Tag: Harvard

Judge Rules Harvard Funding Freeze Illegal

A federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of Harvard University Wednesday.

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Mandel Ngan and Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

A judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding at Harvard University over how officials handled alleged campus antisemitism.

Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston found that the federal government violated Harvard’s First Amendment rights and the U.S. Civil Rights Act in her 84-page opinion, writing, “We must fight against antisemitism, but we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other.” She added that Harvard is “currently, even if belatedly” taking action against antisemitism.

Harvard sued the Trump administration in April after the federal government froze $2.2 billion in funding when the Ivy League university rejected demands to enact a far-reaching slate of changes that would have overhauled admissions, governance, hiring and much more.

Burroughs, an Obama appointee, appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s claims in a July hearing, telling government lawyers that they failed to back up claims Harvard did not appropriately address antisemitism. She also ruled against the administration in another case in June, temporarily blocking the government from halting Harvard’s ability to host international students.

Burroughs wrote Wednesday that “Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did,” but “the record … does not reflect that fighting antisemitism” was the “true aim” of the defendants and such efforts “cannot be accomplished on the back of the First Amendment.”

The ruling comes as rumors of a Harvard settlement with the federal government continue to swirl. The Trump administration has demanded a $500 million settlement that would force other changes to admissions and discipline policies, similar to agreements made by its Ivy League peers Columbia University and Brown University.

Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement Wednesday that “the ruling affirms Harvard’s First Amendment and procedural rights, and validates our arguments in defense of the University’s academic freedom, critical scientific research, and the core principles of American higher education.”

Wednesday’s legal ruling also prompted celebration from free speech groups and others.

“Today, a federal court echoed what [the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression] has said all along: The Trump administration trampled Harvard University’s First Amendment rights and broke civil rights law when it yanked billions in federal grants and contracts over alleged Title VI violations,” FIRE wrote in a statement.

“This is a huge win for all of American higher education, for science, and for free and critical thought in this country,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors. “Time and again, Trump has tried to restrict speech and cripple lifesaving university research. As today’s victory shows, Trump’s war on higher education is unconstitutional. We will continue to stand up and fight back against these attempts to dismantle our universities, terrify students and faculty, and punish hospitals and scientists for not bowing to authoritarianism. And we will win.”

The American Council on Education praised Burroughs’s ruling.

“We are pleased to see a federal court affirm what we always knew to be true: The Trump administration has ignored the law in pursuing politically motivated attacks on Harvard and other institutions,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for ACE. “We urge the administration to abandon these harmful attacks and instead work to restore the partnership that has made colleges and universities the engine of American innovation for decades.”

Judging from the Department of Education’s response to the ruling, that seems unlikely.

“In an unsurprising turn of events, the same Obama-appointed judge that ruled in favor of Harvard’s illegal race-based admissions practices—which was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court—just ruled against the Trump Administration’s efforts to hold Harvard accountable for rampant discrimination on campus,” spokesperson Madi Biedermann wrote in an emailed statement. “Cleaning up our nation’s universities will be a long road, but worth it.”

In a post on X, Education Secretary Linda McMahon added, “The Trump Administration is fully committed to appealing this erroneous decision and will ensure that new taxpayer funding is not invested at any university that steadfastly refuses to uphold civil rights for all students.”

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September 3, 2025
The findings against Harvard are a blueprint for a National Campus Speech Code

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services accused Harvard of violating Title VI, which bans discrimination based on race or nationality at any school that takes federal funding. Last week, it was reported that Harvard is nearing a $500 million settlement with the administration to end legal battles.

In the past two years alone, HHS noted, Harvard has accepted nearly $800 million from the government. But the threat to Harvard’s funding is just the headline. The sweeping theory of “harassment” HHS used to justify its claim has the potential to cause huge damage, not just at Harvard but across the nation, by collapsing protected speech and misconduct into a single charge that could turn campus protest into a civil rights violation.

There’s nothing new about the idea that we need to ban the expression of certain opinions in order to fight discrimination — that’s the reasoning behind a vast number of speech codes that FIRE has fought since 1999. The new, destructive twist on this is what we at FIRE call the cumulative theory of harassment. That’s the notion that while myriad individual instances of expression by unrelated individuals may be fully protected under the First Amendment, they can together create a cumulative harm, even to those not present and not targeted by the speech, that justifies overriding the Constitution.

By using the cumulative theory of harassment, the government can smear those following the law with the actions of those breaking it.

In Harvard’s case, HHS has determined that since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, the accumulation of antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric constitutes a “hostile environment on its campus for Jewish students.” HHS claims Harvard failed to “take appropriate corrective action” to end this hostile environment, thus violating Title VI.

At first glance, this finding may seem justified, or at least not worth worrying about. After all, most Americans are not exactly enthusiastic about their tax dollars going to fund campuses that are hostile environments for Jewish or Israeli students, or anyone else, simply because of their race, color, or national origin. Still, there are several major problems with interpreting the law in the way HHS does here.

Cumulative theory conflates protected expression with unprotected conduct

First and foremost, the government has deemed that a hostile environment exists at Harvard by conflating constitutionally protected expression — including core political speech, which gets the highest level of protection — with unprotected conduct such as vandalism, blocking entrances and exists, even acts of physical violence.

A single paragraph provided an illuminating look at how HHS blurs the line between protected speech and unprotected conduct in order to accuse Harvard of violating federal law:

Harvard student groups and faculty groups posted to Instagram an antisemitic cartoon that included the Star of David, dollar signs, and nooses. The image depicted “a white hand, marked with a dollar sign inside a Star of David, tightening nooses around the necks of a Black man [Muhammad Ali] and an Arab man [Gamal Abdel Nasser].” This incendiary image was subsequently reposted on Instagram by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

It’s not hard to see why Jewish and Israeli students (and many others) would find this cartoon offensive. But it is undoubtedly political speech, which lies at the very core of what the First Amendment protects. In fact, the cartoon in question was originally published in 1967 by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the best-known organizations of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. As the Los Angeles Times pointed out, it was controversial then as well, but this history only serves to clarify that it is indeed political speech. The Harvard groups’ use of the cartoon to make points about “apartheid and occupation” only reinforces the fact that it is political in nature.

