BU Joins 23 Universities in Backing Harvard’s Court Case Over Research Funding and Government Control

BU Joins 23 Universities in Backing Harvard's Court Case Over Research Funding and Government Control

Joint filing says research cuts may prevent cures for cancer, heart disease, or Alzheimer's from ever happening

Boston University on Monday joined 23 other schools-including MIT, Tufts, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, and a variety of state flagship universities-in filing an amicus brief in federal court supporting Harvard University in its ongoing court battle following a series of government actions against the university.

The filing was one of several actions supporting Harvard on Monday, including an amicus brief filed by 21 state attorneys general, among them Andrea Campbell of Massachusetts, and another from 12,000 Harvard alumni.

In recent months, BU has joined other institutions in several collective efforts advocating for government-funded research, noting its benefit to society and to the country's competitiveness in the world. In these court filings and letters, BU has voiced opposition to funding cuts ordered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and submitted legal declarations in support of lawsuits that sought to halt efforts by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE) to slash critical research funding.

The latest filing this week comes as Harvard is seeking a ruling on its motion to stop the Trump administration's freezing of nearly $3 billion in federal research funding, after Harvard refused to surrender control over academics, hiring, and other policies. BU and the other schools submitted an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief supporting Harvard.

"These cuts to research funding risk a future where the next pathbreaking innovation-whether it is a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's, a military technology, or the next internet-is discovered beyond our shores, if at all," the brief says.

The brief cited specific examples of how "sustained government-university collaboration" has contributed to everything from "nuclear reactors to cancer treatments to Google. Indeed, amici institutions have furthered scientific progress in countless ways-from a pathbreaking study that identified the common causes of cardiovascular disease (Boston University) to the first automated DNA sequencer (Caltech) to pioneering hurricane forecasting (Colorado State) to the technology behind the pacemaker and GPS navigation (Johns Hopkins)."

The Trump administration has portrayed the funding cuts as necessary to penalize Harvard for what it has said is a failure to tackle antisemitism on the Cambridge campus-but the move is part of a broader campaign by the administration against college campuses nationwide. Numerous other lawsuits have been filed in courts around the country challenging different parts of the administration's actions.

The brief filed Monday focuses on the sweeping potential impact of massive cuts to research funding. "For decades, these institutions have competed for and received federal funding for scientific research. They have leveraged those resources, along with investments of their own, to advance scientific knowledge and thereby make Americans more prosperous, healthy, and secure. In that way, amici have been participants in a historic collaboration between the federal government and universities. The partnership dates back to World War II, and it has fueled progress and underwritten America's position in the world ever since. This research enterprise is one of the Nation's greatest assets in the fight to maintain global competitiveness, and amici submit this brief to illustrate the magnitude of the harm that will result if it is compromised."

It continues: "Broad cuts to federal research funding endanger this long-standing, mutually beneficial arrangement between universities and the American public. Terminating funding disrupts ongoing projects, ruins experiments and datasets, destroys the careers of aspiring scientists, and deters investment in the long-term research that only the academy-with federal funding-can pursue, threatening the pace of progress and undermining American leadership in the process."

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• Joel Brown

  Senior Staff Writer

  Joel Brown is a senior staff writer at BU Today and Creatives editor of Bostonia magazine. He wrote more than 700 stories for the Boston Globe and has also worked as an editor and reporter for the Boston Herald and the Greenfield Recorder. Profile

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