DOJ sues Harvard over antisemitism, says school ‘tolerated’ harassment of Jewish students

The Justice Department sued Harvard University on Friday for civil rights violations, saying the school has discriminated against its Jewish students by not forcefully cracking down on antisemitic behavior.

The school “tolerated antisemitic mobs” in the wake of the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the department said, and refused to enforce campus harassment rules against those who targeted Jewish and Israeli students, even though it enforces the rules in cases involving others, such as LGBT students.

Government officials called the school’s response to antisemitism “toothless.”

“This Department of Justice will not tolerate the harassment, assault or intimidation of Jewish and Israeli students, and neither should Harvard,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the department’s Civil Rights Division, which is leading the lawsuit.

Harvard, the oldest college in the U.S., has been a particular target for the Trump administration, which has tried to bar it from admitting foreign students and sued over compliance with race-neutral admissions rules.

The Washington Times has sought comment from the school.

In the new lawsuit, the Justice Department said Harvard has been aware of the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students and “deliberately refused” to act or, when it did take steps, they were too weak to meet what the moment demanded.

The lawsuit was brought under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which imposes standards on any school that receives federal funding.

Harvard is set to receive $2.6 billion in taxpayer money under active grants from the federal Health and Human Services Department alone, the DOJ said.

“The United States cannot and will not tolerate these failures and 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,” John Mertens, the DOJ lawyer leading the case, said in the complaint, filed in federal court in Massachusetts.

The Justice Department said the disparate treatment of Jewish students was particularly appalling.

That included announcing the suspension of a student who assaulted a gay law school student, but taking no action when a Jewish business student was assaulted; canceling a lecture of a feminist who questioned transgender identity, but tolerating students chanting phrases that denied Israeli identity; and disciplining a professor who made “racist posts” about Black people, but taking no action against instructors who said “worse derogatory remarks” about Jews and Israelis.

“Harvard’s apathy toward the suffering of their Jewish and Israeli students stands in stark contrast to its prior rigorous enforcement of its anti-bullying and harassment policies,” the lawsuit said.