21 位州检察长、多所大学和校友支持哈佛大学与特朗普对簿公堂

21 位州检察长、多所大学和校友支持哈佛大学与特朗普对簿公堂

【中美创新时报2025 年 6 月 10 日编译讯】(记者温友平编译)周一,超过 12,000 名哈佛大学校友、21 位州检察长以及包括五所常春藤盟校在内的二十多所大学提交了法庭之友陈述书,支持哈佛大学与特朗普政府展开的马拉松式法庭斗争。《波士顿环球报》记者尼克·斯托伊科对此作了下述报道。

在哈佛大学寻求对政府进行简易判决之际,该校获得了广泛的支持,指控特朗普政府在哈佛大学拒绝将学术和招聘决定权移交给政府后,非法冻结了近 30 亿美元的联邦资金。

马萨诸塞州总检察长安德里亚·乔伊·坎贝尔 (Andrea Joy Campbell) 率领 21 名总检察长于周一就此案提交了一份法庭之友陈述书,称政府对哈佛大学的“全面攻击”将“对马萨诸塞州经济产生毁灭性的溢出效应”。

坎贝尔在一份声明中表示:“特朗普政府对哈佛的攻击就是对联邦本身的攻击。总统不能强迫大学放弃其核心价值观或放弃其独立性。”

特朗普政府指责哈佛大学未能保护犹太学生免受歧视和骚扰,违反了民权法。政府对哈佛大学的施压是其对精英大学更广泛打击行动的一部分,并指责这些大学向学生灌输左翼意识形态,并纵容校园反犹太主义。

白宫和联邦官员就法庭之友陈述发表评论的留言没有得到回复。

坎贝尔在文件中表示,资金冻结将剥夺未来研究人员的培训和其他机会,并有可能造成“人才流失”,有才华的候选人可能会“从美国研究型大学被吸引到资金流更稳定的国家的机构”。

总检察长进一步辩称,政府对研究型大学的攻击可能会阻碍或阻止救命疗法的研发。他们表示,政府已经终止了哈佛大学在辐射暴露、肌萎缩性脊髓侧索硬化症 (ALS)、抗生素耐药细菌和乳腺癌研究方面的资助。

他们写道:“毫不夸张地说,对研究型大学的袭击可能直接导致重大生命损失。”

同样在周一,超过 12,000 名哈佛校友提交了自己的法庭之友陈述书,敦促法官保护他们的母校免受政府“违宪和非法要求”的侵害。

文件中写道:“政府对哈佛的战争不仅仅针对哈佛:它还试图败坏和瓦解教育、破坏独立思想、分裂国家。”

“这份陈述实际上不仅表达了我们对削减经费的严重性以及目前已产生的影响的担忧……还揭示了其最终目标,”哈佛大学毕业生、首席律师阿努里玛·巴尔加瓦(Anurima Bhargava)说道,她参与组织和撰写了这份法庭之友陈述。“在我们校友看来,其最终目标远不止于此,它旨在破坏和打击哈佛的核心——开放和自由探究。”

史蒂文·列维茨基是哈佛大学政府与拉丁美洲研究教授,曾撰写过多本有关民主和威权主义的书籍,他对校友们的反应表示赞赏。

“如果我们袖手旁观,任由政府如此滥用权力,我们就会失去民主,”他说。“因此,像哈佛校友这样的人站出来参与反击至关重要。”

法庭记录显示,包括达特茅斯学院、布朗大学、耶鲁大学、麻省理工学院、波士顿大学和塔夫茨大学在内的 18 所学校于周五向波士顿联邦法院提交了一份长达五页的动议,寻求批准提交一份支持哈佛大学的简报。

周一,又有六所学校——斯坦福大学、美国大学、乔治城大学、特拉华大学、丹佛大学和马里兰大学巴尔的摩分校——提交了一份动议,要求加入法庭之友陈述书。

这 24 所大学于周一下午提交了法庭之友陈述书,概述了数十年来由联邦政府资助的学术研究,这些研究推动了医学、天气预报和技术等领域的创新,包括麻省理工学院发明的电话和计算机。

两所大学在文件中辩称:“持续的政府与大学合作为从核反应堆到癌症治疗再到谷歌等各个领域做出了贡献。”

