This battle between Harvard and the Trump administration has been going on for a year now. There have been many moment when it seemed like Harvard might agree to some deal and then just as many when they refused whatever the administration was offering and kept fighting.
A significant moment in that battle happened last June when the DOJ concluded that Harvard had violated the Civil Rights of Jewish students:
In a letter sent to Harvard President Alan Garber on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, attorneys for the administration said the investigation found that Harvard knew Jewish and Israeli students felt threatened on its campus and acted with deliberate indifference…
A formal “notice of violation” of civil-rights law generally is a step that can come before either a lawsuit from the Justice Department or a voluntary resolution with the school. Under past presidential administrations, civil-rights investigations at universities usually ended with voluntary resolution agreements.
Today, the DOJ sued, claiming the school turned a “blind eye” to antisemitism on campus.
In its lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Boston, the Trump administration said that Harvard had “turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis.” The administration said Harvard had strictly enforced policies against other forms of bias, but had allowed anti-Israel protesters to violate rules “with impunity” after the war in Gaza in 2023.
“Instead of arresting the students or even timely stopping the occupation in violation of university policy, Harvard fed them,” according to the lawsuit, adding that faculty members ”brought them burritos for dinner” and “gave them candy.”
The administration said Harvard had failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from severe harassment, including physical assault, stalking and exclusion from campus facilities like libraries and classrooms…
The lawsuit asks a court to declare that Harvard is “in material breach” of its responsibilities under Title VI and, therefore, the government does not have to pay Harvard any existing grants. The suit further asks the court to force Harvard to pay back grants it has already received. And it asks for an independent monitor, approved by the government, to oversee the school’s compliance.
The lawsuit is 44 pages long and includes pages of allegations about how Harvard essentially let protesters run rampant on campus, even when the protesters were clearly violating school rules.
On or about October 30, 2023, anti-Israeli disruptors began occupying Caspersen Student Center for the remainder of the semester, where they stopped, targeted, and accosted Jewish students, forcing Jewish students to stop using the law school’s primary student lounge. The occupation violated university policy, and Jewish students reported these disruptions to Harvard.
On or about November 16, 2023, anti-Israeli student protestors occupied University Hall, in violation of Harvard policies, demanding that Harvard “create a committee to investigate Islamophobia.” The students knew that their occupation was illegal; one of the students gave a speech indicating that they “came here to get fucking arrested.” Instead of arresting the students or even timely stopping the occupation in violation of university policy, Harvard fed them. Faculty Dean of Adams House Salmaan Keshavjee “brought them burritos for dinner,” and Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana gave them candy…
In January 2024, anti-Israeli student groups “began holding protests on the steps of Widener Library without formal permission.” Harvard’s Task Force Report concluded that although these demonstrations “seemingly violated Harvard policies” and “disturbed many Jewish students,” Harvard’s “administration and police seemed reluctant to intervene once a demonstration was underway.”25 That position is clearly unreasonable and even more unreasonable given that Harvard also chose not to punish disruptors after the fact for violating the University’s content-neutral time, place, and manner rules when such violations sprang from antisemitic sentiment. Instead, Harvard’s interim-president issued a campus-wide email purporting to “clarify” policies that had been in place since 2002 that already clearly proscribed the occupation of campus buildings…
This onslaught of illicit campus library occupations by antisemitic, anti-Israeli demonstrators continued well over a year after the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack, despite clear Harvard policy proscribing such conduct, because Harvard deliberately took no meaningful action against the occupiers.
This flood of campus facility takeovers created a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students by replacing the typical calm and quiet atmosphere of the library with large groups of people hostile to, and intimidating toward, Jewish and Israeli students who wanted to access the library.
That’s really just a small sample of the complaint. It goes on like this for pages. So far Harvard hasn’t responded at least not in public. We’ll have to wait and see what tack they take next.
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