DOJ Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Harvard, Citing Campus Antisemitism

The Trump administration’s battle against Ivy League institutions continued on Friday, when it filed a lawsuit against Harvard University for violating federal civil rights law.  

In its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, the administration alleges that Harvard violated the law when its “faculty and leadership turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis” during protests following the attacks on October 7, 2023. The lawsuit seeks to “recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution.”

The lawsuit alleges that “Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard University were harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon” and “denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators.” It also claims, “Jewish students wore baseball caps to conceal their yarmulkes or kept out of sight, effectively denying them access to Federally funded educational opportunities.” 

The Justice Department also argues that phrases like “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as they were used during protests at Harvard, should be understood as calls for violence against Jews. “To a Jewish or Israeli ear, these chants are racial slurs,” reads the suit. 

This lawsuit is just the latest clash between the Trump administration and Harvard over alleged antisemitism practices at the school. Last April, Harvard refused to comply with the Trump administration’s demands to, among other things, change hiring practices, audit programs thought to field “antisemitic harassment,” and discontinue diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. In response, the federal government froze over $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to the university. The university then filed a lawsuit in response, calling the funding freeze “unlawful and beyond the government’s authority.” 

In September, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that the Trump administration’s funding freeze orders were “retaliation for protected speech,” reports The Harvard Crimson. Burroughs wrote, “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” 

The Trump administration’s pressure campaigns against other universities have had mixed results. Columbia University has largely caved to the government’s demands, and in July of last year, the school agreed to pay a $200 million fine to settle the Trump administration’s antisemitism allegations against the school. The capitulation restored most of the $400 million of canceled federal research funding, but it came with strings attached. These included codifying a laundry list of reforms demanded by the Trump administration and adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Antisemitism (IHRA). Free speech organizations have warned that this overly broad definition could punish or silence speech critical of Israel or its government. Harvard also adopted the IHRA definition to settle two other lawsuits regarding campus antisemitism back in 2025. 

With this new lawsuit, the Trump administration’s feud with the Ivy League university is likely to continue. But this doesn’t need to be the case. As Reason‘s Autumn Billings has argued, the best way for private universities to maintain their academic freedom and independence would be to decouple themselves from federal funding. While this might be challenging for some colleges, it shouldn’t be for Harvard, which has a $56.9 billion endowment.