Furthermore, there’s no question that, in a country where the First Amendment continues to protect even the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church holding signs saying “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” outside military funerals, the government simply cannot take action against others for merely for posting a political cartoon on social media.^[1]

The next sentence in HHS’ paragraph reveals that some or all of these groups (the letter does not specify) apologized for posting the cartoon, but suggests the apology was insincere:

The apology for these postings came with a photo of a figure known for saying, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”

Indeed, the Harvard groups eventually replaced the cartoon in the infographic with a picture of civil rights activist Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), who was known for his anti-Zionist views and who famously echoed the “dead Zionist” remark during a 1990 speech at the University of Maryland. But the revised post from the Harvard groups did not quote his remark directly, despite HHS implying that the Harvard groups were trying to associate themselves with Ture’s remark from 35 years ago. Besides, even if they had, it would still be protected speech both under the First Amendment and Harvard policies.

Then comes the paragraph’s conclusion, where HHS mixes all of that protected speech just discussed with unprotected acts:

A “series of anonymous acts” occurred on campus, including posters of Israeli citizens taken hostage by Hamas being vandalized with messages such as “Israel did 9/11.” There were also “instances of vandalism on campus and the posting of swastika stickers near Harvard Hillel’s Rosovsky Hall.”

Unlike the expression in the rest of the paragraph, vandalism, even when expressive, is not protected by the First Amendment. Defacing posters or putting stickers on them, especially if their removal damages the underlying surface, can be and often is prohibited both by law and by university rules. But that’s because it damages or destroys the vandalized item, not because of the content of the speech. Defacing hateful signs with stickers saying “I love everyone!” is still vandalism, and prohibited. Posting political cartoons on Instagram is speech, and is protected. But by using the cumulative theory of harassment, the government can smear those following the law with the actions of those breaking it.

Cumulative theory of harassment creates a general civility code

Another problem with the cumulative theory of harassment is that it holds current speakers responsible for creating a “hostile environment” based on the previous statements and activities of people to whom they may be entirely unrelated. This means anyone can find themselves in the position of perpetrator of hostile environment harassment without himself or herself actually engaging in harassing behavior.

Consider, for example, the following account said to “highlight the hostile environment created for Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard,” according to HHS:

On May 12, 2024, a crudely drawn image of Interim President Garber was also displayed [during an encampment protest] depicting him as a devil with horns and a tail, recalling “medieval antisemitic tropes of Jews as Satan’s minions.”

Like posting a political cartoon to Instagram, simply displaying such a picture simply cannot be deemed harassment by any rational measure, let alone be taken as serious enough to deny the person seeing it “equal access to an educational program or activity.” The Supreme Court’s decision in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education established the standard for peer harassment under Title IX, holding schools liable only when they are deliberately indifferent to harassment that is severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and even warns of “the amount of litigation that would be invited by entertaining claims of official indifference to a single instance of one-on-one peer harassment.”

Under the cumulative theory of harassment, that’s out the window. A school like Harvard must consider each individual student’s choice to display this picture as part of a pattern of behavior that consists of everything everyone else is doing on campus during some undefined period of time, whether or not the student knew anything about it.

HHS doesn’t tell us who displayed the picture, how long it was displayed, whether others at the protest somehow signed off on it or objected to it, how many people saw it, whether it was intended to be antisemitic, or whether HHS or Harvard knows the answers to any of these questions. It requires no coordination or organization. It doesn’t even matter whether the person who displayed the picture is hostile towards Jewish or Israeli students — maybe the artist just hates President Garber!

But using the cumulative theory of harassment, even the message the speaker intended to communicate doesn’t matter. The speaker becomes a harasser who the school has a duty to stop, solely because of what other people, who need not even be present, might have thought about the expression that took place before the current speaker arrived. There’s only one sure way to prevent such “offenses”: you must prevent people from expressing certain opinions when and where those opinions might offend members of a protected class.

Courts struggle to apply the cumulative theory of harassment

While HHS’s OCR was able to draw the conclusion that the words and actions of a number of unrelated perpetrators somehow added up to a hostile environment on a given college campus, it has proved far less successful when analyzed by courts.

Just last month, a federal court dismissed a hostile-environment claim by a coalition of plaintiffs at Haverford College, which sued the institution using the cumulative theory of harassment. As Judge McHugh of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wrote, the plaintiffs sought to establish their hostile environment claim “by citing some 25-plus incidents purportedly impacting the collective consciousness of 50-plus mostly unnamed individuals comprising Jews at Haverford. But such gestalt pleading cannot be employed as a strategy to avoid scrutiny by the Court.”

McHugh noted, “several of Plaintiffs’ allegations involve protected political expression, and cannot be regulated under the guise of nondiscrimination,” later adding that “[m]any of Plaintiffs’ allegations fall into the category of pure, protected speech. Although Plaintiffs may have found much of this speech reprehensible, there is no legal cause of action for upset feelings.”

Among the examples of speech the plaintiffs cited as harassing, but which the court found to be protected, were a lecture on the “weaponization of Covid,” a student handing out Palestinian flags, a campus organization changing its name to “Bi-Co Students for the Liberation of Palestine,” and a number of posts disparaging Israel made by Haverford students and faculty members on their private social media accounts.

The court recognized each of these as instances of political expression protected by the First Amendment. In particular, the court said, “Plaintiffs do not attempt to explain how Haverford could regulate students’ and faculty’s private social media content, offering no basis on which it could assert such invasive authority,” calling into question how HHS could require Harvard to do exactly the same thing.

The Haverford students also complained that Haverford had not done enough to communicate its disapproval of the Hamas attack or antisemitism on campus and (with what appears to be good reason) that it had not followed all its own rules in dealing with protests. But the court did not find this to be a violation of Title VI either, noting that “government coercion of speech to adhere to a particular message tampers with First Amendment protections” and that courts “may not compel administrators to make any specific statement on any particular topic,” citing the 1943 landmark Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. (In that case, the Supreme Court found that the government could not force students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, even against the unprecedented backdrop of World War II.)

