DOJ Sues Harvard Alleging Civil Rights Violations Against Jewish and Israeli Students

The Trump administration is suing Harvard University over alleged civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students, escalating its assault on the Ivy League school over campus antisemitism.The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, charging that Harvard’s administration has continued to fail to protect Jewish and Israeli students from a “hostile educational environment” that took hold on campus after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.The suit alleges that Jews and Israelis at Harvard “were harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon;” “repeatedly denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators;” and compelled to conceal their Jewish identities out of fear for their safety.“Harvard’s response to this: do nothing,” the 44-page complaint reads. The Justice Department charges that Harvard’s “faculty and leadership turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis” by failing to enforce campus rules or meaningfully discipline violators when the victims were Jewish or Israeli.The DOJ is asking a federal judge to declare Harvard in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. It also calls on the court to halt more than $2.6 billion in existing federal grants and compel the university to repay all grant money received during what it describes as Harvard’s noncompliance with Title VI — a period it traces back to October 7, 2023.In a public response on its website, Harvard dismissed the suit as “yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.”“Harvard cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus,” the statement said. “Our actions illustrate this. Harvard has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies on campus.”The founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Kenneth Marcus, tells The New York Sun the suit is “precisely” the kind of action that “motivates higher education to comply with their civil rights responsibilities.”While he acknowledges that litigation is “a much more cumbersome process than the bold, rapid actions we saw from the Trump administration last year,” Mr. Marcus says it reflects “an appropriate use of the process.”“Some of us have been urging the Justice Department to flex its enforcement muscles on campus anti-Semitism for years, and now we’re finally seeing it happen,” says Mr. Marcus, who served as the head of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education under the Bush administration and the first Trump administration. The lawsuit comes with the reported collapse of negotiations between the White House and Harvard to resolve their mounting legal disputes. The standoff began in April 2025, when the administration froze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts after Harvard refused to implement sweeping reforms demanded by the administration to address charges of antisemitism and anti-conservative bias on campus. The following month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the university’s student and exchange visitor program certification, jeopardizing enrollment for some 7,000 international students.Harvard responded by challenging both moves in federal court and has succeeded in winning injunctive relief in both cases. The government’s appeals are pending.

DOJ Sues Harvard Alleging Civil Rights Violations Against Jewish and Israeli Students

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