews who dissent from Zionism. Both groups backed Harvard but criticized the University’s assertions that its new policies on discipline and protest would combat antisemitism.
The scholars — including a retired Harvard Medical School professor and a current Ph.D. student — argued that equating antisemitism with anti-Zionism “may run afoul of Title VI” and could chill academic inquiry and silence Jewish voices critical of Israel. Other signatories included the renowned gender studies scholar Judith Butler; Rebecca T. Alpert, one of the first women ordained as a rabbi; and Atalia Omer, who served as a visiting professor at Harvard from 2018 to 2023.
They warned the government’s position promotes a “singular political understanding” of Jewish identity, conflating religion with nationalism.
JVP, one of the world’s largest anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, went further. In its brief, the group wrote that the Trump administration's stance would effectively rewrite the definition of Judaism to require support for Israel — labeling dissenting Jews, like its members, as antisemitic.
JVP argued that compelling universities to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause by favoring one theological interpretation over another. Harvard adopted the definition as part of a settlement agreement just one day after Trump took office.
The brief cited Harvard’s recent actions — including the cancellation of an anti-Zionist Passover seder held by an unrecognized student group and the suspension of a research partnership with a Palestinian university — as evidence that anti-Zionist Jews on campus already face discrimination.
Blue States
Attorneys general from 20 states and the District of Columbia warned that the Trump administration’s freeze on Harvard’s federal research funding threatened not only the University, but also state economies, public health, and scientific progress.
Led by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, the coalition of Democratic-led states — including New York, California, Illinois, and Michigan — argued that Harvard’s research is deeply woven into regional industries. The amici cited that in Massachusetts alone, Harvard is the fifth-largest employer and spent $1.45 billion at local businesses last year.
“This wholesale attack will have devastating spillover effects on Massachusetts’s economy — as it would on the economy of any Amicus State if its major research universities were targeted in the same way,” they wrote.
The amici warned that the funding freeze could stall Harvard-driven development in Allston and dampen the state innovation’s economy. They wrote that cutting research dollars would slow biotechnology growth in neighbouring areas to Cambridge and reduce the founding of new companies that rely on Harvard’s research pipeline and workforce.
“The federal government’s current attack on research universities is, in multiple respects, an attack on the states themselves,” they wrote.
Campbell has emerged as a vocal defender of Harvard in the courtroom. Last week, she filed a brief in support of Harvard’s separate lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over its ability to enroll international students.
Legal and Civil Liberties Organizations
A coalition of high-profile civil liberties organizations argued that the federal government’s decision to cut off research funding was an unconstitutional incursion into free speech on campus.
In a joint amicus brief filed Monday, the eight groups accused the Trump administration of seeking to override Harvard’s institutional independence by demanding ideological changes in its academic programs, hiring, and governance.
The group argued that such conditions amount to viewpoint discrimination barred by the First Amendment — particularly when applied to a private university’s internal decisions about what to teach and whom to admit. They warned that letting the funding cutoff stand would open the door to political coercion across higher education.
Though they differ sharply in politics and mission — from the libertarian Cato Institute to the progressive American Civil Liberties Union — the groups united around the concern that the federal government was trying to wield federal dollars as a cudgel to dictate campus ideology.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has been a vocal critic of free speech at Harvard, filed a separate brief raising similar claims. FIRE argued that the Trump administration’s actions effectively pressure the University to discipline student expression critical of Israel and penalize institutions that permit such speech.
“Exactly none of Harvard’s problems,” FIRE wrote, “in any way excuse Defendants’ unlawful, unconstitutional demands.”
The Muslim Legal Fund of America, in its own filing, applied that argument to pro-Palestine advocacy. It warned that the White House’s approach presumes anti-Zionist speech to be discriminatory, creating a chilling effect for Muslim and Arab students and violating basic First Amendment protections.
Middle East Scholars
The Middle East Studies Association of North America argued in a brief that the Trump administration is leveraging federal power to suppress scholarship and speech critical of Israel — in violation of the First Amendment.
MESA, a scholarly organization with dozens of current or former Harvard affiliates, wrote that the administration is “weaponizing” Title VI to punish Harvard over its campus climate. The brief cited the government’s threat to defund the University until it restructured academic units like the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, calling the demand “a stunning attempt to suppress disfavored expression.”
MESA also pointed to a string of recent administration actions — including Harvard’s shutdown of its partnership with Birzeit University and the suspension of a Palestine-focused program at the Divinity School — as evidence that federal pressure is already chilling academic freedom.
“Preemptive obedience invites further coercion,” the group warned.
National Education Organizations
A coalition of 28 major higher education organizations, led by the American Council on Education, warned that the Trump administration’s funding freeze threatened not only Harvard, but the autonomy and vitality of universities nationwide.
The groups included professional groups representing admissions and financial aid officers, research libraries, and law and medical schools.
They argued that the administration’s actions represent an unprecedented attempt to coerce an institution into aligning with its political ideology, bypassing the legal process Congress laid out for enforcing Title VI. Instead of pursuing a formal investigation or voluntary compliance, the administration abruptly withheld research dollars, they wrote — an act the amici argued was a clear sign that the funding freeze is “pretextual and not truly about Title VI enforcement.”
They warned that if the freeze is allowed to stand, future administrations could use federal funding to target disfavored research or impose political litmus tests on universities.
“If federal officials in 2025 are permitted to force universities to cater to whoever holds the political power of the moment, it will happen again and again, in 2028, 2032, 2036, and beyond, to the detriment of this Nation,” the organizations wrote.
They wrote that Harvard is merely the first target and that institutions that lack Harvard’s “substantial resources to resist these incursions” are “far worse positioned” to withstand similar political pressure.
Correction: June 11, 2025
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee is an unrecognized student organization. In fact, the PSC is recognized by Harvard College, though College administrators placed the group on probation until July.
Clarification: June 12, 2025
A previous version of this article stated that the PSC was responsible for mounting the spring 2025 Harvard Yard encampment. To clarify, though members of the PSC participated and the group made public statements in support of encampment protesters, the encampment was organized by a coalition of unrecognized groups including Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.
