A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit from President Donald Trump’s administration that accused Harvard University of antisemitism, NPR reported Friday.
The elite school had refused to comply with demands to stop discrimination, per a Breitbart News report from May of 2025.
The NPR article continued:
The decision from U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns said that President Donald Trump’s administration failed to prove an ongoing violation of federal civil rights laws. The judge said the lawsuit, filed in March, mostly focuses on incidents that took place in the 2023-24 academic year, with a few from March 2025.
The cases were “too isolated and episodic” to prove a persistent civil rights violation at the Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the judge said.
Trump’s lawsuit accused the university of failing to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests following the terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. However, the NPR article said Harvard President Alan M. Garber claimed the school took measures that included forming a task force to combat antisemitism.
The Department of Education (ED) has been investigating Harvard over allegations of discrimination and antisemitism.
Stearns was appointed by former President Bill Clinton (D) and serves in Boston, Massachusetts, according to the Hill.
In a statement regarding the lawsuit’s dismissal, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the administration disagreed with Stearns’ decision and was working to determine how to move forward.
“The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division 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 noted.
According to Breitbart News, Harvard previously refused to “comply with demands for reforms to halt antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and it is one of several universities being watched by a federal antisemitism task force.”
In addition, “A Trump administration inquiry has concluded that Harvard University knowingly violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students, acting with ‘deliberate indifference’ when it learned about what was happening,” the outlet reported in June of 2025.
During an interview in May, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said, “Harvard has continued to fail miserably” on antisemitism. “It’s almost like it’s their strategy. So, we’ll have to dig down and figure out what’s gone on there and where the money is coming from from out of the country.”