Judge McHugh was careful throughout the brief not to discount the discomfort Jewish students at Haverford might have felt during the past year’s pro-Palestinian protests, saying they might have a legal claim that the school didn’t follow its own policies, so that part of their case can move forward. The question, he noted, was not “whether Haverford could have handled each situation better.” Rather,

Under Title VI, the question is whether Haverford was so indifferent to known acts of harassment that it caused students to undergo harassment or made them more vulnerable to it, and thereby undermined the students’ education. Davis, 526 U.S. at 644-45. And even taking all these allegations as a whole, Plaintiffs’ pleading does not plausibly support a finding of deliberate indifference, especially where countervailing First Amendment concerns are considered in evaluating the often-fragile balance college administrators must strike.

In another recent case, Gartenberg v. Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Judge John Cronan of the Southern District of New York similarly found that much of the expression the plaintiff cited was “pure speech on matters of public concern,” and while some of that speech could be considered to determine intent, “it cannot itself support a claim for an objectively hostile educational environment under this Court’s interpretation of the statute.” On the other hand, the incident that headlined Gartenberg’s complaint was considered to have sufficiently alleged a violation of Title VI to allow the case to proceed to discovery. As Judge Cronan summarized the complaint:

After first attempting to locate Cooper Union’s president, the mob descended on the building’s library, where a group of students wearing recognizably Jewish attire were sheltering behind locked doors. The demonstrators surrounded the library and proceeded to bang loudly on the library’s doors and on its floor-to-ceiling glass windows, shouting demands to be let in and continuing to direct anti-Israel slogans and wave a Palestinian flag at the Jewish students inside the library. During the roughly twenty-minute ordeal, Cooper Union’s administrators did nothing to disperse the protestors and instead directed law enforcement to stand down, even as the college’s president had just escaped the building through a back exit. None of the protestors subsequently faced any discipline.

There is a stark difference between that sequence of events and the kinds of expression that courts have consistently protected under the First Amendment.

Real discrimination deserves a real response. True threats, vandalism, and violence are not protected speech and schools should act when they occur. But they must do so with the precision the Constitution requires.

HHS claims Harvard may have been deliberately indifferent to patterns of harassment that violated Title VI. And it does identify potentially troubling incidents, as did Harvard’s own task force studying the issue of campus antisemitism. But because it has mixed and conflated incidents of protected expression with unprotected discriminatory acts, the federal government has made it impossible to separate any objective case that Harvard has violated Title VI as written and intended from an exercise in political speech-policing.

A bipartisan error

Given the level of partisan acrimony in American politics, and the Trump administration’s aggressiveness towards Harvard in particular, one might think that this is a right-wing or Republican problem. Unfortunately, though, this is one of the rare issues in which the Biden and Trump administrations are in substantial agreement.

In the middle of 2024, the Department of Education under President Biden began to issue findings in a number of Title VI complaints filed in the wake of campus activity after the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. As should surprise no one, the letters did highlight some pretty concerning problems at schools like the University of Michigan and (especially) CUNY’s Brooklyn College. But it made these diagnoses using the same cumulative theory of harassment that the Trump HHS is now applying to Harvard.

The findings it announced with regard to a third college, Lafayette College, illustrates just how absurd this approach can become. Despite Lafayette’s (apparently) responding to every complaint of antisemitism, including those that were vague or purely based on expression, the Department of Education still found it in violation of Title VI. Why? Because it failed to assess whether “social media and off-campus conduct individually or collectively created or contributed to a hostile environment.” Translation: Lafayette didn’t treat constitutionally protected speech as evidence of actionable harassment.

As I remarked at the time,

If anything, Lafayette was a bit heavy-handed: Most students would think twice about posting on Instagram after being called on the carpet by the college chaplain to “discuss” their political opinions… It’s hard to see what else Lafayette could have done to try to address the allegedly hostile environment on its campus without actually descending into censorship.

The resurrection of “group libel”

FIRE has long explained that the U.S. has no legal category called “hate speech.” That’s still true. But the cumulative theory of harassment is starting to look a lot like an attempt to revive the old concept of group libel, a legal relic rightly abandoned decades ago.

Group libel laws once aimed to ban statements that defamed not individuals, but entire groups. The idea: if you can’t spread lies about a person, why should you be allowed to malign a racial or ethnic group? As University at Buffalo law professor Samantha Barbas details, the press, civil liberties advocates, and even the NAACP frequently warned against these laws as Trojan horses for censorship. In 1935, when New Jersey passed an “anti-Nazi” group libel law, newspapers worried it could be used to ban criticism of Nazis. The ACLU rightly called it a sweeping threat to free speech, and described the law as “more sweeping in its threat to free speech than any measure ever passed in any state,” and in a pamphlet claimed that the law could even be used against Jews for criticizing Nazis.

The evil of Nazi Germany soon provided the best imaginable example for group libel law advocates, and during World War II, Congress proposed a bill that would have banned sending material through the mail that exposed people to “hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy” based on race or religion. While a number of labor unions supported the bill, the NAACP testified against it, concerned that it would impair constitutional rights and “lead to an aggravation of race and religious tensions.” Thankfully, the bill never got a floor vote, though some states maintained laws regulating group libel.

While prosecutions appear to have been few and far between, in the 1952 case Beauharnais v. Illinois, the Supreme Court narrowly affirmed the constitutionality of a group libel statute, upholding a 1917 Illinois statute that outlawed making public any material that “portrays depravity, criminality, unchastity, or lack of virtue of a class of citizens, of any race, color, creed or religion [and] exposes the citizens of any race, color, creed or religion to contempt, derision, or obloquy or which is productive of breach of the peace or riots.”

As is often the case, bad facts made for bad law. Joseph Beauharnais, president of the “White Circle League of America,” had distributed a pamphlet demanding the Chicago government “halt the further encroachment, harassment and invasion of white people, their property, neighborhoods and persons, by the Negro,” asserting that “If persuasion and the need to prevent the white race from becoming mongrelized by the negro will not unite us, then the aggressions . . . rapes, robberies, knives, guns and marijuana of the negro, surely will.” He was convicted and fined $200.

But if the Supreme Court’s upholding the Illinois law was group libel’s biggest moment in the sun, it was also its last. Justice Frankfurter couched his majority opinion with caveats, proving that even then, the Court seemed uncomfortable. And they had reason to be. Beauharnais didn’t age well. Legal scholars blasted it. Thurgood Marshall and the ACLU tried to get it overturned. The Supreme Court never cited it again. Even Illinois repealed the law nine years later. By 1969, Brandenburg v. Ohio effectively buried Beauharnais, by making clear that even advocating flatly illegal conduct is protected unless it incites imminent lawless action.

