President Trump talks extra about Harvard than individuals who truly went there — which is to say quite a bit.
After a number of universities made like Paul Weiss and rolled over and confirmed the Trump administration their stomach, the president figured that Harvard would fold ultimately. Columbia paid a $200 million settlement to revive its funding. Brown paid $50 million to Rhode Island workforce applications. Cornell agreed to $30 million over three years. Absolutely these dorks in Cambridge would cough up quickly!
However a “settlement” remained elusive, and so Trump ramped up the stress.
He tried to cancel $2 billion in federal grant funding, alleging the college violated Title VI by discriminating towards Jewish college students. Choose Allison Burroughs blocked it in September and made it everlasting in October. He tried to kick Harvard out of the Scholar and Trade Customer Program, successfully banning worldwide college students. Choose Burroughs blocked that too.
So right now, the Justice Division filed a model new Title VI lawsuit alleging that Harvard “defied federal regulation and violated Title VI repeatedly by discriminating towards Jewish and Israeli college students with out regret.” Third time’s the allure?
The 44-page grievance, filed within the District of Massachusetts, alleges that Harvard maintained a campus so hostile to Jewish and Israeli college students after Hamas’s October 7 assault on Israel that it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Most of what it paperwork are protests towards Israel’s conflict in Gaza, that are protected by the First Modification. However clearly Jewish members of the neighborhood did really feel marginalized and endangered. The grievance factors to college students concealing yarmulkes underneath baseball caps, a mezuzah stolen from a dorm room, “Heil Hitler” screamed at college students ready for campus transportation, and calls to “gasoline all of the Jews” getting upvotes on the Harvard-only Sidechat platform.
Just about each considered one of these allegations is sourced to a report produced in April of 2025 by Harvard’s personal Presidential Job Power on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. In truth, the college spent months documenting the issue in excruciating element and settled two non-public Title VI lawsuits — Kestenbaum v. Harvard and Brandeis Middle v. Harvard — by adopting the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, explicitly extending its nondiscrimination insurance policies to Jewish and Israeli college students, committing to annual antisemitism coaching, and establishing a partnership with an Israeli college. That definitely undercuts the federal government’s declare that Harvard was “detached” to the issue or that the violation is systemic and ongoing.
The proposed treatment for this “violation” is functionally a demise penalty for the college. The DOJ needs the courtroom to declare Harvard to have been in violation of Title VI since October 7, 2023, forcing it to return billions of {dollars} in federal grants made since that date, and reducing it off from all federal funds going ahead. How it will assist Jewish college students — a lot of whom participated within the protests themselves — is left as an train for the reader, though the grievance gestures vaguely within the path of an outdoor monitor to make sure that the college enforces its insurance policies towards protesters, as much as and together with calling the cops on them.
This might a be a extremely novel utility of Title VI, and the federal government didn’t wish to threat winding up in entrance of Choose Burroughs, who referred to as the funding freeze a “focused, ideologically-motivated assault” and the SEVP revocation “retaliation.” And so the DOJ designated the brand new case as associated to Kestenbaum and Brandeis Middle, in order to get in entrance of Choose Richard Stearns.
Choose Stearns dismissed a lot these prior complaints, however he didn’t dismiss them completely. He additionally characterised Harvard’s response to antisemitism as “at finest, indecisive, vacillating, and at occasions internally contradictory,” discovering that “the information as pled present that Harvard failed its Jewish college students.” However he by no means adjudicated the claims, since each instances settled in early 2025, and it’s not clear whether or not he’ll agree that this new explanation for motion by the federal government is expounded sufficient to robotically wind up on his docket.
In the meantime, the president continues to clarify, that he’s making an attempt to precipitate an “untenable disaster” in greater training.
Dammit, now now we have to aspect with Harvard. Ughhh, effectively … GO CRIMSON!
Liz Dye produces the Legislation and Chaos Substack and podcast. You may subscribe by clicking the brand:
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