By
Harvard Sues the Trump Admin in Landmark First Amendment Case
https://ift.tt/F2f6lE8
A new landmark lawsuit argues that Trump’s political threats, including the freezing of $2.2 billion in federal funding, is in direct violation the First Amendment, and did not follow any recognizable legal procedures.
What makes this legal setback even more devastating for Trump is that his attack on the Ivy League institution was done at the insistence of the Israel Lobby – which means this will also be a major defeat for The Lobby and its agents of influence embedded deep within Trump’s cabinet…
IMAGE: The Israel Lobby has placed the Trump Administration in a dangerous corner now – in a potentially embarrassing case for both the President and the Lobby.
This week, Harvard University took the bold step in suing the Trump Administration. The new case was filed in the federal court of U.S. District of Massachusetts – naming multiple federal agencies in the suit, in a move intending to block the Trump Administration from withholding crucial federal funding to universities “as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard.”
According to Alan M. Garber, the president of Harvard, the Trump Administration’s actions are ‘unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.’
Rather disingenuously, President Donald Trump is accusing American universities of “failing to protect Jewish students” over the past 18 months of campus protests in opposition to Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza.
Last week, Harvard formally rejected a list of demands that the Trump Administration claimed said was designed to halt ‘diversity initiatives’ and allegedly to “fight anti-semitism” on campus. Due to the fact that many of the student leaders of the pro-Palestinian human rights demonstrations are in fact Jewish themselves, it’s become clear that Trump’s threats have nothing to do with actual ‘antisemitism’, but rather to crack down on lawful and constitutionally protected speech regarding the criticism of Israel and its war crimes committed against Palestinians – a genocide being carried out with US weapons, planes, drones, satellite targeting, and bombs.
The unprecedented incursion by the federal government is part of an Israel Lobby effort to make the Trump Administration deploy a new Orwellian “anti-semitism task force” – which has since identified over 60 universities to target ‘for review’, with the aim of threatening the institutions with financial punishment unless university official clamp down on freedom of speech and assembly.
In an embarrassing example of executive overreach, pro-Israel zealots in the Trump Administration jumped the gun by issuing a threatening letter of their demands which sent earlier this month – clearly without any care for the legal implications of this unprecedented display of White House racketeering. After realizing the legal trap they had set for themselves, the White House then tried to walk-back their unconstitutional play-play by claiming that their letter was “issued by mistake.” Unfortunately, it was too late, and Harvard had already begun a counter offensive against the executive overreach.
The Washington Post reports on the details of the case:
Garber said, other statements and actions suggest otherwise: In addition to a freeze of $2.2 billion in federal funding, the government has considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students and said that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
Garber noted that the government has cited the university’s response to antisemitism as a justification for its actions.
“As a Jew and as an American, I know very well that there are valid concerns about rising antisemitism,” he said. And to address those concerns effectively “requires understanding, intention, and vigilance. Harvard takes that work seriously. We will continue to fight hate with the urgency it demands as we fully comply with our obligations under the law. That is not only our legal responsibility. It is our moral imperative.”
The Ivy League university is accusing the Trump administration of violating its First Amendment rights, federal administrative procedures and regulations for taking action against institutions. Harvard also claims that while Trump administration officials have accused the school of violating Title VI, a federal law that says any school found to violate civil rights is not eligible for federal funding, they failed to follow the procedures set out in the law.
The president and fellows of Harvard College filed the sweeping complaint against the departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, and Defense, the General Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, and the leaders of those agencies.
According to the complaint, the “fatal procedural shortcomings are compounded by the arbitrary and capricious nature” of the decision. Before the funding freeze, the government had threatened to terminate nearly $9 billion in federal funding, not just to Harvard, but also to affiliated Boston hospitals and independent corporate entities not under Harvard’s control.
Trump’s unwieldly actions against universities taken on behalf of the Israel Lobby, are now having the opposite effect of what they intended which was to put a chilling effect of student protests against Israel’s ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in Gaza. As a result of Trump’s aggression against the First Amendment, campus protests have now expanded nationally, including new nationwide coordinated “Day of Action” taking place on dozens of American college campuses.
In addition to sparking more student dissent, Trump and the Lobby’s attacks on academic institutions have prompted thousands of American professors to sign similar letters to the one written by Harvard – calling for academia to reject the unlawful demands made by the White House, and to “mount a coordinated response with other schools and alumni.”
WaPo adds here:
Harvard leaders said the government’s directives — conveyed in the wide-ranging five-page letter — were unlawful and unconstitutional. The steps ordered, they warned, would be critically damaging to a generations-long partnership between the federal government and universities that had powered scientific advances.
“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” Garber told the campus community last week.
In announcing the lawsuit Monday, Garber listed research jeopardized by the funding freeze, including efforts to understand how cancer spreads, to predict the spread of infectious-disease outbreaks, and to reduce the risk of multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
“The consequences of the government’s overreach will be severe and long-lasting,” Garber wrote.
In addition to Harvard, the Trump Administration is targeting other Ivy League institutions including suspending $1 billion of scientific research funding from Cornell University, $510 million at Brown University, and also Columbia University – which had become the epicenter of pro-Palestinian campus protests. It appears that Columbia capitulated to the White House demands after some $400 million of federal funds for research and development was threatened unless school administrators cracked down on student criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians.
The real question now is: How much longer will the Trump Administration allow a foreign lobby to weaken the Administration’s standing at home, and drag it into a constitutional abyss?
READ MORE ISRAEL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Israel Files
SUPPORT OUR INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV
VISIT OUR TELEGRAM CHANNEL
news
via 21st Century Wire https://ift.tt/eRKWc74
April 22, 2025 at 07:53AM
April 22, 2025 at 09:30AM
via 21st Century Wire https://ift.tt/F2f6lE8