Conclusion

Real discrimination deserves a real response. True threats, vandalism, and violence are not protected speech and schools should act when they occur. But they must do so with the precision the Constitution requires — punishing conduct, not ideas, and respecting the robust political debate that higher education exists to nurture.

Harvard’s case should be a warning. Unless we properly respect the line between speech and misconduct, Title VI risks becoming not a shield against injustice, but a sword for enforcing the orthodoxy favored by whatever political forces wield it, now or in the future.

[1] And while, as a private university, Harvard could legally limit freedom of speech in ways the government may not, the government also may not launder demands for censorship through a private organization, campus or not. Furthermore, just like the vast majority of private universities, Harvard promises to provide a great deal of free political expression. While such promises are frequently ignored by those universities, they are nonetheless both legally and morally binding.

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August 20, 2025
Alumni urge Harvard not to “give in” amid settlement rumours

“This is a critical juncture – and it’s essential you live the values Harvard teaches and not make a deal with the Trump administration that cedes the university’s autonomy in unconstitutional or unlawful ways,” states the August 1 letter.

Signed by 15,068 alumni, faculty, researchers, staff and other supporters, the letter criticises settlements made by Columbia and Brown, which signatories warn “represent a dangerous capitulation that risks eroding the foundation of American higher education”.

“As Harvard rightly argued in court in its lawsuit, the unconstitutional demands being made by this administration represent a blatant encroachment on academic freedom and university autonomy,” it continues.

Last month, Columbia became the first institution to settle with Trump over allegations of antisemitism on campus, paying the administration $221m in return for settling various civil rights and employment claims and restoring $400m in terminated funding.

Soon after, Brown University followed suit, reaching its own deal with the administration over similar disputes about DEI admissions practices and access to student data.

Harvard, having the largest endowment of any global university, has been the only one to challenge the White House in the courts, though recent rumours have suggested a $500m deal between Harvard and the government could be in the making.

The letter’s message is clear: “Do not give in.”

It calls on university leadership to uphold Harvard’s independence and reject political interference and punitive action, ensuring that admissions hiring, employment and disciplinary processes do not treat student and staff differently based on their political views.

The signatories recommend the establishment of a structure for the university to directly engage with the Harvard community about policy changes impacting them, urging Harvard to use its financial resources to “protect and honour” their livelihoods and education.

“Protect students, faculty, researchers and staff, especially those with international status, from any intrusions of privacy, unwarranted immigration action, and attacks on their constitutionally protected rights and freedoms,” it continues.

At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale

Harvard alumni

The letter warns of the “chilling effect” that a settlement would have on the Harvard community and beyond.

Holding the line is critical for campuses across the US, for those that benefit from the research and scholarship of the university, and for the “foundational role that independent higher education plays in our democracy,” it argues.

“At this moment of national reckoning, Harvard must demonstrate that our values, integrity, and freedom are not for sale.”

Since mid-April, the Trump administration has launched multiple attacks on Harvard for allegedly failing to root out antisemitism on campus and failing to hand over international students’ records, among other accusations.

The university is fighting the government on multiple fronts in the courts, including defending its right to enrol international students, which the administration has repeatedly tried to revoke.

The university has publicly stood by its 7,000 international students, who make up over 27% of Harvard’s student body and come from nearly 150 different countries.

Amid broader attacks on higher education and severe visa challenges, colleges across the country are bracing for a major decline in international students this fall, with “conservative” estimates of a potential 30-40% decline.

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August 18, 2025
The Myth of Antisemitism at Harvard

As rumors swirl that Harvard University will soon capitulate to the Trump administration and pay a $500 million fine, it’s important to speak out against university officials who bow down to authoritarianism. I’ve argued for why Columbia and Brown were wrong to settle, how their agreements endanger academic freedom, and why these agreements leave universities more vulnerable to future attacks by the Trump regime.

But it is also important to reiterate the fact that the reasons cited by the Trump administration for why Harvard must pay this money are lies. The Trump administration’s assertion that Harvard has committed antisemitic discrimination against Jews is a series of falsehoods fabricated by an antisemitic president and his obedient bureaucrats who seek to punish their perceived political enemies on fraudulent grounds.

On June 30, 2025, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued the finding that “Harvard University is in violent violation of Title VI.” No one knows what a “violent” violation is, since this bizarre term has never been used before, but the result was inevitable. Since Harvard had already been punished for imagined antisemitism far more harshly than any college in American history, with billions of dollars in grants cut off without due process, the finding of guilt was an inevitable ex post facto determination.

Still, it’s important to examine this absurd finding of antisemitism at Harvard in depth, because it sets a standard that all colleges will be expected to obey, and because it requires the worst attacks on free speech ever ordered by the federal government.

Most of the government’s report comes not from any investigation of its own, but from Harvard’s own self-examination of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration’s Notice of Violation against Harvard is almost comical for its lack of evidence of any wrongdoing committed by Harvard.

The Trump administration concluded, “We find that these and other actions contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard,” citing a large number of cases of people engaged in peaceful expression, including several silent “study-in” protests at Harvard libraries. Incredibly, Harvard’s unjustifiable repression of silent, nondisruptive protests, which included banning dozens of students and faculty from the library, was used by the government as evidence that Harvard has done too little to protect Jewish students.

When carrying a piece of paper into a library is punished by Harvard, it’s a travesty. When Harvard punishes its students and faculty for carrying a piece of paper into a library and this is cited by the government as insufficiently repressive of free speech, it’s a disaster.

This also shows why Harvard may be willing to cut a deal with the government, despite the humiliation required to bow down before Trump: The repression demanded by the Trump regime is precisely what the Harvard administration has inflicted upon its students and faculty and wants to expand. Censorship is not an unfortunate side effect of any deal with Trump; it may be Harvard’s goal to use this agreement to provide an excuse for crushing dissent even more than it already has.

The other primary evidence against Harvard cited by the Trump administration was a 2024 Harvard survey of 2,295 students, faculty and staff that found 61 percent of Jewish respondents felt there were academic or professional repercussions for expressing their political beliefs, and 15 percent of Jewish respondents said they did not feel physically safe on campus. But the Notice of Violation completely omits the fact that the same survey found that a much higher proportion of Muslims feared professional repercussions (92 percent) and feared for their physical safety (47 percent).

