In the three months since President Trump returned to power, his administration has prized speed and shock value.
Harvard University is wagering that White House strategy could be used against it.
The 51-page lawsuit the university filed on Monday, intended to fight the administration’s freeze of billions in federal funding, hinges largely on a statute that provides specific timelines for federal agencies to draft rules and impose penalties.
This wonky workhorse of American law, known as the Administrative Procedure Act, has been cited in a majority of lawsuits filed this year against the Trump administration, including complaints seeking to reverse funding reductions to the United States Agency for International Development, local schools and Voice of America.
While Trump’s strategy has generated headlines, the outcomes of these cases will determine whether that approach will also produce lasting policy victories.
In Harvard’s case, the university is seeking to fend off accusations of discrimination from the administration’s antisemitism task force, a group that was put together to move faster than typical federal civil rights investigators.
The administration preferred to work with Harvard and encouraged the university to “come to the negotiating table in good faith” instead of grandstanding, said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman. “Harvard is showboating,” Fields said. “But they know more than anyone that not playing ball is going to hurt their team. They need to be in compliance with federal law in order to get federal funds.”
Harvard turned to the administrative procedure law after facing a crush of government demands that included, among other conditions, audits of its faculty for plagiarism and political views, along with changes to admissions and hiring. The university argues that Washington is seeking to exert unconstitutional sway — and that its effort is defined by sloppiness that blasted past due process.
In some ways, the administration’s zeal for speed has already proven costly. The list of demands emailed to the university on April 11 was sent by mistake, Trump officials have said. But while there have been differing accounts about why the email was mishandled, the demands were so onerous that Harvard officials decided they had no choice but to take on the White House.
Trump officials tried to reopen negotiations in recent days, but Harvard refused. Instead, the university has accused the administration of breaking the law.
“Defendants,” Harvard wrote in the lawsuit, “failed to comply with their own regulations before freezing Harvard’s federal financial assistance.” In another section, Harvard notes that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbids certain kinds of discrimination, requires a detailed process before it can be a basis for freezing money. The Trump administration, Harvard says, did “the precise opposite.”
New York Times News Service