A federal judge in Boston handed Harvard University a legal victory on Wednesday. It’s the latest in a high-profile legal fight over whether the Trump administration acted illegally when it froze more than $2.2 billion in Harvard research funding in response to allegations of campus antisemitism.

In her ruling, Judge Allison D. Burroughs said the administration’s funding freeze was issued without considering any of the steps Harvard had already taken to address the issue.

Burroughs said she found it “difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of [federal law].”

White House spokesperson Liz Huston said after the ruling: “We will immediately move to appeal this egregious decision, and we are confident we will ultimately prevail in our efforts to hold Harvard accountable.”

The more than $2 billion in federal funding that the administration had frozen supported more than 900 research projects at Harvard and its affiliates. That includes research into the treatment and/or prevention of Alzheimer’s, various cancers, heart disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and autism. Burroughs also highlighted a program through the Department of Veterans Affairs “to help V.A. emergency room physicians decide whether suicidal veterans should be hospitalized.”

The case has been the subject of intense focus as Harvard has stood largely alone in pushing back against the Trump administration’s efforts to use funding cuts as leverage to win vast ideological and financial concessions from other elite institutions, including Columbia and Brown University.

In a July hearing, a lawyer for the Trump administration said Harvard’s funding had been frozen because the school had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin, by failing to address antisemitism on campus.

But Burroughs ruled that it was the administration that had run afoul of Title VI by quickly freezing funding without first following a process clearly laid out in law.

Harvard’s attorneys had argued that the cuts imposed by the Trump Administration threatened vital research in medicine, science and technology.

Burroughs wrote in her decision that, “research that has been frozen could save lives, money, or the environment, to name a few. And the research was frozen without any sort of investigation into whether particular labs were engaging in antisemitic behavior, were employing Jews, were run by Jewish scientists, or were investigating issues or diseases particularly pertinent to Jews (such as, for example, Tay-Sachs disease), meaning that the funding freezes could and likely will harm the very people Defendants professed to be protecting.”

Burroughs underlined that antisemitism is intolerable, and criticized Harvard, saying it “has been plagued by antisemitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue.” But, the judge concluded, “there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism.”

President Trump has previously been outspoken in his criticism of Burroughs, writing on Truth Social earlier this year that she is a “Trump-hating Judge,” and “a TOTAL DISASTER.”

Following Wednesday’s ruling, White House spokesperson Liz Huston again criticized Burroughs and said “It is clear that Harvard University failed to protect their students from harassment and allowed discrimination to plague their campus for years. Harvard does not have a constitutional right to taxpayer dollars and remains ineligible for grants in the future.”

“This ruling is huge. It is a big, decisive victory for academic freedom,” said Harvard history professor Kirsten Weld, who is also president of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which was a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Even though the White House plans to appeal, Weld says she hopes this ruling sends the message “that you cannot break universities in this fashion and that it is worth standing up and fighting back.”

Google Advances AI Image Generation with Multi-Modal Capabilities

• By John K. Waters
• 09/03/25

Google has introduced Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, marking a significant advancement in artificial intelligence systems that can understand and manipulate visual content through natural language processing.

The AI model represents progress in multi-modal machine learning, combining text comprehension with image generation and editing capabilities. Unlike previous systems focused primarily on creating images from text descriptions, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image can analyze existing images and perform precise modifications based on conversational instructions.

Technical improvements include enhanced character consistency across multiple image generations, a persistent challenge in AI image synthesis. The system can maintain the appearance of specific subjects while placing them in different environments or contexts, indicating advances in computer vision and generative modeling.

The model leverages Google’s large language model knowledge base, allowing it to incorporate real-world understanding into visual tasks. This integration demonstrates progress toward more sophisticated AI agents capable of reasoning across different data types.

Google implemented safety measures, including automated content filtering and mandatory digital watermarking through its SynthID technology. The watermarking addresses growing concerns about the identification of AI-generated content as synthetic media becomes more prevalent.

The launch intensifies competition in generative AI, where companies including OpenAI, Adobe, and Midjourney are developing similar multimodal capabilities. Industry analysts view image generation as a key battleground for AI companies seeking to expand beyond text-based applications.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is priced at $30 per million tokens. For more information, visit the Google site.