A Judge’s Deep Ties to Harvard
As discussed in this series on President Trump vs. Harvard University, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs is intimately tied to the Harvard community in many ways, and perhaps least important among these, as the New York Times reported in 2018 and discussed in part 3 of this series, is the widely circulated detail that Judge Burroughs did not gain admission when she applied decades earlier.
- A Judge’s Deep Ties to Harvard
- A Pattern of Rulings That Favors Harvard
- A Public Persona Shaped for Partisan Impact
- Media Amplification of a Carefully Crafted Narrative
- Harvard’s Free-Speech Makeover and Its Deeper Contradictions
- A Courtroom Tilted by Harvard’s Influence
- Explore Books Written by Our Contributors
- Free Speech, Antisemitism, and a Selective Judicial Lens
- When Judicial Neutrality Gives Way to Advocacy
She has a close family relationship with billionaire Harvard megadonor Dick Smith, a bond that has lasted a lifetime. There is also the controversy over her father’s underappreciated efforts to fundraise for Harvard, based on a list of Jewish alumni provided by the university’s powerful fundraising apparatus. Added to this are many other Harvard connections within her peer, family, and community networks.
A Pattern of Rulings That Favors Harvard
Taken together, they form a dissonant web of personal interconnections linking Judge Burroughs to Harvard, a proximity that is difficult to ignore. We must conclude that Judge Burroughs can reasonably be perceived as inescapably sympathetic to, and perhaps overly impressed by, Harvard’s presumed greatness—as it is perceived by so many members of her peer, family, and community networks—rather than concerned by its self-serving, intergenerational exclusivity.
It may be time for a new judge—or a higher court—to intervene, one with fewer personal ties to Harvard.
The tenor of her judicial decisions, which have tended to favor Harvard and to laud its societal role, suggests that impartiality may be lost along the way. The New York Times thus erred in 2018 when it suggested that concerns about Judge Burroughs’ proximity to Harvard implied she would rule too harshly against the university.
The opposite has occurred, as Judge Burroughs has instead ruled too lightly in Harvard’s favor, offering too little reassurance that impartiality is secure. She appears to place Harvard on the very pedestal the institution has cultivated for nearly four centuries, a public relations achievement without parallel in the United States but one that is inconsistent with the darker realities of Harvard’s entitlement culture and self-adulation.
A Public Persona Shaped for Partisan Impact
Judge Burroughs remains at the center of this storm, no matter how neutral she professes herself to be. If only she showed the same skepticism toward Harvard as she does toward its critics.
And now she and her supporters are cultivating her image as one of the few fearless judges of conscience standing up to a Constitution-treading Trump, in disregard of a social and political movement supported by tens of millions of voters seeking to “take back America” and “make it great again.”
In a courtroom where generations of Harvard visibly and invisibly converge, reasonable minds can wonder whether true justice can ever prevail.
She portrays Trump’s efforts to defend Israel—in its struggle against adversaries ranging from Harvard Square to Gaza to Iran’s Fordow enrichment plant—as the politicization and manipulation of antisemitism rather than its muscular defense.
This shift suggests a partisan strategy, as if crafted by image consultants preparing to bring her into their ranks, perhaps as a future vice-presidential candidate, attorney general nominee, or Supreme Court justice in gratitude for her continued efforts to demonize the President and his followers.
Media Amplification of a Carefully Crafted Narrative
This explains the stream of headlines—from The Forward to the Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson—touting the moral strengths of a modern‑day Joan of Arc, one some readers might be tempted to christen “Saint Allison the Just.” Harvard Magazine, long a public relations platform for the university, set the stage for last summer’s dramatic courtroom showdown, noting that Judge Burroughs “heard oral arguments in Harvard’s much‑anticipated federal funding case against the Trump administration, which challenges the freezing of more than $2.2 billion in research grants and contracts.”
