Judge’s Harvard antisemitism ruling sends Trump Justice Department back to drawing board

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 school Thursday, determining 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.

DOJ SUES UCLA OVER ALLEGED ‘JUDENREIN’ CONDITIONS DURING ANTI-ISRAEL ENCAMPMENT "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 March 20, 2026, after 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 weekslong 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.

UCLA STUDENT COUNCIL CONDEMNS CAMPUS EVENT WITH FORMER ISRAELI HOSTAGE 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.