The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Friday against Harvard University, alleging the school violated federal law by discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students, reported MS NOW.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, is part of President Donald Trump’s broader push to strip the university of federal funding unless it agrees to a list of reforms. Harvard has argued that the administration’s efforts exceed the federal government’s legal authority and violate the university’s constitutional rights.
According to the complaint, Harvard’s leadership turned “a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis" following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The lawsuit states that Jewish students “wore baseball caps to conceal their yarmulkes" and were “denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators."
The legal action follows a pattern used by the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department under the Trump administration. Officials have accused Ivy League institutions of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal research grants and funding.
In the filing, the government stated that the United States “brings this action to compel Harvard to comply with Title VI, and to recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution."
Harvard rejected the allegations in a statement released Friday and quoted by MS NOW.
The university claimed it “cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community" and “has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies on campus."
“We will continue to prioritize this important work and will defend the university against this lawsuit, which represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government," the statement said.
The Trump administration has taken several steps against Harvard in the wake of its failure to handle growing antisemitism on campus, including a freeze of more than $2 billion in federal research funding.
Trump later announced that Harvard University had agreed to pay $500 million and operate trade schools as part of a deal with the administration, but that deal did not come to fruition.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump and his administration have increased pressure on higher education institutions across the country. The Department of Education has opened antisemitism investigations into at least 60 universities and warned of “potential enforcement actions if institutions do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act."
Several universities have already reached agreements with the administration following similar investigations, including Northwestern University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Brown University, and the Universities of Virginia and Pennsylvania, which accepted multiyear settlements.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)