Updates on Antisemitism Litigation Against Harvard
Graphic by Miranda Chao Hwang
Harvard is no stranger to pushback from the federal government; in the most recent installment of its legal disputes, the university made significant headway. In a memorandum issued Aug. 13, U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns granted Harvard’s motion to dismiss the antisemitism case brought by the U.S. Justice Department in March. The DOJ has appealed the dismissal.
First filed on March 20, 2026, the case cited several complaints regarding acts of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. Specifically, the DOJ alleged in its initial court filing that Jewish and Israeli students were denied access to educational facilities by demonstrators. “[They] violated content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions, and coupled their chants, signage, and other means of disruption with intimidating actions and slurs,” DOJ attorneys wrote.
Though the filing conceded that peaceful protest is not inherently a violation of Title VI, it argued that Harvard’s “deliberate indifference to this harassment,” demonstrated by a lack of campus policy enforcement, provided sufficient grounds for the suit. This case followed a March 10 letter from the Department of Education that cited six out of eight Ivy League institutions for antisemitic discrimination and harassment—excluding Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania.
“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,” Harvard wrote in a March 20 statement on the lawsuit. The statement said that training for members of the campus community, as well as civil-dialogue programming, demonstrates “the very opposite of deliberate indifference.”
The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts’s dismissal cited several instances that identified deficiencies in the government’s arguments. “The Amended Complaint focuses almost entirely on incidents that took place during the 2023-2024 school year. Only three incidents are alleged to have occurred after this period, all of which took place nearly a full year later … in March of 2025,” Stearns wrote in his four-page ruling. According to the district court judge, the characterization of the incidents as “isolated and episodic” did not align with the government’s argument of institutionalized Title VI violations at Harvard, and thus supported the dismissal of the case.
Judge Stearns also found that the government misconstrued the controlling statute, which allows the government to revoke funding for Title VI violations. This ruling further supports Harvard’s separate lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s revocation of nearly $2.2 billion in federal funds.
Whistleblower Report
The ruling is also accompanied by a second development associated with the Justice Department. Haley Van Erem, a former DOJ attorney who served from 2015 to 2025 and received several honors during that time, including three Distinguished Service Awards, two Special Commendations, and one Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General Cooperative Achievement award.
On Aug. 17, she accused DOJ leadership of egregious misconduct relating to antisemitism litigation against three Ivy League schools, Harvard included. The report, made public on Aug. 18 by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, noted the detailed history of deviations from DOJ policy. Significantly, officials at the DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services “departed from longstanding investigative practices designed to ensure due process, accuracy and legal compliance,” Van Erem’s lawyers said. More than one case had little or no factual basis to support opening an investigation.
For Harvard’s case specifically, Van Erem’s lawyers said that the freezes on research funding, as well as settlement proposals that would change the curriculum, endowment management and governance “were being pursued before any completed investigation had established Title VI violations and without a demonstrated connection between the proposed remedies and substantiated findings of unlawful discrimination.”
The letter also mentioned Brown University and Columbia University, though the alleged DOJ violations took different forms in each case.
Other Litigation
In January 2025, Harvard reached a separate but important settlement in a case brought by the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education over alleged Title VI violations. As part of the settlement, the university agreed to several terms, including explicit protections for Jewish and Israeli identities under its Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policies.
Harvard also agreed to establish an official partnership with a university in Israel, adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, and hire a designated individual to consult on antisemitism complaints.
Importantly, the press release stated: “As part of this settlement with Brandeis Center and JAFE, which includes monetary terms, Harvard has not admitted to any wrongdoing or liability.”
The university faces other challenges from federal litigation, including the government’s actions affecting international students with F-1 visa status and its lawsuit seeking race-related admissions documents, both of which remain pending in court.
Beyond Harvard, other peer institutions have also faced legal challenges from the government. Several schools, including Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and Yale, have reached agreements or are pursuing them with the Justice Department.
Harvard also has received support in its legal battles. Yale backed Harvard amid funding freezes, and the president of the Association of American Universities published the “Statement of Barbara R. Snyder, AAU President, on Harvard’s Refusal to Surrender Its Independence or Relinquish its Constitutional Rights.” She expressly supported Harvard’s choice to safeguard intellectual inquiry from political influence.
“Today I find myself deeply grateful to Harvard University, one of our founding members, for having the courage to live up to its values,” she said. “[President Garber] is absolutely right that all of us have a stake in safeguarding the freedom of thought and inquiry,” Snyder stated.
Harvard’s Actions Against Antisemitism
The university has responded to claims of antisemitism in several sweeping actions in recent years. On Nov. 9, 2023, nearly one month after the escalation of regional tensions following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, former Harvard University President Claudine Gay issued a statement titled “Combating Antisemitism.”
“Antisemitism has no place at Harvard,” she said. “While confronting any form of hatred is daunting, the challenges we face tackling antisemitism are made all the more so by its pernicious nature and deep historical roots. But we are committed to doing the hard work to address this scourge.”
In January 2024, President Alan M. Garber announced two presidential task forces focused primarily on combating antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus. Garber echoed sentiments from President Gay, stating, “Harvard University is resolved in our commitment to combating antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.”
“The University has taken and continues to take substantive actions to advance this commitment through both University-wide and school-specific initiatives aligned with preliminary and final recommendations put forward by the Presidential Task Force guided by Harvard’s commitment to open inquiry and academic freedom.”
Preliminary recommendations from the task force urged the university to take several steps, including clarifying Harvard’s values; acting against discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate; improving disciplinary processes; implementing education and training; fostering constructive dialogue; and supporting Jewish life on campus.
The Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias has also investigated aspects of campus life that uniquely affect students of these identities. Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian rhetoric have deeply affected students on campus. The task force reached several similar conclusions, recommending improvements in campus safety and university-wide recognition, support for a climate of freedom of expression and pluralism among affinity groups, and audits of academic resources related to Islam, the Middle East, and Palestine studies.
As tensions surrounding Israel and the Middle East remain on Harvard’s campus, the university has called for respect, civil dialogue, and transparency in promoting “an academic culture where diverse perspectives can be respectfully explored, challenged, and developed.”
Though the case was dismissed, the DOJ’s appeal may still affect Harvard research funding and other legal cases.
Seyi Amosun ’29 (samosun@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the “Harvard Independent.”