The magazine described a packed courtroom, with journalists and spectators lining up well before proceedings began, and multiple lawyers representing Harvard, the AAUP, and its Harvard chapter. The government, meanwhile, sent a single lawyer from the Department of Justice: Michael Velchik, an alumnus of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School.
The Boston Globe profiled Judge Burroughs’ many Harvard‑related trials, noting that she called the government’s arguments “a bit mind‑boggling.” Though she had not yet ruled, Trump had already taken to social media to label her a “TOTAL DISASTER.” The media storm expanded globally, including coverage in The Times of India, which described how Judge Burroughs pressed government attorney Velchik on how halting billions in research funding aligned with the administration’s stated goal of combating antisemitism at Harvard.
The case became a focal point in a broader legal and political standoff between Harvard and President Trump’s administration, which accused the university of permitting antisemitism and failing to uphold civil rights protections. Judge Burroughs stated during the hearing, “They’re not funding speech, they’re funding research. And you’re tying that research to speech,” expressing skepticism about whether concerns over antisemitism justified such steep funding cuts.
Harvard’s Free-Speech Makeover and Its Deeper Contradictions
How did we arrive at this unlikely moment in which an elitist, exclusivist enclave of manufactured “rich diversity”—as Judge Burroughs herself phrased it in her 2019 SFFA decision—has been reimagined as a poster child for free speech, something as antithetical to the Harvard community as economic equality?
As this author has long argued, it is far nobler to confront Harvard’s offensive and oppressive elitist entitlement and exclusion, and its multigenerational assault on free speech and the First Amendment, from its partisan embrace of DEI (an embrace shared by Judge Burroughs in her 2019 SFFA decision) to its acceptance of exclusionary slogans such as “Zionism is racism” or the more recently popular and arguably genocidal “From the river to the sea.”
These institutionally normalized catchphrases, aligned with a broader politically correct—now “woke”—academic establishment, reflect a moral decay and the overuse of rhetorical tropes marking Harvard’s intellectual decline.
Reasonable minds, as Judge Burroughs wrote in her widely praised but later overturned 2019 SFFA decision, can disagree on matters of legacy admissions and alumni relations. But no reasonable observer can ignore the laundering of money in exchange for the illusion of class—yielding, instead, its near‑homonym, crass—that Harvard has perfected over nearly four centuries of unnatural selection. The long and murky legacy of the expansive, often invisible hidden hand of the Harvard community, where influence is purchased across generations, permeates nearly every corner of American society.
A Courtroom Tilted by Harvard’s Influence
In a courtroom where generations of Harvard visibly and invisibly converge, reasonable minds can wonder whether true justice can ever prevail. Indeed, the White House was right to doubt whether the public interest could be protected in a courtroom where competing visions of Harvard battle for the soul of a judge herself torn between two irreconcilable forces, reminiscent of the young and tormented Anakin Skywalker at the end of the Clone Wars as he was pulled between the light and dark sides of the Force.
As shown in episode 13 of season 6 (“Sacrifice”) of The Clone Wars, during a vision quest on Moraband, Jedi Master Yoda confronted a menacing illusion conjured by Darth Sidious:
Darth Sidious: “He is our destiny. He will be our new instrument of fear.”
Yoda: “Your apprentice, not yet is he. And defeat him, you will not!”
Darth Sidious: “He is ours, soon enough.”
Both were correct, as Star Wars fans well know.
Even as Judge Burroughs’ skeptical questioning of Velchik generated headlines predicting a Harvard victory, the New York Times reported that Harvard was considering a settlement with the White House, including a $500 million fine—far larger than the $200 million paid by Columbia the week before—while refusing to yield on control of admissions, hiring, curricula, or academic freedoms. How she would rule was, for a few hopeful observers, not a foregone conclusion; but for most, the outcome was predictable. Harvard’s influence permeated the courtroom, where its supposed greatness was celebrated while its corrupting power went unchecked.
