"The Trump administration will appeal a federal judge’s order reversing billions of dollars in funding cuts to Harvard University, extending a standoff over the White House’s demands for reforms at the Ivy League school. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal late on Thursday in a pair of consolidated lawsuits brought by Harvard and the American Association of University Professors. The case has tested the government’s power to sway the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, which has resisted a pressure campaign targeting elite colleges around the country. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled in September that the Trump administration’s sweeping funding cuts violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights. The judge said the government put unconstitutional conditions on Harvard’s federal funding and failed to follow federal procedures allowing the government to sanction universities for civil rights violations. The Trump administration cut more than $2.6 billion from Harvard over allegations that it had been slow to deal with anti-Jewish bias on campus. Burroughs rejected that notion, saying the government was using antisemitism “as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”"