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A Defense Department official told others in the Trump administration that a $12 million biological threat research grant at Harvard shouldn’t be terminated because of national security risks, according to the school’s latest court filing.
The disclosure is part of a trove of internal Trump administration documents reviewed by Harvard lawyers. Harvard says the records show the White House directed the abrupt freezing of more than $2 billion in federal funds headed to the university’s research programs, in violation of federal law.
“Harvard is currently the top performing team on the … program,” which helps the Defense Department stay abreast of emergency biological threats, wrote the official from DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, according to the filing.
“Inadequate knowledge of the biological threat landscape poses grave and immediate harm to national security,” the official added.
The Defense Department told Harvard it was ending the grant in mid-May.
“Despite the clear public and national benefit,” the contract was canceled, Harvard’s attorneys wrote.
“In the Government’s view, so long as Harvard is punished for exercising its First Amendment rights, the ends justify the means,” the school added. “Nothing in the Government’s administrative record indicates that the Secretary of Defense yielded to the contracting official’s plea.”
CNN has reached out to the Defense Department for comment.
Harvard’s vice provost for research John Shaw wrote in a sworn statement to the court that the grant cuts to the university would irreversibly disrupt several research projects, especially in scientific labs.
“Sensitive equipment would sit idle and degrade. Perishable samples would spoil. Live specimens would be euthanized … Many labs rely on continuous processes, so interruptions would render years of work useless.”
Even with its endowment of billions of dollars, Harvard “cannot cover the funding gap itself,” Shaw wrote.
“Harvard’s effort is at a pivotal juncture in Phase 1 as they are just starting the microfluidic experiments that will give first indications of whether the program goal is achievable,” the person wrote. “They are also a critical integrator of multiple technologies that enable this effort and could not be readily reproduced.”
More filings are due in the case over the next month. Oral arguments are scheduled for July 21.
Harvard also gave the fullest articulation yet of other examples of the research projects that have lost their federal funding.
They include, according to Shaw: a pediatric HIV/AIDS study, supported by a $88 million grant; a $7 million grant to prevent breast cancer in women that may be at a higher risk; and $10 million for Harvard to investigate combatting antibiotic-resistant infections.
Harvard said in its court filings on Monday that $2.4 billion in federal awards have been terminated, representing more than 950 ongoing research projects.
Harvard argues in the Monday court filing this approach shows the agencies violated the law in the way they abruptly froze university research grants, and that the federal government made no effort to investigate its accusations of antisemitism at Harvard.
“The directive to freeze and terminate every dollar of Harvard’s research funds came directly from the White House, which dictated the form that such terminations would take and set arbitrary deadlines for particular terminations,” Harvard’s lawyers wrote.
Internal federal agency documents that Harvard obtained include communications where Trump administration officials acknowledge the White House was giving the greenlight on the grant terminations, and that a template letter the White House wanted to use was sent from different federal agencies to the university.
“In its haste to cancel Harvard’s funding, the White House demanded that agencies terminate funding, leaving them with no time or freedom to explain their decisions, consider important aspects of the problem and alternatives, or account for the pivotal reliance interests tossed aside by Harvard’s blacklisting,” the university’s filing said.
Attorneys for Harvard said the record in the case showed that prior to the administration’s termination of federal grants for the university, the government had no evidence backing up the antisemitism claims.
“The Government rushed to terminate Harvard’s funding not because it concluded after careful assessment that federal financial support for certain programs at certain of Harvard’s 12 different schools suborned antisemitism, but because the White House demanded across-the-board terminations of funding to Harvard University-wide solely to inflict maximum punishment upon Harvard,” they wrote.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
