The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has blasted Donald Trump for what it describes as “brass-knuckle tactics” in his ongoing feud with Harvard.
The Journal’s editorial board rejoiced after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully canceled more than $2 billion in Harvard’s federal grants and contracts, which Trump froze after the Ivy League school refused to comply with demands to address alleged antisemitism on campus.
The decision, a humiliating blow for Trump amid his attacks on Harvard and other universities, was praised by the board as a “huzzah for the rule of law, which is no small thing.”
“But it might prove a pyrrhic victory, since President Trump seems willing to keep using and sometimes abusing government power to punish the school if it won’t unconditionally surrender,” the board warned in its editorial.
“The White House is waging a multi-front war against Harvard that has involved cutting off federal funding, banning foreign student enrollment, and threatening its tax-exempt status and even its patents. Mr. Trump’s laudable aim is to clean up the antisemitic rot on campus. But its brass-knuckle tactics are doing damage to the rule of law and the First Amendment.”
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled Wednesday that freezing Harvard’s federal funding was an “unconstitutional” attempt by the Trump administration to “coerce and control” the school.
Trump’s campaign against the university was fueled by accusations that Harvard allowed antisemitism to become rife on campus amid pro-Palestinian protests following Israel’s war in Gaza.
However, Burroughs ruled that Trump’s targeting of Harvard violated free speech protections, writing it was “difficult to conclude” anything other than the administration using complaints of antisemitism as a “smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House spokesperson Liz Huston said the administration will appeal the “egregious” ruling.
The Journal’s editorial board argued that the Trump administration is prepared to “fire every bazooka in its arsenal at Harvard, no matter the collateral damage,” following the legal defeat.
“Mr. Trump could take his legal loss as a hint. Instead, it might make him see crimson and do worse. But when the next Democratic President uses this precedent to target campus conservatives or climate ‘deniers,’ the right will be singing Harvard’s current fight song,” the board wrote.
The paper’s conservative-leaning editorial board has not shied away from criticizing Trump in the past.
That includes warning American consumers will bear a “big chunk” of the costs from the president’s tariff plans, describing the FBI raid on former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s home as a “vendetta campaign” against the Trump critic, and accusing Trump of “weaponizing” mortgage fraud claims against his opponents.
