The federal government is suing Harvard over what the Justice Department’s complaint calls the university’s "toothless non-response to the ongoing relentless antisemitic on-campus discrimination."
The suit was announced with a traditional press release that included quotes from Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, who represented Trump as a private lawyer before he was elected in 2024, also posted to social media a video of herself describing it as "an important federal civil rights lawsuit." She announced, "we look forward to litigating this case." The Washington Free Beacon has learned that Trump himself has personally been calling Dhillon directly every so often to check in on the case.
The new federal complaint relies heavily on facts described in the report of Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias. That makes it difficult for Harvard to dismiss the facts or characterizations in the report, because the task force was made up largely of Harvard professors picked by Harvard’s president. Harvard can claim the situation has since been remedied, but, in that regard, an inconvenient truth is that not all of the task force’s recommendations have been implemented. While the pace of disruptive anti-Israel public protests on the campus has slowed, and while the anti-Israel activists are whining about what they characterize as "politically motivated terminations of leaders at Harvard’s scholarly centers that include programming on Palestine," egregious incidents of bigotry persist to this day. So does robust "programming on Palestine"; Harvard’s English and history departments paid a $35,000 honorarium and $7,500 in travel expenses "for a 5 star hotel" to have Ta-Nehisi Coates appear on campus on September 24, 2025, the second day of Rosh Hashana, and "read from his chapter on Palestine," according to documents released this week by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. An Arab Conference at Harvard is scheduled for April 17-19, 2026, and is described by organizers as "the largest Arab Conference in North America."
The anti-Israel protesters have tried to hide behind the First Amendment’s protections on free speech and assembly; Mahmoud Khalil has a case against Columbia on this before Judge Arun Subramianian of the Southern District of New York. In a Harvard case brought by Harvard student Alexander "Shabbos" Kestenbaum, who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2024 and who accompanied Trump on an October 7, 2024, visit to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Queens, New York, Judge Stearns declared himself "dubious that Harvard can hide behind the First Amendment to justify avoidance of its Title VI obligations."
The reference is to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits race and national-origin discrimination in federally funded programs and activities. As today’s complaint puts it, "Harvard is currently set to receive more than $2,615,000,000 of taxpayer money under active federal grants from the Department of Health and Human Services alone (to say nothing of other agencies). Yet Harvard defied federal law and violated Title VI repeatedly by discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students without remorse. And Harvard remains in violation of its Title VI obligations."
In addition to the Title VI claims, there are civil breach of contract claims; the government asks the court to "Rescind and award the United States restitution of all grant payments made to Harvard during the time of Harvard’s noncompliance with Title VI." It also asks for appointment of an independent outside monitor, "subject to approval and in collaboration with the United States, to oversee and ensure Harvard’s full compliance with all injunctive and equitable relief ordered by the Court. The monitor shall be empowered to audit Harvard … and recommend corrective actions for such duration and scope as the Court deems just and necessary." Kestenbaum or outgoing New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik might be fine candidates for that role.
The federal complaint also notes that Harvard was far more permissive and lenient when it came to anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli actions than the "rigorous enforcement" against professors whose offenses were directed at black people or at "trans identity."
Harvard responded by lashing out with a flailing denunciation of the Trump administration, calling the lawsuit "yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government." In its unsigned statement, the university also claimed, "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." It did not specify what it meant by the "root causes of antisemitism," itself a ridiculous formulation given the fundamentally irrational nature of bigotry and bigots, and a phrase that does not appear a single time in the 311-page report of Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias.
In other court filings and outside of court the university and its employees have made a variety of claims, including that the anti-Israel protests on campus did not rise to the level of severe, pervasive harassment that would lead a reasonable person to fear physical harm; that it has taken steps to improve the campus climate; and that the Trump administration is vindictively, groundlessly targeting Harvard along with other civil society institutions, such as the press, as part of a broader plan of replacing democratic freedom with authoritarian tyranny. (Really, I used to work at Harvard, and I live in Boston; a substantial fraction of the Harvard faculty and alumni actually believe this last theory and go around selling books and Substack subscriptions to each other and soliciting campaign and charitable contributions on these "democracy is in danger" grounds.)
In a separate federal lawsuit filed last month, the Justice Department sued Harvard for admissions data the government says it needs to assure that Harvard is complying with a 2023 Supreme Court decision that found its use of racial preferences in college admissions violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. "Harvard has failed to disclose the data we need to ensure that its admissions are free of discrimination — we will continue fighting to put merit over DEI across America," Attorney General Bondi said in a press release announcing that case.
Federal district judges and even appellate judges in Massachusetts are typically highly sympathetic to Harvard. They frequently either went to school there, guest-lecture at Harvard Law School, or have spouses who work there. Even so, at least two federal judges have been critical of Harvard’s response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. "Harvard failed its Jewish students," Judge Richard Stearns found in August 2024. Even Judge Allison Burroughs, who Trump has described as a "TOTAL DISASTER," and who found in Harvard’s favor at trial in the admissions case in which she was later overturned by the Supreme Court, found, "It is clear, even based solely on Harvard’s own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by antisemitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue ... Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did."
Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, resigned in early January 2024, in part because of her own botched response. The federal complaint does a nice job of recounting that:
On December 5, 2023, President Gay testified about antisemitism at Harvard before the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce. When asked by Representative Elise Stefanik whether a call "for the genocide of Jews violate[s] Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment," President Gay answered, "It can be, depending on the context." While President Gay publicly expressed contrition for her poor choice of words, in a private meeting with Harvard’s governing board, she condemned Representative Stefanik as a "purveyor of hate" and "supporter of proudboys." This hostility toward Rep. Stefanik for giving President Gay the platform necessary to embarrass herself and Harvard demonstrates that Harvard as an institution views the problem as being called out, not being hostile to Israeli and Jewish students. This shows Harvard’s deliberate indifference.
Stefanik praised the lawsuit. "This is the absolute correct decision by the Trump Administration to sue Harvard for failing to protect Jewish students. This is after years of Congressional oversight work that I was proud to lead in holding Harvard accountable," she said in a statement.
The civil complaint also contains language referring to the possibility of criminal liability. It notes language certifying that "the award recipient is in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, certifications, and assurances, including all terms and conditions of the award," and concluding that "a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement in this declaration and certification or otherwise in connection with this payment/drawdown request (or concealment or omission of a material fact as to either) may be the subject of criminal prosecution."
The federal government had halted funding to Harvard last year, but Harvard sued to get it restored. The money is mostly flowing while that case is under appeal. This case addresses some of the same issues but with a cleaner start under the Administrative Procedure Act and other laws governing the flow of federal funds to universities.