The surveys indicate that Islamophobia at Harvard is a far worse problem than antisemitism. Yet Harvard hasn’t taken any significant actions against Islamophobia, and Harvard hasn’t adopted a new definition of Islamophobia to prohibit double standards in criticizing Muslim nations. And the Trump administration has done nothing despite the far greater fears expressed by Muslims at Harvard.

Is there antisemitism at Harvard? Sure, there’s antisemitism everywhere, just as there is racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and every other form of bigotry. But we don’t hold universities responsible for banning these ideas under threat of massive government retaliation. In fact, we demand exactly the opposite: Colleges must protect hateful ideas and refuse to censor them.

Far from being “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitism as the Notice of Violation claims, Harvard has bent over backward to suppress free speech, ban protests, denounce its own students and faculty, and punish people without due process, all in the name of censoring criticism of Israel. It’s difficult to name an American college that has done more to suppress free speech in the name of fighting “antisemitism” than Harvard, but no amount of repression will ever satisfy the Trump regime.

I don’t want people to think that Harvard as an institution is free from antisemitism. Harvard has indeed engaged in antisemitism and deserves condemnation for doing so. In April, Harvard administrators banned Jews from holding a Passover seder, by far the most clear-cut example of institutional antisemitism at Harvard. Banning Jews from conducting a religious ceremony on campus is clearly antisemitic. But in this case, Harvard’s antisemitism was directed at Jews critical of Israel, so naturally the Trump administration completely ignores it.

Even though it’s wrong for Harvard to try to suppress Jewish religious activities for political reasons, this isolated example of antisemitic repression would not justify a government investigation, let alone a finding of a “violent violation.” Private colleges should have wide discretion to make bad decisions, even those that violate their own standards of free expression and the religious rights of their students, without being subjected to government penalties.

Likewise, the anti-Palestinian bias evident in Harvard’s repression of pro-Palestinian protests on campus is also a clear double standard and violation of Title VI’s rules protecting students based on national origin. But moral criticism, not government control, is the best way to fix the problem.

I’ve argued that the repressive demands made against Harvard by the Trump regime are a blueprint for the obedience all colleges will be required to observe. The same is true of the fake “antisemitism” finding against Harvard, which provides a model for what future Title VI “investigations” will be. The government will make a list of every protest and controversial view expressed on a campus, quote a few right-wing students looking for a Columbia-style payday about how they are trembling in fear at hearing ideas they don’t like, and conclude that the university failed to do enough to protect the sensitive feelings of conservative students against the horrors of being criticized.

Although this charade of antidiscrimination law has begun with the Trump administration pretending to care about antisemitism, it won’t be long before men start complaining about the hostile environment caused by feminists, white guys express their fear of anyone uttering the word “diversity” and, of course, all the straight people and devout Christians who are oppressed by the gays. If this kind of ridiculous evidence of “harassment” is accepted against a university for allowing free speech, then it can be equally applied by the Trump administration to any college that permits students and faculty to criticize right-wing dogmas about race, gender or sexuality.

If Harvard submits to the Trump administration, it will be endangering its own finances, abandoning the values of academic freedom and betraying its students and faculty. But even worse, Harvard’s obedience will give the Trump administration license to pursue every college, for every implausible reason, until they submit.

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August 15, 2025
FIRE Reacts — Where does Harvard go from here? With Larry Summers

2025 has not been kind to Harvard.

To date, the Trump administration has
revoked nearly $3 billion in research funding to the
university, demanding violations of free speech, academic
freedom, and institutional autonomy in return for restoring the
funding. In response, Harvard
filed a lawsuit, raising First Amendment claims.

Helping us unpack all things Harvard are:

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:32 Harvard’s disputes with the Trump
administration

08:29 The need for internal reforms at Harvard

42:50 Institutional neutrality debate

46:16 IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

01:01:28 Latest update on potential Harvard-Trump
administration settlement

Enjoy listening to the podcast? Donate to FIRE today and
get exclusive content like member webinars, special episodes, and
more. If you became a FIRE Member
through a donation to FIRE at thefire.org and would like access to
Substack’s paid subscriber podcast feed, please email [email protected].

Show notes:

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August 12, 2025
DHS Offers to “Simplify” Harvard Lawsuit

The Trump administration has extended an offer to Harvard University to “simplify” an ongoing legal battle by pulling back on threats made in a May 22 letter from U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem to revoke the institution’s ability to host international students.

At the time, Noem wrote in a letter to Harvard officials that DHS was stripping its Student Exchange and Visitor Program certification due to an alleged “failure to adhere to the law.” Harvard responded with a lawsuit, and a judge quickly granted a temporary restraining order to block the federal government from stripping Harvard’s SEVP certification, which would have likely resulted in a loss of international students and dealt the university a severe financial blow. (Harvard also sued the Trump administration over frozen federal research funding in April.)

Harvard argued in its May lawsuit that the revocation was “a blatant violation of the First Amendment” and due process and a retaliatory move by the federal government after the university rejected demands to control its governance, curriculum and the “ideology” of faculty and students. The move, according to the lawsuit, could potentially “erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body” and would harm students who had already been admitted to the university.

Now, in a Wednesday court filing, government attorneys have agreed “that the May 22 letter will not be used to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification or Exchange Visitor Program designation.” They called the proposal “an attempt to jointly simplify the case.”

DHS officials wrote in the filing that they are “open to counterproposals and a meet and confer.” However, they wrote that Harvard “did not accept.”

Harvard declined to comment and DHS did not respond to an inquiry from Inside Higher Ed.

As Harvard and the federal government battle over international students in court, the Trump administration has found other ways to ratchet up pressure on the nation’s wealthiest university. Last month the U.S. Department of State announced it was opening an investigation into Harvard’s eligibility to participate in the Exchange Visitor program, which is overseen by the State Department and grants J-1 visas for visiting scholars, researchers and postdocs. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that the probe will ensure programs don’t “run contrary to our nation’s interests.”

There have been recent reports—and denials—that Harvard is nearing a settlement with the Trump administration, which, in addition to attempting to cut off its flow of international students, has leveled a litany of claims against the university, including vague allegations of unlawful action and accusations of antisemitism. The Trump administration has demanded sweeping changes at Harvard, which the university has largely rebuffed thus far.

