By Jack Queen
(Reuters) -Harvard University sued on Monday to block U.S. President Donald Trump from freezing billions of dollars in federal funding after the elite research institution rejected a list of White House demands that it said would undermine its independence.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston said Trump has launched a broad attack on funding for cutting-edge research at major universities as he seeks to rid them of what he describes as antisemitism and ideological bias.
"This case involves the Government’s efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard,” the lawsuit said.
Harvard alleges the Trump administration’s actions were arbitrary and unlawful and violated the university’s First Amendment rights to free speech.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement that the "gravy train of federal assistance" to institutions like Harvard was coming to an end.
"Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege," Fields said.
Since his January inauguration, Trump has cracked down on top U.S. universities, saying they mishandled last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.
Harvard is the first university to file a lawsuit in response to Trump’s crackdown.
The Trump administration began a review of $9 billion in federal funding for Harvard in March and subsequently gave the university a sweeping list of demands, including a mask ban and an end to all diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Since then, the Trump administration has frozen $2.3 billion in funding to Harvard and threatened to strip the university of its tax-exempt status and take away its ability to enroll foreign students. It has also demanded information on the university’s foreign ties, funding, students and faculty.
The Trump administration has also paused some funding for universities including Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, Northwestern (NASDAQ:NWE) and Brown over the campus protests.
In a statement about the Harvard lawsuit, university president Alan Garber said the institution would continue to fight hate and fully comply with anti-discrimination laws, which Trump accused it of violating in its response to pro-Palestinian protests.
Instead of engaging with Harvard about fighting antisemitism as civil rights law requires, Garber said, the government was seeking "to control whom we hire and teach."
Some Harvard faculty members have sued the Trump administration separately from the university, as have some Columbia University professors, citing grounds similar to those Harvard laid out on Monday.
Harvard’s lawsuit names various federal officials and agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Energy and Education.
Representatives of those agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.