Harvard University expanded its lawsuit against the Trump administration on Tuesday, hours after the government said it was ending about $450 million in research funding to the school.
The battle between the administration and the nation’s oldest university has been intensifying since April 11, when the government sent Harvard a list of intrusive demands in a mistakenly emailed missive. After the university refused to comply, the government froze more than $2 billion in grants, which prompted the school to sue in federal court in Boston.
But the litigation has done little to cow the federal government. Last Monday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon warned Harvard against even applying for federal grant money “since none will be provided.”
In its amended lawsuit on Tuesday, Harvard said the government had “doubled down” on its tactics as it “ratcheted up funding cuts, investigations, and threats that will hurt students from every state in the country and around the world.” According to the university, at least a half dozen federal departments and agencies have sent notices in the last week about grants being terminated.
Ms. McMahon’s letter, the university said, and other government actions left Harvard exposed to “widespread disruption of its research operations, with Harvard — and those faculty, staff and students whose salaries are supported by the frozen or terminated funding — not knowing when, or if, existing funding will resume or whether it will be available in the future.”
Harvard’s new accusations build on the case that the university filed on April 21, when it argued that the federal government had trampled on the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act, a law that governs the actions of federal agencies.
