The US Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Friday accusing Harvard University of violating federal civil rights law by failing to address antisemitism on campus. The suit alleges the university was “deliberately indifferent” to harassment of Jewish and Israeli students and intentionally failed to enforce campus rules when victims were Jewish or Israeli, sending a message that those students were excluded and denied equal access to educational opportunities.
The complaint says the United States will not tolerate such failures and seeks to compel Harvard to comply with federal civil rights law and to recover billions in taxpayer subsidies it says were awarded to a discriminatory institution. Harvard has not publicly responded to the lawsuit.
The probe into Harvard began less than two weeks after President Donald Trump took office, the administration says, focusing on conduct before and after pro-Palestinian demonstrations linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The lawsuit contends Harvard did not discipline staff or students who protested or appeared to endorse demonstrations, including by canceling or dismissing classes that conflicted with protests.
Harvard has repeatedly rejected the government’s findings, asserting its commitment to combating bias. In a statement the university said antisemitism is a serious problem and unacceptable in any context, and that it has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism. Harvard President Alan Garber told officials last spring the university formed a task force on antisemitism, hired a new provost and new deans, and reformed discipline policies to be more consistent, fair and effective.
The Trump administration has applied similar pressure to other universities, freezing billions in research grants that institutions rely on for scientific and medical work. When negotiations fail after a finding of civil-rights violations, the government can attempt to cut federal funding through administrative channels or by referring cases to the Justice Department for litigation, as it has done with Harvard.
Several universities have reached agreements with the administration to restore funding; some deals included direct payments to the government, such as Columbia University’s $200 million and Brown University’s $50 million payment toward state workforce development programs. Reports indicated Harvard and the administration had, at times, been close to a settlement that might have required Harvard to pay $500 million to regain federal funding and end investigations, but that figure was later raised to $1 billion by Trump, who said Harvard had been “behaving very badly.”
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, characterized the administration’s actions as a “full scale, multi-pronged” attack on Harvard, adding, “When bullies pound on the table and don’t get what they want, they pound again.”
Edited by: Alex Berry