根据法庭记录,参与此项行动的其他学校包括普林斯顿大学、宾夕法尼亚大学、加州理工学院、科罗拉多州立大学、约翰霍普金斯大学、密歇根州立大学、俄勒冈州立大学、俄勒冈大学、莱斯大学、罗格斯大学、马里兰大学(帕克分校)和匹兹堡大学。

麻省理工学院院长萨莉·科恩布鲁斯周一在一封信中宣布了该学院对哈佛大学诉讼的支持,她在信中赞扬了“美国政府支持科学研究的模式”,称其为“美国安全、竞争力、繁荣、健康和生活质量的强大引擎”。

科恩布鲁斯写道:“尽管我们麻省理工学院的人都清楚联邦政府资助的大学研究对公众的价值,但我们还是觉得有必要向法院,乃至美国人民,证明它带来的无数好处。”

几所签署协议在法庭上支持哈佛大学的大学也面临特朗普政府的资金威胁,特朗普政府已采取非常措施改革高等教育,特别是精英学校。

该校声称,精英大学宣扬左翼思想,自哈马斯于 2023 年 10 月 7 日对以色列发动袭击以来,未能解决校园内的反犹太主义问题。

截至周一,康奈尔大学和哥伦比亚大学是仅有的两所尚未加入的常春藤盟校。哥伦比亚大学领导层表示,他们将遵守校方的要求。此前,校方官员冻结了数亿美元的资助,理由是该校未能保护犹太学生免受歧视。上周,校方宣布将针对该校的认证,这最终可能导致哥伦比亚大学失去其学生的联邦经济援助。

面对特朗普对高等教育的打压,其他一些学校也采取了联合行动。今年4月,几所十大联盟院校的教授们签署了一项类似北约的协议,允许这些院校在政府决定针对其成员院校时共享资源。

哈佛大学还获得了美国公民自由联盟和个人权利与言论基金会的支持,这两个组织也在周一提交了支持哈佛大学的法庭之友陈述书。

该基金会过去曾对哈佛大学持批评态度,经常将其列在其年度大学言论自由排名的底部附近。但该组织在周一提交的长达10页的文件中表示,政府对哈佛大学的攻击“是对第一修正案权利的不可辩驳的侵犯”,并对全国大学的独立性构成了威胁。

该组织在文件中表示:“如果不加以制止,政府将继续利用其故意扭曲的联邦反歧视法概念,作为攻击机构自治的借口,并继续试图夺取控制我国校园言论和教学的权力。”

美国公民自由联盟高级律师维拉·艾德尔曼在一份声明中表示:“如果政府能对哈佛大学采取这种行动,那么后果将不仅限于此;它将为全面报复、胁迫和对私人行为者的意识形态骚扰打开闸门。”

这是一个正在发展的故事,将会更新。

题图:人们走过哈佛大学校园里的哈里·埃尔金斯·怀德纳纪念图书馆。希瑟·迪尔为《波士顿环球报》拍摄

附原英文报道:

21 state attorneys general, multiple universities, alumni to back Harvard in court battle against Trump

By Nick Stoico Globe Staff,Updated June 9, 2025 

People walked past the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library on Harvard’s campus.Heather Diehl for the Boston Globe

More than 12,000 Harvard alumni, 21 state attorneys general, and two dozen universities, including five Ivy League schools, filed amicus briefs backing Harvard in its marathon court battle with the Trump administration Monday.

The broad wave of support for Harvard comes as the university seeks a summary judgment against the government, alleging the Trump administration unlawfully froze nearly $3 billion in federal funding to the school after it refused to cede control of academic and hiring decisions to the government.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell led a group of 21 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the case Monday, writing the government’s “wholesale attack” on Harvard “will have devastating spillover effects on the Massachusetts economy.”

“The Trump Administration’s attack on Harvard is an attack on the Commonwealth itself,” Campbell said in a statement. “The President cannot strong-arm universities into abandoning their core values or relinquishing their independence.”

The Trump administration has accused Harvard of violating civil rights law by allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment. Its pressure campaign against Harvard is part of the administration’s wider crackdown on elite universities, which it accuses of indoctrinating students into leftist ideology and tolerating campus antisemitism.

Messages left for the White House and federal officials seeking comment on the amicus briefs were not returned.

