BUZZ
Cited incidents were ‘too isolated,’ judge rules
A federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard University on Thursday, ruling that the cited incidents were “too isolated and episodic” to prove ongoing civil rights violations.
“Without diminishing any concern arising from these occurrences, the court finds them, singly and collectively, to be too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day,” U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns stated in the ruling.
The Trump administration is not satisfied with the ruling, according to The Hill.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the department “is actively investigating antisemitism nationwide.”
“The Civil Rights Division has an extensive and active portfolio of antisemitism enforcement, including indictments, prosecutions, settlements, and investigations across the country,” she said.
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in March, alleging that Harvard has failed to protect Jewish students on campus.
The school “has tolerated antisemitic mobs of students, faculty, and visitors allegedly expressing their opposition to Israel by assaulting, harassing, and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students,” a news release from the department states.
“Harvard has been deliberately indifferent to its Jewish and Israeli students’ plight and failed to prevent such conduct by selectively enforcing its campus rules to permit it to continue,” the release states.
The department also claimed the school ignored its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, disregarding “exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities.”
This isn’t the first antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard.
In 2024, six Jewish students accused the school of “selectively” enforcing its anti-discrimination policies, The College Fix previously reported.
Other universities have also been targeted for alleged antisemitism on campus.
This month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against George Washington University. Alumni had alleged “shameful complicity” in campus antisemitism, but the judge determined there was a procedural issue with the lawsuit.
He told the plaintiffs that they may refile an amended complaint within 30 days.
In another case, the University of California Berkeley reached a settlement with a Jewish advocacy group earlier this year.
The school will now require student organizations to remove bylaws that prohibit “Zionist” speakers, or those that support the idea of a Jewish political state, such as Israel.
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