A federal judge delivered a broad win to Harvard University Monday in its battle with President Trump, ruling that his proclamation to block the school from hosting foreign students is unconstitutional.
Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee to the court in Massachusetts, said the administration has been on an unfair campaign to undermine the country’s oldest college, and she called the Justice Department’s defense of Mr. Trump’s move “absurd.”
She said the president was acting in retaliation against Harvard because it wouldn’t cave to Mr. Trump’s demands to change its hiring practices and curriculum, interfering with core academic freedoms.
“Here, the government’s misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this administration’s own views, threaten these rights,” she wrote. “To make matters worse, the government attempts to accomplish this, at least in part, on the backs of international students, with little thought to the consequences to them or, ultimately, to our own citizens.”
She issued an injunction blocking the administration from carrying out Mr. Trump’s foreign student plans.
The president had issued a proclamation ordering the government to refuse entry to any new foreign student seeking to study at Harvard. He’d also ordered a review of currently enrolled students.
Judge Burroughs had issued a restraining order, but her new decision Monday makes that a more lasting bar.
She had previously issued a similar ruling against Homeland Security after the department tried to de-certify Harvard from hosting foreign students.
Mr. Trump and his team said they were moving against Harvard because the school has allowed antisemitism to spread on campus. The president also said crime rates are rising at the school’s Massachusetts campus, and he cited some interactions with Chinese entities.
But Harvard contended — and Judge Burroughs agreed — that Mr. Trump was really trying to impose federal control over Harvard’s admissions and curriculum.
She rejected the administration’s defenses, including a request that it give the federal government the “presumption of regularity” — a sense that the government is generally acting in good faith to pursue the law.
Judge Burroughs said the government’s actions went so far beyond what has been done before that “the Court will not apply any presumption of regularity to conduct that is so unusual and therefore irregular on its face.”
She said the administration’s claim that it wasn’t retaliating was repeatedly undermined by the words of the White House and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
The judge chided White House spokesperson Harrison Fields for complaining that Harvard “decided to litigate this on MSNBC, the now defunded NPR and the ratings-disaster CNN instead of acting like adults.”
“Harvard is entitled under the Constitution to take a ‘hard line’ when it comes to academic freedom, and it is entitled to air its grievances with the government publicly without meeting its ‘demise,’” she wrote.
Some 6,800 foreign students were at Harvard this school year, accounting for about 27% of total enrollment.
