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A hearing in Boston on Monday is expected to shape the future of negotiations between the White House and the nation’s oldest university.
July 21, 2025Updated 7:44 a.m. ET
The Trump administration and Harvard University will appear before a federal judge on Monday as each party seeks outright victory in their clash over billions of dollars in research money that the government has taken from the school.
The hearing is likely to be a milestone in a lawsuit that partly hinges on what the government’s role in higher education should be.
Both Harvard and the government are asking Judge Allison D. Burroughs for summary judgment — a ruling that would decide the lawsuit, at least in Judge Burroughs’s court, without a trial.
Harvard will argue on Monday that the Trump administration is trying to curb its First Amendment rights. Judge Burroughs sided with the university in another significant case, when she ruled on several interim matters related to the government’s effort to block the school from enrolling international students.
But Monday’s hearing will be the judge’s first substantive opportunity to signal her thinking on Harvard’s signature lawsuit against the federal government.
Harvard and the administration have been at odds for months, frequently sparring over whether the nation’s oldest and richest university tolerated antisemitism on its campus or defied a Supreme Court ruling about race-conscious admissions. Their dispute escalated in April, when the government inadvertently emailed Harvard a set of demands that university leaders believed threatened the school’s independence.