Congressional Democrats have threatened to investigate if Harvard agrees to a settlement.

If Harvard settles, it would be the third Ivy League university to strike a deal with the federal government since mid-July. Columbia University was the first, agreeing to a seemingly unprecedented settlement, which closed investigations into allegations of antisemitism and restored some frozen research funding in exchange for changes to admissions, academic programs and other concessions that will be overseen by a third-party resolution monitor. Columbia agreed to pay $221 million as part of the settlement.

Brown University also reached an agreement in late July to settle investigations into alleged antisemitism and restore about $510 million in frozen federal research funds. Brown agreed to spend $50 million on state workforce development efforts, provide admissions data to the federal government and bar transgender athletes from competing, among other stipulations.

Outside the Ivy League, the University of California system announced earlier this week that it intends to negotiate with the federal government over $584 million in suspended federal funding amid Department of Justice investigations into alleged antisemitism. UC officials said the system is seeking a “voluntary resolution agreement” with the Trump administration to restore funding.

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August 8, 2025
HHS Accuses Harvard of Thwarting Investigations

The Trump administration has accused Harvard University officials of failing to comply with an ongoing civil rights investigation into alleged campus antisemitism, The Boston Globe reported.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber that it was referring the civil rights investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice, which it is permitted to do in cases where “compliance under Title VI cannot be obtained voluntarily.”

The letter, written by Paula Stannard, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, also referenced legal actions taken by Harvard, which has fought back against frozen federal research funding and other matters.

“Rather than voluntarily comply with its obligations under Title VI, Harvard has chosen scorched-earth litigation against the Federal government,” Stannard wrote. “The parties’ several months’ engagement has been fruitless.”

Harvard did not respond to a request for comment from Inside Higher Ed.

The letter comes as Harvard is reportedly considering a $500 million settlement with the Trump administration to close current investigations and unfreeze $2 billion in federal research funding. Harvard is reportedly mulling a settlement even though a judge appears to view its case favorably.

If Harvard settles, it will add to the list of wealthy and highly visible institutions that have yielded to the Trump administration’s demands in recent weeks. Columbia University agreed to far-reaching changes and a $221 million settlement to restore federal funding and close investigations into antisemitism on campus that stemmed from pro-Palestinian protests in 2024. Brown University also struck a deal with the Trump administration to restore $510 million in research funding, agreeing to various concessions but no payout to the federal government.

As a potential settlement with the Trump administration looms, some Harvard faculty members sent a letter to the president and board, urging Garber to push back on what they called “the Trump administration’s assault on the vibrancy and inclusiveness of U.S. higher education.”

Signed by multiple well-known scholars, the letter exhorted Garber not to “compromise core university and academic-freedom values that generations before us have worked to define and sustain,” and to resist ceding power to the federal government over hiring and admissions.

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August 1, 2025
How Public Attacks on Harvard Harm All of Higher Ed

The Trump administration has waged its war on higher education on the battlegrounds of social media, press releases and on-air interviews. Shrouded in vague terminology and questionable legal authority, the public attacks are a stark departure from the channels the federal government traditionally uses to issue guidance and policy changes.

In March, we learned from the Department of Health and Human Services press office that it, along with the Department of Education and the General Services Administration, had started a comprehensive review of $54.1 million in federal contracts and $5 billion in federal grant commitments for Columbia University over alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The next day, the president doubled down on social media, posting to the conservative site Truth Social, which he owns, that colleges and universities that allow “illegal protests” would be at risk of losing federal funding.

In May, during an ongoing public battle with Harvard University, Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced in a letter posted to the social media platform X that the federal government would no longer give grants to the institution. The document aired a litany of grievances against the institution including allegedly adopting a remedial math program and hiring “failed” former mayors Bill De Blasio and Lori Lightfoot; it also took aim at the Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow Penny Pritzker for being a “Democrat operative.”

The style and tone of communication goes beyond bombast and tells of a more coherent vision for the country, including higher education, according to Daniel Kreiss, the Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Professor in the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the faculty director and principal researcher of the UNC Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. Issuing public threats, using pliable labels and making examples of individual colleges are tactics to control an autonomous sector and provoke widespread confusion, he said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed.

Colleges have little recourse to fight the full force of the federal government—legally or through publicity, Kreiss said, but he urged institutions to invest more in their local communities and to recommit to their teaching missions. He also explained why Vice President JD Vance’s autobiography is a great teaching tool.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: The way the administration is communicating with higher ed is unlike anything the sector has seen before. Public letters and social media posts now deliver news of investigations, funding freezes or threats of future action. What does that reveal about how the government is thinking about its relationship with higher ed?

Daniel Kreiss

UNC at Chapel Hill

A: This is not the relationship, let’s say, between the U.S. government and research universities that prevailed from World War II on, when the government was collaborating with its research industries to make America stronger, militarily and economically. This is very much an adversarial relationship where the Trump administration is saying, “Universities and higher education broadly are making America weaker, and therefore we need to bring U.S. higher education to a heel in order to fit with our political vision for what America should be.” I think that some of the characteristics of the communication that you described is the strategy of policymaking through publicity, as well as the creation of a pervasive climate of uncertainty that is really directed by this core goal of theirs, which is control. In essence, what they want is for universities to fall in line behind the administration’s own vision and priorities for what the American agenda should be, which is one of a deeply reactionary, far-right coalition that is currently occupying all three branches of government.

Q: Do you think the administration has a vision for higher education in particular?

A: I think it’s a vision for America, and Trump has been remarkably clear on what that looks like. It’s an America defined pretty narrowly on racial, ethnic and religious terms. It’s an America that has a certain understanding of its history that aligns with those dominant religious, racial and ethnic groups. It’s an America that has doubled down on masculinity as its defining gender in terms of who should be in power and have power in public life. So when we talk about a vision for higher ed, it’s a higher ed that serves that.

This is what you see in these very vague pronouncements about things like DEI. Anyone who educates or does research on anything that runs counter to that celebration of a very particularistic America is suspect and un-American. Higher ed is part of a whole set of knowledge-producing institutions in society—we can think about journalists and scientists, too— as being problematic because they serve accountability functions. They hold corporations responsible for things like polluting. They hold executives responsible for violations of democratic norms. Or, you know, they hold people in power accountable for not being good custodians of public trust. I think the administration wants to weaken that accountability function that can be played by universities because it undermines, ultimately, their ability to exercise power in the service of that larger vision of what they believe America should be.

