The United States Department of Justice has widened the scope of its civil rights litigation against Harvard University, introducing fresh accusations that Jewish and Israeli scholars were subjected to systemic bias, hostility, and disparate conditions on campus, JNS reported.
The government's modified 59-page petition, submitted to the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts on Monday, came approximately four weeks after the Ivy League institution lodged a formal request to throw out the federal case. This updated legal document chronicles numerous hostile events that were absent from the original lawsuit inaugurated on March 20.
A primary addition to the grievance involves Marshall Ganz, a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School. The filing claims Ganz prohibited Israeli attendees from showcasing a group presentation centered on “liberal Jewish democracy" during a 2023 academic seminar.
“The Israeli students were forbidden by Professor Ganz to present their project of choice and were told that associating the word ‘Jewish’ with ‘democracy’ was offensive," according to the complaint.
Furthermore, the educator allegedly asserted that the proposed topic would render the educational environment “unsafe for their Muslim and Arab peers."
The federal document highlights an autonomous internal probe conducted by the university itself, which concluded that Ganz had actively discriminated against the participants due to their “Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnicity" while providing advantageous conditions to Arab and Muslim scholars whom he “deemed as ‘oppressed’ by Israel."
Additionally, the revised federal filing charges that anti-Israel agitators trapped Jewish undergraduates inside an academic study lounge during an October 19, 2023, university demonstration. It also notes an incident from March 2025 where a university staff member “tore down posters depicting the faces of Israeli hostages that were on display on Harvard Chabad kiosks in Harvard Yard".
Other newly incorporated grievances include the vandalization of captive-awareness flyers with antisemitic conspiracy graffiti stating “Israel did 9/11," alongside the October 2024 discovery of swastika decals affixed in close proximity to the Harvard Hillel building.
According to federal prosecutors, these newly introduced events solidify the assertion that Harvard has exhibited a chronic history of bigotry and conscious apathy toward its Jewish and Israeli student population, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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.