Baala Shakya, Photography Editor

In a legal document backing one of Harvard’s lawsuits against the Trump administration, 24 universities — including Yale — urged the court to consider how federal research funding has enabled American scientific innovation and global competitiveness. 

The 19-page amicus brief, filed on Monday, outlines the harms that could result from cuts to government-funded scientific research and argues that the partnership between universities and the federal government has “propelled the United States to preeminence on the world stage.” 

“It is often true that the boldest research — with the most potential to redound to humanity’s benefit — depends on public investment,” the amicus brief reads. “American scientific investment is unique — in its scale, its reliance on academia and its support for basic research.”

An amicus brief is a legal document submitted to a court by an outside party providing arguments or expertise to aid the court in deciding a case. In support of Harvard’s April lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s freeze on the school’s federal funding, myriad parties — including the American Civil Liberties Union, Harvard’s student-led Palestine Solidarity Committee, twenty U.S. states and the District of Columbia — have sought to file such briefs.

The brief filed by Yale and other schools summarizes how federal research funding has supported “life changing and history-altering innovations,” such as the Internet, GPS navigation and cancer treatments. The brief warns that the effects of halting research funding “at even one institution” will be felt throughout the “entire ecosystem” of higher education because research projects across different institutions depend on each other.

“MIT cannot use machine learning to uncover patterns, for example, without data from Princeton and Harvard,” the brief explains.

The brief emphasizes the fragility of the American “research enterprise,” arguing that universities depend on long-term external support to fund foundational research that results in scientific innovation, because such research is rarely profitable in the short term. 

Citing successes like the sequencing of the human genome and the development of a COVID-19 vaccine by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the brief argues that some of “the most monumental scientific achievements in recent memory” only succeeded because the government was willing to fund ventures that required too much upfront investment for private backers to pursue.

The brief warns that funding cuts also jeopardize future research. Without federal support, the brief argues, young researchers may leave scientific fields or pursue their research abroad, which would weaken American competitiveness.

“Many projects cannot pause; they will end, squandering years of work and funding,” the brief argues. “If samples are spoiled, data lost, or clinical trials cut short, researchers will have to start at square one even if funding is restored, while other countries poach scientists and overtake American progress.”

Professor Harold Hongju Koh, a legal adviser to the U.S. Department of State during the Obama administration, wrote to the News that the universities’ amicus brief “vividly illustrates why terminating research funding is not just an ivory-tower problem.”  

Yale’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications confirmed the University’s involvement in filing the amicus brief in an email to the News. Yale has otherwise not commented on its role in drafting or organizing the brief, and University leaders have not made statements on the Harvard litigation. 

While a Friday motion asking permission to file an amicus brief originally involved 18 universities, the brief filed on Monday includes an additional six institutions: American University, Georgetown University, Stanford University, the University of Delaware, the University of Denver and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Columbia and Cornell are the only Ivy League schools — besides Harvard itself — to not sign onto the amicus brief.