The Trump Administration Takes on Harvard on Antisemitism

The filing by the Justice Department of a civil complaint against Harvard for antisemitism on campus marks a newsworthy turn in the fight against the oldest bigotry. The filing moves the issue to, in the federal courts, a new and important stage. Heretofore successive administrations have shrunk from flexing their “enforcement muscles,” as a former assistant secretary of education, Kenneth Marcus, puts it. “Now,” he says, “we’re finally seeing it happen.”Count this as another case in which — as in, say, moving the American embassy in Israel to its capital at Jerusalem — the Trump administration has been prepared to act where others haven’t. It was announced this morning by Attorney General Pam Bondi. She framed the litigation as proof of the White House’s “commitment to demanding better from our nation’s schools and putting an end to discriminatory behavior that harms students.” The government’s intervention stands in sharp contrast to what the suit describes as Harvard’s halting response to the antisemitism that erupted on campus after Hamas’s October 7 attack. While Jewish and Israeli students were “harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon;” “repeatedly denied access to educational facilities;” and compelled to conceal their Jewish identities out of fear for their safety,” Harvard, the suit alleges, “turned a blind eye.” Harvard’s indifference to its Jewish and Israeli students was the first of its failures, the suit maintains. The university then compounded the wrong, the DOJ claims, by refusing to enforce its own rules — like the one that bars students from setting up a tent city on Harvard Yard — or punish violators when the victims were Jewish or Israeli. Worse still, “Harvard instead rewarded students who assaulted, harassed, or intimidated their Jewish and Israeli peers.” Together these infractions put Harvard in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act which bars federally funded institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Harvard is set to receive more than $2.6 billion in active grants. The government asks the court to withhold those funds and compel the university to repay all grant money received while in noncompliance with Title VI. It traces that back to October 7, 2023. Harvard dismissed the litigation as “yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.” It also insisted it “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.” In contrast, witness Cornell’s stand for the Technion in New York. Mr. Marcus, a former head of the civil rights office of the Education Department, reckons the suit is “precisely” the kind of action that “motivates higher education to comply with their civil rights responsibilities.” The school has failed to grasp the initiative. As Ms. Bondi declares in a statement: “Since October 7th, 2023, too many of our educational institutions have allowed anti-Semitism to flourish on campus — Harvard included.”

The Trump Administration Takes on Harvard on Antisemitism

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