(Bloomberg) — Harvard University is tapping a white-hot lawyer with conservative bona fides to fight the Trump administration’s threat to withhold billions in funding, betting his ties to the president and experience guiding billionaires through legal thickets can win the school a reprieve.
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William Burck of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan was hired to help Harvard President Alan Garber repel Donald Trump’s demands for the college to overhaul governance, admissions and hiring practices to be more in line with the president’s priorities. On Monday, Harvard rejected those terms, with Burck writing that Harvard won’t “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
Hours later, Trump hit back, freezing $2.2 billion in multiyear grants to America’s oldest and richest university and suggesting Tuesday in a social media post that it should lose its tax-exempt status. Trump and allies seeking to overhaul the US higher education system have cast Harvard as a symbol of all that’s wrong with elite universities, citing pro-Palestinian campus protests that disrupted classes and antisemitic attacks on Jewish students.
The case will test Burck’s ability to negotiate with Trump’s inner circle over a contentious issue that’s a top priority for conservatives. People who have worked with him over the years say the 53-year-old is well suited to the task, with an engaging manner and formidable courtroom skills, along with a worldview that largely aligns with Trump’s.
Burck’s hiring sends different messages to different audiences, according to Alan Dershowitz, the famed lawyer and professor emeritus at Harvard.
“To the faculty, they’re saying, ‘We’re tough, we’re standing up to the government,’” Dershowitz said in an interview. “But to the government, they’re saying ‘We’re hiring your guy.’”
Harvard’s faculty, students and administration have been sharply divided since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, which prompted disruptive demonstrations that often framed the Jewish state’s retaliatory response as “genocide.” Critics claimed many of the protests were showcases for rampant antisemitism. Allegations that Harvard wasn’t doing enough to protect Jewish students led to the ouster of President Claudine Gay.
The college has taken steps to address antisemitism on campus, including tightening disciplinary procedures. But it’s also sought to fortify its ties with Republicans by hiring a lobbying firm, Ballard Partners, tied to Trump’s chief of staff and selecting a conservative lawyer for a powerful leadership role.
But last month, the Trump administration said it was scrutinizing as much as $9 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard as part of probes into alleged antisemitism. The Trump administration had already canceled $400 million in federal money to Columbia University, and has frozen dozens of research contracts at Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern universities.
Columbia sought to get the funding restored by agreeing to ban masks, expand campus police powers and appoint a senior vice provost to oversee a department. And Harvard had signaled it would work with the administration to address antisemitism.
But when the Trump administration asked for additional measures last week that could have dictated hiring and admissions, the university balked.
“Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” it said in response to Trump.
Along with Burck, Harvard hired another lawyer tight with conservatives: Robert Hur of King & Spalding. The former special counsel gained prominence when he investigated former President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents. Burck represented Hur during his testimony to Congress about a report that said Biden was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Burck also has ties to other high profile political cases. Just this year, he helped the law firm Paul Weiss negotiate a deal to perform $40 million in free legal work on conservative causes to avoid a Trump executive order that threatened to cripple its business. He also represented New York Mayor Eric Adams over corruption charges that Trump’s Justice Department dropped. Critics said the administration’s actions were politically motivated.
Last year, Burck also sued the US Internal Revenue Service on behalf of hedge fund manager Ken Griffin for failing to protect his confidential tax data from being stolen and leaked to the media by a contractor now in prison. The IRS issued an unusual public apology to Griffin.
In 2021, Burck helped secure a Supreme Court win for two conservative groups, including the Americans for Prosperity Foundation backed by the billionaire Charles Koch, over a California requirement that charities list the names and addresses of their top donors in state filings. The high court said the California rule put their donors at risk of harassment and intimidation.
But perhaps Burck’s closest ties to the president come with his role as the outside ethics adviser for the Trump Organization. Since he was brought on in January, he’s been responsible for reviewing corporate decisions including transactions over $10 million and leases of space more than 40,000 square feet (3,716 square meters).
Trump Organization
In a news release about his hiring, the company said Burck is “widely regarded as one of the nation’s finest and most respected lawyers.” For his part, Burck said the Trump Organization is “one of the most successful, respected and recognized companies anywhere in the world.”
Burck, who lives in New York and suburban Washington, attended Yale University as an undergraduate and for law school before serving as a clerk to former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. He worked as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, helping to send Martha Stewart to prison.
He worked in the White House for former President George W. Bush, later joining Quinn Emanuel. He represented Brett Kavanaugh in his contentious Senate confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. Burck also worked for an array of defendants in criminal cases, including FIFA, soccer’s governing body.
In the first Trump administration, Burck represented several Trump insiders in the Russian influence investigation by Robert Mueller, including Steve Bannon, Don McGahn and Reince Preibus.
A longtime New England Patriots fan, he defended billionaire owner Robert Kraft against solicitation of prostitution charges, which prosecutors dropped. He also represented Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross in a lawsuit by former head coach Brian Flores, who claimed he was denied the top coaching spot with the New York Giants because of racial discrimination.
–With assistance from Janet Lorin.
(Updates to include name of lobbying firm in eighth paragraph. A previous version of the story corrected Burck’s undergraduate affiliation in the 19th paragraph.)
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