Harvard’s fight with the Trump administration is just getting started. The cost is already high

By Chelsea Bailey, CNN

(CNN) — A picture of Dr. David Walt, a pioneering scientist whose research helped significantly lower the costs of DNA sequencing, greets visitors to Harvard University’s website right next to a large headline: Research Powers Progress.

But since Harvard has become embroiled in an ideological battle with the Trump administration, Walt has become the face of a fight between the nation’s most prestigious university and the federal government.

Harvard’s brawl with the Trump administration over academic autonomy and government control exploded on the national scene in recent weeks, with the White House accusing the school of tolerating antisemitic behavior and academic leaders saying in a lawsuit filed Monday the government is trying to pressure the school to submit to its demands.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon insisted Tuesday the White House’s recent demands are not about curbing freedom of speech.

In the wake of the government’s threats, Harvard – an institution that is 140 years older than the US government – has begun touting the life-changing impacts of its federally funded research and spelled out in court documents how the Trump administration’s “unlawful” actions could impact not only the university’s employees and students, but the wider American public.

Funding cuts will undoubtedly ‘cost lives’

Walt, who was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in January by then-President Joe Biden, leads a lab that’s developing early detection technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, like ALS.

His team’s research, he said, could one day help with early detection and drug development, and impact countless lives.

But last week, the Trump administration ordered him to halt all the lab’s ALS research immediately as part of a more than $2.2 billion federal funding freeze.

In an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest, Walt said he quickly scrambled to find work for the lab’s three researchers. But if the funding freeze were to continue, he cautioned, it would undoubtedly “cost lives.”

In addition to neurodegenerative diseases, Walt’s lab studies cancer and infectious diseases. But, he added, they can’t do it without federal funding.

“Cancellation of funding to researchers across the US will delay medical progress and will threaten public health,” Walt said.

Harvard sued multiple government agencies Monday, arguing that withdrawing federal funding violates its First Amendment rights to academic freedom, as well as several congressional statutes and regulations.

“The government has ceased the flow of funds to Harvard as part of its pressure campaign to force Harvard to submit to the government’s control over its academic programs,” the university’s lawyers argued in the suit. “That, in itself, violates Harvard’s constitutional rights.”

CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers said she believes Harvard’s lawyers could successfully argue that the administration’s decision to freeze federal research funding at the university is an “overreach” and a violation of the First Amendment.

“(Harvard is) saying basically, you can’t discriminate against us by holding our federal funding back based on our viewpoint,” Rodgers said. “That’s exactly what the White House is trying to do here.”

McMahon, the education secretary, said the issues at hand were about civil rights.

“This is making sure that students on all campuses can come and learn and be safe … and that is why we have had these funds either withheld or frozen during this period of time of negotiation,” she said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Rodgers said she expects the Justice Department to defend the administration’s actions and remain in lockstep with President Donald Trump’s desires.

But no matter the outcome, she added, the case is likely to be appealed, all but assuring that the decision could drag through the courts for months or even years, while critical research remains in limbo.

‘Ripple effects for decades’

For Harvard’s School of Public Health, which receives 46% of its funding from the federal government, the freeze has already caused widespread damage.

In the weeks since the Trump administration withheld that funding, a school spokesman told CNN administrators have begun laying off those employed through federally funded research, reduced the number of first-year PhD positions in Biostatistics and Population Health Sciences for the incoming class, and canceled leases on two buildings that provided office space.

Stephanie Simon, the spokesperson for the School of Public Health, told CNN they are facing “a significant budget crisis.”

“Our faculty are working to understand and develop solutions to urgent problems that affect millions, including why cancer spreads, how microplastics in the environment impact fertility, why ultra-processed foods increase the risk of early death, how to address the threat of antibiotic-resistant disease, and so much more,” she said in a statement.

“Federal funding is essential to power this research.”

Harvard’s website now touts its various achievements: its school of engineering helping stroke survivors regain mobility with a robotic device, the school of education keeping kids in school and reducing chronic absenteeism, and the medical school developing a new treatment for sickle cell patients.

Harvard’s lawyers devote an entire section of the university’s lawsuit to enumerating the real-world impacts of the sudden halt of federal funding.

The government’s threat to pull $8.7 billion in federal funding would affect “preeminent Boston hospitals” as well as institutions like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee, the University of Alabama, and Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, Harvard’s lawyers wrote.

The Ivy League university frequently collaborates on “regional initiatives” with state and local partners, and a freeze could reduce or eliminate that work, according to court documents.

“The Government has not—and cannot—identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America’s position as a global leader in innovation,” the lawsuit states.

All that research and funding, as well as the United States’ position as a global leader, could be at stake if the Trump administration halts federal spending at the university.

“The economic implications are substantial, as each suspended research project hinders the cultivation of scientific talent that drives the United States’ global competitiveness in research and development,” Harvard’s lawsuit states.

If the Trump administration continues to spar with the nation’s top research universities, Walt said there will be longterm impacts on not only his lab, but at research facilities across the nation.

Delays will cause “new diagnostic tests for early disease detection, new drugs and new treatments for debilitating diseases to be pushed into the future,” he told CNN in an email. “Because of these delays, there will be many people who suffer unnecessarily and many people who die unnecessarily. That’s the undeniable consequence of the cancellation.”

For decades the partnership between the US government funding and America’s top research facilities has educated the next generation of scientific leaders. Without funding for critical research, he said, the promise of future generations could be lost.

“In the end, we will be buying Chinese and European diagnostic tests and drugs because the innovation will not be here in the US,” Walt said. “These cancellations will have negative ripple effects for decades to come.”

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