The Trump administration is aiming to claw back billions in federal funds awarded to Harvard University over the years.
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The Trump administration is once again suing Harvard University, accusing the university of violating federal civil rights.
In February, the Justice Department sued Harvard, accusing the university of failing to comply with an investigation into its admissions practices. Now, the administration is escalating its nearly year-long battle with the university.
In this latest lawsuit, the Justice Department says Harvard failed to respond adequately to reports of antisemitic harassment and discrimination and aims to recover billions in federal funds awarded to the institution over the years. The federal government previously froze more than $2 billion in federal grants at Harvard, but a federal judge ruled the freeze illegal and restored the funding.
The lawsuit comes after the Department of Health and Human Services found last summer that Harvard had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on shared ancestry, including antisemitism. Since then, HHS has been working to bring Harvard into voluntary compliance with Title VI, according to the lawsuit. But the government’s complaint doesn’t say why exactly it decided to bring the suit now.
President Trump demanded in early February that Harvard pay $1 billion in damages.
Harvard has acknowledged the need to improve how it responds to antisemitism and announced a slate of reforms last April. But Paula Stannard, director of the HHS civil rights office, said in a news release Friday that Harvard’s “proposed reforms did not meet Title VI requirements.”
“OCR required concrete action, not assurances,” she added.
The lawsuit alleges that Harvard “remained deliberately indifferent” to the hostility that Jewish and Israeli students reported.
“Harvard also intentionally refused to enforce its campus rules—rules it enforced against others—when the victims were Jews or Israelis,” the lawsuit states. “This sent the clear message to Harvard’s Jewish and Israeli community that the indifference was not an accident; they were being intentionally excluded and effectively denied equal access to educational opportunities.”
DOJ is asking a federal judge to declare that Harvard discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students and require the university to enforce time, place and manner restrictions on campus protests; to discipline those who violate those policies; and to seek help from law enforcement to arrest “protestors who unlawfully impede movement through campus and occupy Harvard buildings and outdoor spaces following orders to disperse.”
A Harvard spokesperson told The New York Times that university’s Title VI reforms “demonstrate the very opposite of deliberate indifference.”
The spokesperson added that the lawsuit “represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.”
