Alan Dershowitz to Newsmax: Harvard Won't Win Legal Battle Against Trump

Constitutional law expert Alan Dershowitz told Newsmax on Monday that Harvard University won't win as it fights the Trump administration in court to regain access to more than $2.2 billion in federal grants and, potentially, its tax-exempt status, which President Donald Trump said he intends to revoke.

The funding was frozen hours after Harvard President Alan Garber said the university would not comply with the government's demands to limit student activism, following last year's anti-Israel protests that roiled college campuses across the country.

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Dershowitz, who is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told "Wake Up America" that "Harvard is taking very bad advice from radical professors, including some law professors, that are misleading them and telling them they're going to win the lawsuits."

He said the law was not on its side.

"They're not going to win the lawsuits," he said. "There is no obligation on the part of the federal government to fund or to give tax deductions. There's a case called Bob Jones, which allows the IRS to remove tax deductions based on discrimination. Now, the president's not supposed to play a role in that, it should be the IRS that does that independently, but Harvard's not going to win these lawsuits and that's why I think it's sending out mixed messages."

He added their lawyers know better.

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"On the one hand, it's saying it's going to fight, fight, fight," Dershowitz continued. "On the other hand, it's hired lawyers who are conciliators and who are close to the Trump administration. The message there is that they're going to make a deal, they're going to negotiate, and they're going to pull back.

"In the end, we're going to see some changes at Harvard mandated from external sources, and some things will remain the same. It won't be perfect, but it will be a lot better than it is today, particularly for conservative students, Jewish students, Christian students, religious students. They really bear the brunt of this radicalism at Harvard and many other universities."

Real change at Harvard is possible, Dershowitz said, but it "won't happen without external pressures," and both the Trump administration and the university are guilty of going "too far" in their public squabble.

"The only reason Harvard released its report recently on antisemitism is for fear of what the Trump administration is doing," Dershowitz said. "So, both sides are going too far. The Trump administration is going too far by cutting off research grants for cancer research and medical research, and Harvard is going too far by saying, we're not going to change anything. Harvard has to change, and the administration has to target its defunding to make sure that those of us who want to see — which is the vast majority of Americans — who want to see research on illnesses and other things that benefit all Americans, those research efforts can go forward."

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