Explore Books Written by Our Contributors
Perhaps moving the case to the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, as the White House proposed, might have offered a final hope for justice—far from the grasp of Harvard’s influence in courtroom 17 of the Moakley Courthouse in Boston. But Judge Burroughs rejected this, siding once again with Harvard, as she had in previous cases. She dismissed the President’s proposal to redirect research funds from Harvard to trade schools serving America’s working poor and rural communities harmed by globalization—communities Harvard has long ignored while cultivating new elites from abroad.
Judge Burroughs noted that “the government has continued to pressure Harvard in other ways,” citing the President’s statement that he was considering taking away “Three Billion Dollars” from “a very antisemitic Harvard” to give to “TRADE SCHOOLS.” As if trade schools—serving the American heartland and trying to offset the harms of globalization—were engaged in some unconstitutional plot. As if underfunded trade schools do not deserve the same taxpayer support that Harvard has long taken for granted, while giving little back to the Americans whose taxes sustain it.
Free Speech, Antisemitism, and a Selective Judicial Lens
President Trump was elected by many of these Americans, who instructed him clearly to make America great again. Yet opponents of this movement, including Judge Burroughs, seek to preserve Harvard’s asymmetrical grip on American society in defense of their own interests. Judge Burroughs opened her decision by acknowledging the President’s goal: “Defendants and the President are right to combat antisemitism and to use all lawful means to do so. Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did.”
But she quickly pivoted: “The record here, however, does not reflect that fighting antisemitism was Defendants’ true aim… and even if it were, combatting antisemitism cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.” She argued that free speech must not be sacrificed, and that Harvard is now taking steps to address antisemitism. It is thus, she claimed, up to the courts to safeguard academic freedom and prevent arbitrary grant terminations—even if doing so risks angering a determined administration.
Yet is she correct to assert that combating antisemitism was not the administration’s true aim? This fight is only one front in a broader struggle against DEI’s weaponization and its assault on working‑class white Americans, whose histories of poverty and hardship are ignored by an academic culture obsessed with narratives of privilege. Jewish communities, historically victims of unprecedented persecution and genocide, have been recast by DEI frameworks as part of a supposed caste of “white privilege”—a mischaracterization perpetuated by academia, with Harvard at the forefront.
When Judicial Neutrality Gives Way to Advocacy
Harvard’s stance following the October 7, 2023 massacre, when over 1,400 Israelis were murdered, illustrated this distortion. Some within the institution blamed Jews for their own victimization, abusing free speech to spread hate, while Harvard’s leadership remained passive.
This context makes it clear that antisemitism was indeed one of the administration’s concerns. Judge Burroughs may dislike this, but she is wrong to dismiss it. She further argued that combating antisemitism “cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment,” but nor can taxpayer dollars continue flowing to elitist institutions like Harvard without scrutiny.
Indeed, free speech at Harvard has become something of an oxymoron. As The Harvard Crimson reported in February, “A Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee released a report Friday concluding that many Harvard College students self-censor when discussing controversial topics.” The committee “was convened by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra in February during a moment of both hand-wringing and soul-searching over the state of free speech on Harvard’s campus,” and its “report concluded that some undergraduates avoid politically fraught conversations, opting instead to socialize and take courses with like-minded peers and instructors. Only 33 percent of graduating College students feel free to express their views on controversial issues, according to a 2024 survey of graduating seniors cited in the report.”
Judge Burroughs cited Justice Louis Brandeis, who wrote in Whitney v. California that the remedy for falsehood is “more speech, not enforced silence.” She warned that if speech can be curtailed to protect Jews today, “the speech of the Jews (and anyone else) can be curtailed when political winds change.” But by framing the President’s supporters as spreading “falsehood and fallacies,” she crossed from judge to partisan actor.
Instead of neutrally arbitrating justice, Judge Burroughs has taken Harvard’s side. In doing so, she has turned her back on those excluded from its elite circles. It may be time for a new judge—or a higher court—to intervene, one with fewer personal ties to Harvard.
The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the journal or its editorial team. It is published as part of our commitment to open and critical debate.
