The Department of Justice filed a new lawsuit Friday against Harvard University, alleging the school violated the law by discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students, in the Trump administration’s latest effort to claw back federal funding from the elite institution.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, marks the latest effort by President Donald Trump to strip the university of its federal funding until it capitulates to a list of demands for ideological reform. Harvard has argued Trump’s push for change exceeds the federal government’s lawful authority and infringes on the university’s constitutional rights.
The lawsuit accuses Harvard’s leadership of turning “a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis,” in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the yearslong Israel-Hamas war. Jewish students, the lawsuit alleges, “wore baseball caps to conceal their yarmulkes” and were “denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators.”
The accusations follow a familiar strategy in the Civil Rights Division of Trump’s DOJ: accuse Ivy League universities of violating Title VI criteria in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which must be met in order for postsecondary institutions to receive federal research and grant funding.
The United States “brings this action to compel Harvard to comply with Title VI, and to recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution,” the lawsuit said. The case has been assigned to Judge Richard G. Stearns, a Clinton appointee, in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Harvard staunchly denied the allegations, saying in a statement Friday that the university “cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community” and “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.”
“We will continue to prioritize this important work and will defend the university against this lawsuit, which represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government,” the statement said.
Friday’s lawsuit came after the Trump administration, which views Harvard as a threat to conservative ideology, cut $2.6 billion in research funding for the university, slashed federal contracts and attempted to prevent international students from studying at the institution.
The university took the White House to court and won after the president ordered sweeping federal funding cuts across the university. Harvard argued it had been unfairly penalized by the administration for refusing to adopt its ideological views, and a federal judge reversed the $2.6 billion of slashed federal funds after finding the Trump administration violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights. The Justice Department promptly appealed that decision and the Trump administration demanded a $200 million payment from Harvard to the federal government. The university entered into negotiations with the White House and had appeared close to reaching a deal until Trump upped his number to $1 billion and threatened to launch a criminal investigation into the university. The president accused the university of committing “serious and heinous illegalities” in a series of posts on TruthSocial. Since his return to the White House last year, Trump and his administration have mounted a pressure campaign against the nation’s higher education institutions. The Department of Education has launched antisemitism investigations into at least 60 universities and warned of “potential enforcement actions if institutions do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.”
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky. Recommended
Northwestern University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Brown University and the Universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania have all agreed to multiyear settlements with the Trump administration following Title VI investigations.
