President and Fellows of Harvard College v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services et al.

In April 2025, the Trump administration demanded that Harvard University implement a series of policy and governance changes around admissions, hiring, student discipline, and more—or else lose access billions of dollars in federal funding.

Harvard rejected the demands, and the administration quickly froze more than $2 billion intended to fund the university’s research.

Representatives for Harvard promptly sued the administration, asking a judge to block federal officials from withholding any funding. The university argued that the funding freeze was unjustified, violated its First Amendment rights, and violated the process for cutting funding set in federal law.

As the case made its way through the courts, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced that all of the university’s future grant requests would be denied. The university subsequently filed an updated version of its lawsuit, asking the judge to step in and block the administration from withholding those funds, too.

On Sept. 3, 2025, the federal judge overseeing the case ruled that the administration’s actions were illegal and ordered it to restore Harvard’s funding. The administration is appealing that ruling.

On July 22, 2026, a group of 14 university professors and scholars filed an amicus brief in the appeal.

The brief draws parallels between the Trump administration’s targeting of Harvard and tactics commonly used by governments in autocracies or backsliding democracies. It urges the judge to consider the administration’s actions in that context and uphold the lower court judge’s ruling that ordered the administration to release the university’s funding.

“As the growing group of present-day authoritarian and backsliding countries has amply demonstrated, democracies require universities insulated from political pressure and control and a strong, independent judiciary to stand firm and faithfully apply the law, no matter the identity of the parties before it or how they are perceived by those in power,” the group writes.

• Amicus brief (filed July 22, 2026)
• Brief for plaintiff-appellee (filed July 15, 2026)

• WBUR: Trump and Harvard: A timeline of events (Sept. 4, 2025)
• The Boston Globe: Federal judge rules that Trump administration unlawfully cut nearly $3 billion of Harvard’s research funding (Sept. 3, 2025)
• The Associated Press: Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze (Aug. 7, 2025)