HANOVER — Dartmouth College is among two dozen U.S. research institutions supporting Harvard in its legal fight against the Trump administration, arguing that the federal government’s freeze of $2.2 billion in research grants to Harvard “would negatively impact the entire research ecosystem.”

On June 9, Dartmouth along with other peer institutions filed an amicus brief, a legal action by parties who are not directly part of a case, but have an interest in its outcome.

In April, the Trump administration demanded Harvard make broad government and leadership reforms at the university and change its admissions and hiring policies. It also told the university to halt all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, to no longer recognize several pro-Palestine student organizations and to commission an external party to investigate antisemitism on campus.

Instead of conceding to the demands, Harvard responded by filing a lawsuit against several federal agencies on April 21. The Trump administration has continued waging a war against Harvard, freezing billions of dollars in federal research funding, threatening the university’s tax exempt status and attempting to bar the institution from  admitting international students. 

A  hearing in the case is scheduled for July 21.

“Terminating funding disrupts ongoing projects, ruins experimental 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,” the amicus brief, submitted the Boston-based firm Cloherty & Steinberg said.

The brief goes on to illustrate several examples of scientific breakthroughs dating back to World War II that would not have been possible without federal dollars. Examples include advancements in radar that helped the Allies to win the war, the technology behind the pacemaker and the GPS, and the first life-sustaining liver transplant.

“Sustained government-university collaboration has contributed to everything from nuclear reactors to cancer treatments to Google,” the brief said.

The cuts would also be bad for the economy, the brief argued. In 2024, for example, each dollar the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, invested in research yielded $2.56 in economic activity nationwide, the brief said. 

In the 2024 fiscal year, Dartmouth faculty received $186 million in federal funding for research, which represents 44% of Dartmouth’s entire research budget and approximately 10% of Dartmouth’s total operating budget, Jana Barnello, a spokesperson for the college, said in an email to the Valley News.

Since February, Dartmouth has had about 20 research grants terminated or paused, totaling about $5 million. The college is appealing many of the cuts and is providing bridge funding to researchers in the the meantime, Barnello said.

“We’re fortunate that we have not seen as many grant cancellations as some of our peers,” Barnello said.

The decision to join the amicus brief comes as the college’s President Sian Beilock and the Board of Trustees have faced both backlash and support for their actions, or lack thereof, since Trump took office in January.

In March, the college named Matt Raymer, a former chief counsel for the Republican National Committee, as Dartmouth’s senior vice president and general counsel.

In April, Beilock did not sign onto a statement from the the American Association of Colleges and Universities opposing Trump’s threats to higher education. As of today, over 650 school leaders have signed onto the statement and Beilock is the only Ivy League president who has not. 

Since the decisions, hundreds of faculty and thousands of alumni have signed onto letters and petitions demanding college leaders stand up to the Trump administration by not complying with executive orders, issuing public statements and engaging in legal action.

“We wrote that petition because we were encouraging Dartmouth to stand up and stand together with other colleges and universities to fight these various attacks on higher education by the federal government,” Elizabeth Frumkin, a Boston-area attorney who graduated from Dartmouth in 1988 and co-authored the petition, said in a phone interview Monday.

It’s “good” that Dartmouth is part of the amicus brief Frumkin said but she would like to see Beilock publicly speak out against the Trump administration’s tactics.

“It would be helpful for Beilock and leaders of the institution to show public, moral leadership,” Frumkin said. “Beilock will often speak about Dartmouth’s values, like speaking across differences and being courageous. I think those are all wonderful but Dartmouth needs to live those values in this moment.”

Beilock defended her decision to not sign the open letter in a campus-wide email on April 23. “I have never signed open form letters because they are rarely effective tools to make change,” the email said. “I prefer joining action-oriented coalitions.”

In addition to the amicus brief in the Harvard case, Dartmouth has filed declarations in support of an Association of American University lawsuit challenging funding cuts by the NIH as well as four declarations in lawsuits against funding cuts at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

Frumkin pointed out that over the last several months Beilock has met with Trump-appointed officials including Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice and a class of 1989 Dartmouth graduate.

“We don’t know what’s discussed when President Beilock goes to Washington,” Frumkin said. Instead of potentially striking deals with the Trump Administration, “the better approach is for institutions of higher education to stand together,” Frumkin added.

Nearly 600 Dartmouth alumni, faculty and community members have signed a petition praising Beilock for her “thoughtful navigation of the challenges facing higher education today.”

Jerry Hughes, a 1988 Dartmouth graduate who wrote the petition, told the Valley News in an interview Tuesday that he doesn’t “think anyone has better access to information than President Beilock and her team.” 

“Anyone who feels that they’re able to make a better call on these things is armchair quarterbacking with an absurd level of confidence,” he added.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.