PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University along with 23 other colleges and universities filed an amicus brief on Monday, June 9, in support of Harvard University’s motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s funding freeze on approximately $3 billion in research grants and contracts to the university.

The amicus brief urged the federal court hearing the case to sustain federal investments in scientific research at U.S. universities, arguing that protecting research is in the public interest and that compromising funding would come with irreparable harm. The brief emphasized that for more than 80 years, the federal government has invested heavily in scientific research at U.S. universities, enabling breakthroughs that save and improve lives and build economies.

“This funding has fueled American leadership at home and abroad, yielding radar technology that helped defeat the Nazis, computer systems that put humans on the Moon, and a vaccine that saved millions during a global pandemic,” the brief states. “Many of these life-changing and history-altering innovations came out of work that had an entirely different initial focus.”

The amicus brief argued that the U.S. has long advanced scientific research in collaboration with universities, and the result has been a symbiotic partnership that has made America a global leader.

“The government identifies projects that are vital to the national interest,” the brief notes. “Agencies award funding for those initiatives, usually on a competitive basis, selecting recipients based on scientific merit and their ability to create value for the American people. And in exchange, the country’s top scientists harness federal resources to drive gains in fields from nuclear power to biomedicine to artificial intelligence.”

The universities argued that broad cuts to federal research funding, like those Harvard is challenging in court, disrupt projects, ruin experiments and datasets, and destroy the careers of aspiring scientists. Funding cuts also deter investment in the long-term research that only institutions with federal funding can pursue, threatening the pace of progress and undermining American leadership.

“Terminating funding to universities jeopardizes American innovation and economic growth by severely limiting their ability to play their vital, longstanding roles in expanding scientific knowledge,” the brief states. “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 noted that sustained government-university collaboration has contributed to inventions and breakthroughs ranging from nuclear reactors and national security measures to cancer treatments, DNA sequencing technology and hurricane forecasting techniques.

The amicus brief urged the court to grant summary judgment to Harvard in its lawsuit against the government, which would allow the judge to rule on the case without a full trial. Even schools that do not experience direct funding cuts will suffer, it argued — scientists work across institutions, grants issued to one university support researchers from others schools, and cutting-edge research is often conducted via collaboration.

“Extensive cuts to federal research funding to universities threaten much of what has made the U.S. research enterprise a juggernaut of growth and prosperity,” the brief states.

In addition to Brown, the brief’s signatories include American University; Boston University; California Institute of Technology; Colorado State University; Dartmouth College; Georgetown University; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Michigan State University; Oregon State University; Princeton University; Rice University; Rutgers University; Stanford University; Tufts University; University of Delaware; University of Denver; University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Oregon; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; and Yale University.