WashingtonThe back to school From September he is leaving a rosary of judicial cleanses to Donald Trump. On Wednesday, a federal judge concluded that the American president violated the law by freezing billions of dollars in Harvard as a measure of pressure to interfere with his educational curriculum. Although the Trump government will probably appeal against the decision, it is a significant legal victory for the university, which in June began secret negotiations with the White House to reach an agreement.
Although the decision of Judge Allison D. Burroughs, of the U.S. District Court in Boston, is about the freezing of funds, in the demand that Harvard filed in April denounced that Trump had stepped on his rights to freedom of expression, as stated by the first amendment of the Constitution.
In the demand filed in the spring, Harvard accused the government of leading a wide attack on the university “to influence and control academic decisions.” In the text he also mentioned other universities of the Ivy League – the concept of which the country’s elite centers are included and against which Trump now charges – that have suffered funding cuts by the federal government. The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon; the temporary administrator of the General Services Administration, Stephen Ehikian; The Attorney General Pam Bondi, and other government officials are the main accused in a university document.
“No Government should dictate what a private university can teach, nor who must admit or hire, or which areas of study or research can be pursued,” wrote in April by Harvard President Alan Garber in a message to the university community.
To freeze the funds for research, Trump accused Harvard of not doing enough to fight “anti -Semitism” on the campus. In exchange for not applying the punishment measure, the President demanded a series of demands. Among other things, Harvard closed all programs of diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as submitting certain departments to an external audit. Harvard refused to obey the demands because he considered that they threatened their independence and freedom of chair.
In the ruling, the judge said that although Harvard had tolerated hatred for too long, the Trump administration “used anti -Semitism as a smoke curtain for a selective and ideologically motivated attack on the most prestigious universities in the country.” Burroughs states that the freezing of Harvard’s subsidies is a retaliation against the university and violates its protected freedom of expression rights for the first amendment of the US Constitution.
The magistrate says it is the responsibility of the courts to protect academic freedom and “ ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally defective endings of subsidies, even if doing so involves facing the anger of a government committed to its agenda, regardless of the cost. ”
White House spokeswoman Liz Huston has responded in a statement that they will appeal the sentence issued by an “activist judge named by Obama”, stating that Harvard “has no constitutional right to taxpayers’ money and remains inescapable for future subsidies.”
Harvard President Alan Garber in a message to the university community has celebrated the result. Garber says that the sentence “validates our arguments in defense of university academic freedom, critical scientific research and the fundamental principles of American higher education”.