Campbell’s filing said the funding freeze will take away training and other opportunities for future researchers and risks a “brain drain” where talented candidates may be “lured away from American research universities to institutions in countries where funding streams are more stable.”

The attorneys general further argued government attacks on research universities could hinder or prevent the development of lifesaving treatments. They said the government has already terminated funding at Harvard for studies into radiation exposure, ALS, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and breast cancer.

“It is no exaggeration to say that attacks on research universities could lead directly to significant loss of life,” they wrote.

Also on Monday, more than 12,000 Harvard alumni filed their own amicus brief urging the judge to protect their alma mater from the government’s “unconstitutional and unlawful demands.”

“The Government’s war against Harvard is not just about Harvard: it is an attempt to discredit and dismantle education, disrupt independent thought, and divide the nation,” the filing read.

“The brief is really speaking not only to the concerns we have about the import of those funding cuts and how those are already being felt . . . but also what the end goal is here,” said Anurima Bhargava, a Harvard graduate and lead attorney who helped organize and create the amicus brief. “In our view, as alumni, the end goal is something much broader, which is to undermine and to target the very core of Harvard, which is about openness and free inquiry.”

Steven Levitsky, a professor of government and Latin American studies at Harvard who has authored several books on democracies and authoritarianism, praised the alumni response.

“If we stand on the sidelines and let the administration abuse its power in this way, we are going to lose our democracy,” he said. “So it is essential that folks like Harvard alumni stand up and help to push back.”

Eighteen schools — including Dartmouth College, Brown University, Yale University, MIT, Boston University, and Tufts University — filed a five-page motion in federal court in Boston on Friday seeking approval to submit a brief in support of Harvard, according to court records.

On Monday, six more schools — Stanford University, American University, Georgetown University, University of Delaware, University of Denver, and University of Maryland Baltimore — filed a motion asking to join the amicus brief.

Those 24 universities in total filed their amicus brief Monday afternoon, where they outlined decades of academic research funded by the federal government that led to innovations in areas such as medicine, weather forecasting, and tech, including the invention of the telephone and computer at MIT.

“Sustained government-university collaboration has contributed to everything from nuclear reactors to cancer treatments to Google,” the universities argued in the filing.

Other schools involved in the effort are Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, California Institute of Technology, Colorado State University, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University, Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Rice University, Rutgers University, University of Maryland (College Park), and University of Pittsburgh, according to court records.

MIT president Sally Kornbluth announced the institute’s support for Harvard’s lawsuit in a letter Monday where she praised the “US model of government support for scientific research,” calling it a “powerful engine for US security, competitiveness, prosperity, health and quality of life.”

“Although the value to the public of federally funded university research feels obvious to us at MIT, we felt compelled to make the case for its countless benefits to the court and, in effect, to the American people,” Kornbluth wrote.

Several of the universities that have signed on to back Harvard in court have also faced funding threats from the Trump administration, which has taken extraordinary moves to overhaul higher education, particularly elite schools.

The administration has claimed elite universities pedal leftist ideologies and have failed to address antisemitism on campus since Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

Cornell and Columbia are the only Ivy League schools that have not joined as of Monday. Columbia leaders have said they would comply with the administration’s demands after officials froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, arguing the school failed to protect Jewish students from discrimination. Last week, the administration announced it was targeting the school’s accreditation, which could ultimately result in Columbia losing federal financial aid for its students.

Some other schools have also made moves to band together in the face of Trump’s crackdown on higher education. In April, professors at several Big Ten conference schools signed a NATO-like agreement that would allow the institutions to share resources in case the government decides to target one of its members.

Harvard also gained the support of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which also filed amicus briefs backing Harvard on Monday.

The foundation has been critical of Harvard in the past, often placing the university near the bottom of its annual college free speech rankings. But in its 10-page filing on Monday, the organization said government’s attacks on Harvard “are indefensible violations” of First Amendment rights and represents a threat to the independence of universities across the country.

“Left unchecked, the administration will continue to deploy its willfully distorted conception of federal anti-discrimination law as a pretextual battering ram against institutional autonomy and continue its attempts to seize for itself power to control speech and instruction on our nation’s campuses,” the organization said in its filing.

“If the administration can do this to Harvard, it won’t end there; it will open the floodgates to retaliation, coercion, and ideological harassment of private actors across the board,“ Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement.

This is a developing story and will be updated.


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