Q: You mentioned vague pronouncements about things like DEI. What conclusions do you draw from this tactic of sowing confusion and using unclear and undefined language?

A: Ultimately, the end goal is control. They have a few tools to do so—legal means, regulatory means—and they have a lot of funding means to get institutions that are otherwise autonomous in civil society to comply with what they want them to do. But in the absence of those levers, what do you use? Well, you use publicity to get willing compliance or anticipatory compliance.

This is really what’s key about the publicity piece, because every time they issue something on X or Truth Social or speak publicly about something, whether it’s a threat or making claims that a college is going to be investigated, they’re speaking to the sector as a whole. And publicity ensures that everyone in higher ed is going to have to be responsive to what they say, even if not publicly, but at least in internal decision-making.

If nobody really knows what DEI is, what discrimination actually entails, what threats are actually real and legal, who will be investigated and how, that creates conditions where every single university administrator has to act in some anticipatory way in order to mitigate a perceived threat, or to escape scrutiny. That ultimately increases this control over universities because they’re acting in ways that might comply in some way and likely are going far beyond what the law will actually allow. We can understand this by looking at other countries, like Hungary, for example. Viktor Orbán has created enough of a climate of both outright control and uncertainty over funding that people comply with what he wants them to do. He’s weaponized this to his advantage

The Supreme Court’s recent decisions have also played a role in this—in making it harder for [federal] judges to issue these broad injunctions. In essence, what they’re saying is that people are going to be anticipatory, interpreting whatever this public statement is in some way, and in the absence of any other guidance of what might be subject to judicial scrutiny or might be, let’s say, judicially suspect in itself, administrators are going to be making these decisions based on their own risk assessments.

Q: Speaking of the courts, we’ve seen a flurry of lawsuits challenging the administration, so some final decisions will be made on these issues at some point. Will that clarity roll back some of the pre-emptive compliance you’re describing?

A: Well the rub is the judicial process takes years. And administrators have to act now. And it’s in exactly that disconnect between that far-off time horizon of, “Oh, I’m sure our lawyers are telling us that this will likely get struck down” and in the meantime, you have to act on the basis of yearly budgets or what is in compliance with guidelines coming from the NIH or the NSF. All of those decisions have to be made in the moment, in a climate of uncertainty.

So in that context, no, the legal resolution is so far off, and the strategy of how to get there is so deeply unclear, that I don’t think higher ed’s in a great place to pursue judicial remedies for these things.

Q: We’ve got a number of examples of how institutions have responded to the administration—Harvard pushing back, Columbia and Penn conceding to demands, Jim Ryan resigning from the UVA presidency. Are universities at all prepared for how to handle this moment?

A: There’s a lot going on there, right? The best public case that we have for resistance is Harvard, but even while Harvard is negotiating, the Trump administration is continuing to put a lot of public pressure on it, which gets back to that earlier point that they’re speaking far beyond Harvard, saying, “If you do this, you will come under the full weight of federal government scrutiny, and we’re willing to have this battle.”

Universities are in a hard spot for a few reasons. One, collective action is really hard. Higher ed as a sector is deeply diversified, so the question is: Who’s in the best position to actually do that sort of fighting? The second is that every institution, no matter how large, is really complex. It’s hard to make a proactive case for anything, for just all of faculty, for example, let alone an entire university.

That said, there are a few effective models that we can begin to pick out. Harvard’s choice to double down on making an easily understandable argument for the value of higher education is our best public communication strategy—really doubling down on how universities are an economic engine for communities, states and America itself. When we’re talking about advancing science and technology, early research into artificial intelligence, the development of the internet—that all comes from university-led research that was funded, in part, through federal subsidies and research dollars. That has made America the leading country in technology innovation. This is where we get into a big tent with people from the Republican coalition who are pro-business and pro-corporations that are built on the infrastructure that universities help put together. We train the employees that go work for Fortune 500 companies that position America’s global dominance in its corporate workforce. It’s not saying we do everything, but we do a lot of really great public value work. And somebody needs to make that argument, because if no one is doing it, why would the American public come to these answers themselves?

Q: On the point about federally funded research at universities advancing technology innovation and the economy—is that argument lost on this administration?

A: My educated guess of why universities are this particular target in this particular way is that this is political. It’s not about America’s economic growth or America’s technological advantage at the end of the day. This is foremost a political strategy of mobilizing a set of grievances and victimhoods that help to build and maintain a coalition. It’s this idea that Trump’s electoral coalition is being continually victimized by being less safe. That America is losing its culture, its language, its identity, etc., through immigration. This has been the dominant drumbeat since Trump announced his candidacy for president in advance of 2016.

The other piece to this is the divide in the two parties between who has a college education and who doesn’t. This is a really important point that fuels the Republican Party’s coalition, and which is why attacks on higher ed, if we read them through the lens of publicity, are about identity work. [It’s] saying, “We are representing you people who never went to college against all these higher ed elites who don’t respect you, constantly denigrate America and who want us to be some cosmopolitan global force that’s going to undermine what makes America great.” That’s why, to me, it’s fundamentally political.

Q: Can you say more about the education divide among voters? How can colleges address that?

A: The New York Times did some great reporting maybe two years ago that gave universities social mobility scores. It was looking at which universities were the best vehicles of the American dream. One broad conclusion from that reporting was that a lot of universities are failing at this. Now, there’s all sorts of complicated reasons for that—income inequality generally, the finances of higher ed, etc.—but I think one thing that universities can very much do across the board is reinvest in opportunities for those who have the least amount of money or access to a college education.

I’m somebody who spent some time at very elite institutions, and, you know, they don’t always have great relationships with the communities that exist right next to them. If we’re thinking about what a model would look like to win people back to see these great advancements and their ultimate value for the American people, it would involve just trying to extend it locally. How do we create more affordable housing in towns where universities are located? How can we help people in communities where there’s vast income inequalities between the university and its surrounding environments? How do we get our deep wells of expertise and knowledge out into the communities closest to us in a way that clearly demonstrates through action, not just words or abstract statistics, our real value in people’s lives?

