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The Justice Department is planning its next move after a federal judge in Boston dismissed its case accusing Harvard University of repeatedly turning a “blind eye” to antisemitism on campus.
“We disagree with the ruling and are assessing next steps,” Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement. “The Civil Rights Division has an extensive and active portfolio of antisemitism enforcement, including indictments, prosecutions, settlements, and investigations across the country.”
Judge Richard Stearns, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the Ivy League on Thursday, determining that the incidents of antisemitism were too isolated to establish a pattern showing that the school remained in violation of federal civil rights law after the federal government issued its complaint.
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“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,” Stearns wrote.
The Justice Department filed its lawsuit against Harvard on March 20, 2026, following a wave of anti-Israel protests that erupted on college campuses nationwide after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
At Harvard, protests during the 2023-24 school year included repeated occupations of libraries and other campus buildings and a weeks-long encampment in Harvard Yard. Jewish students reported being harassed, intimidated and excluded from campus spaces. The Justice Department alleged that Harvard violated Title VI by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment despite complaints to university leaders about the conduct.
But Stearns said the Justice Department referred to only three antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus during the following school year that the school had allegedly failed to address.
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Those incidents included protesters allegedly breaching barricades outside an event featuring former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a Harvard employee allegedly removing posters of Israeli hostages, and more than 60 masked protesters staging a “die-in” outside Widener Library, where they chanted, “we will honor all our martyrs.”
Stearns did not rule on whether Harvard had violated Title VI during the height of the campus unrest. Instead, his decision focused on whether the Justice Department had sufficiently alleged that violations continued after the government formally put Harvard on notice.
The Trump administration sent Harvard a warning letter on June 30, 2025, saying the school had violated Title VI over its response to antisemitism on campus.
Under the statute, the government is required to notify a recipient of a violation and try to resolve it voluntarily before taking enforcement action.
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In his dismissal, Stearns said the Trump administration’s amended June 2026 complaint did not identify any incidents in which Harvard failed to address antisemitism after the government sent its warning letter.
“The Government provided the requisite notice underlying this action on June 30, 2025,” Stearns wrote. “As noted above, the Amended Complaint is devoid of any factual allegations plausibly establishing that any events that might be construed as evidence of noncompliance occurred after June 30, 2025.”
Stearns also rejected the Trump administration’s allegation that Harvard University’s failure to cooperate with every demand in the federal government’s proposed voluntary agreement showed that the school was not in compliance with Title VI.
“Harvard’s refusal to follow every specific demand from the administration wasn’t enough, because the legal question was whether Harvard was complying with Title VI— not whether Harvard was doing exactly what the administration told it to do,” Stearns wrote.
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The dismissal comes as the Trump administration pursues two lawsuits against the University of California over alleged discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students, faculty and staff at UCLA.
Fox News Digital reached out to Harvard University for comment.
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