The last thing is that we need to reinvest in our teaching missions. Most professors I know care deeply about their students, but their time and attention is split in many different ways. We really need to restore commitment to that educational mission that we all have, at least for the very simple reason that students are the bridges to the communities that they represent. They’re our best messengers for what the value of this amazing institution of American higher education is. I have kids from all over the state, from all different walks of life—this idea is that what the university does is serve those students as well as their communities. The knowledge that students are bringing from those communities and the traditions that they are a part of flows into universities as much as knowledge is flowing out.

Q: In the swirl of staffing cuts and hiring freezes in response to federal funding cuts, are you concerned about what it means for science communication, fact-checking and efforts to combat misinformation?

A: At its best, science communication is scientists and social scientists making assessments based on the best available evidence that we have about a particular phenomenon in the world and society. We need people to play that function, because that’s the best evidence we have to make political decisions. We can have a range of possible political solutions to things as long as we’re safeguarding institutions that produce a set of public facts that we’re all sharing.

But as you know, science is complicated. There are always going to be debates. And that’s good. But when social scientists or scientists have a general consensus about something, it is the outcome of a very antagonistic process. Maybe that speaks to something that we used to have a lot more conversations around—explaining the scientific process and how hard it is to produce a fact, and how many millions of dollars go into producing research that can produce something as reliable as a fact.

We’re seeing this erosion of institutions that can serve the goals of public accountability, and it is deeply problematic for the field. So there’s going to be fewer people entering the field, because there’s less funding and fewer opportunities for them to do this work. The other thing is a lot of people make the choice not to go into doing disinformation-related research, in part, because it’s hard. We’ve seen doxing, death threats against researchers. It’s also the rhetoric, like when the vice president is calling somebody an “enemy of the people.” I taught JD Vance’s book to my undergraduates in 2017, and we had a great series of conversations about that book. I could have all sorts of differences with him, but I would never say JD Vance is an enemy of the people. It’s that deliberately inflammatory rhetoric that is exactly what a lot of researchers like myself are concerned about.

Q: Do you still teach Hillbilly Elegy to your undergrads?

A: That was a special one-off course, but I 100 percent would teach it again. It’s a great teaching tool and book, and I think it lays out a very particular and searing account of somebody’s upbringing while then prescribing a set of political responses that are thoughtful and can and should be debated in a classroom. It resonated with a lot of my students.

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July 15, 2025
‘Strong evidence’ Harvard doesn’t meet accreditation standards, feds say
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Dive Brief:
- Two federal agencies on Wednesday notified Harvard University’s accreditor of “strong evidence to suggest” the Ivy League institution no longer meets its accreditation standards.
- In a letter to the New England Commission of Higher Education, the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services cited recent HHS findings alleging that Harvard is in “violent violation” of federal antidiscrimination law and has been “deliberately indifferent” to the harassment of Jewish and Israeli students on its campus.
- The announcement comes the week after Columbia University got word from its accreditor that its approval “may be in jeopardy” following similar findings by HHS against the New York institution.
Dive Insight:

A wide-ranging April executive order from President Donald Trump directed U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “promptly” provide accreditation agencies with any findings of noncompliance with Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs.

On Wednesday, McMahon did so for Harvard’s accreditor, NECHE.

“By allowing antisemitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers,” she said in a statement.

The Education Department expects NECHE to “enforce its policies and practices” and keep the agency “fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards,” McMahon added.

Without accreditation, Harvard would lose eligibility to accept federal financial aid — a crucial revenue source for all colleges, even the wealthiest ones.

After HHS accused the university of violating Title VI last week, NECHE released a FAQ addressing its next steps.

The commission made clear that the federal government cannot direct it to revoke a college’s accreditation. Likewise, a college does not automatically lose its accreditation if it is put under investigation, the FAQ said.

NECHE gives institutions “up to four years to come into compliance when found by the Commission to be out of compliance, which can be extended for good cause,” it said, adding that institutions remain accredited during that time.

Under NECHE policies, the commission will conduct an independent review of the allegations against Harvard.

Meanwhile, HHS’ findings heavily cited an April report from Harvard on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on its campus. The internal report found that Jewish, Israeli and Zionist students and employees at the university felt shunned or harassed at times during the 2023-24 academic year.

Since the report published in April, the Trump administration has repeatedly used it in attempts to cut off Harvard from enrolling international students and terminate more of its federal funding.

Harvard also released a second report in tandem that addressed anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, finding that Harvard students and employees in these demographics also said they experienced harassment and discrimination during the same time frame.

However, the Trump administration has not highlighted the findings from the second report in its news releases about Harvard’s alleged failure to protect students from harassment. And the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has thus far stayed silent on issues of Islamophobia under Title VI.
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July 9, 2025
Harvard “Indifference” to Jewish Students Violates Law

The Health and Human Services Department announced Monday that Harvard University’s “deliberate indifference” regarding discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students violates federal law.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights said Harvard is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism.

The finding, similar to one HHS announced against Columbia University in May, adds to the Trump administration’s pressure on both Ivy League institutions to comply with its demands. It has already cut off billions in federal funding.

HHS’s Notice of Violation says that a report from Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, combined with other sources, “present a grim reality of on-campus discrimination that is pervasive, persistent, and effectively unpunished.”

“Reports of Jewish and Israeli students being spit on in the face for wearing a yarmulke, stalked on campus, and jeered by peers with calls of ‘Heil Hitler’ while waiting for campus transportation went unheeded by Harvard administration,” the Notice of Violation says.

In a statement, Harvard said it is “far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings.”

“In responding to the government’s investigation, Harvard not only shared its comprehensive and retrospective Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Report but also outlined the ways that it has strengthened policies, disciplined those who violate them, encouraged civil discourse, and promoted open, respectful dialogue,” the statement said.

In April, the federal government ordered Harvard to audit academic “programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture” and report faculty “who discriminated against Jewish or Israeli students or incited students to violate Harvard’s rules” after the Oct. 7, 2023, start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The government also ordered Harvard to, among other things, stop admitting international students “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”

“HHS stands ready to reengage in productive discussions with Harvard to reach resolution on the corrective action that Harvard can take,” HHS Office for Civil Rights director Paula M. Stannard said in a news release.

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June 30, 2025