A United States federal court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s administration against Harvard University over allegations that the institution failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from antisemitic harassment during pro-Palestinian demonstrations on its campus.
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Judge Richard G. Stearns of the US District Court in Boston dismissed the suit on Thursday, August 13, 2026, after granting Harvard’s request to throw out the action.
The judge held that the government failed to establish a plausible case that Harvard remained in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, colour or national origin in programmes receiving federal financial assistance.
The Department of Justice filed the suit in March, accusing Harvard’s faculty and leadership of turning a blind eye to alleged antisemitism and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students.
“Harvard let anti-Israeli demonstrators occupy its libraries. Harvard allowed an anti-Israeli encampment to persist for twenty days in violation of university policy,” the department alleged.
The government’s complaint relied largely on incidents recorded during protests over the war in Gaza in the 2023–2024 academic year, alongside three later incidents alleged to have occurred in March 2025.
However, Judge Stearns ruled that the incidents cited by the government were “too isolated and episodic” to support an inference that institutional noncompliance with federal civil rights law persisted at Harvard.
“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 institutionalised noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day,” the judge held.
The court also found that the amended complaint failed to establish that Harvard remained in breach of Title VI after the Federal Government formally notified the university of its alleged noncompliance on June 30, 2025.
Judge Stearns explained that enforcement proceedings under Title VI were intended to secure future compliance rather than punish institutions for alleged past violations.
The Trump administration had asked the court to cut off future federal funding to Harvard and recover nearly $1 billion in grants previously awarded to the institution.
The judge’s decision represents a significant setback for the administration’s wider campaign against prominent American universities accused of tolerating antisemitism and permitting liberal bias on their campuses.
Trump has repeatedly accused Harvard and other universities of giving pro-Palestinian groups unrestricted freedom to operate amid Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
His administration had separately frozen billions of dollars in federal funding to Harvard over similar allegations. In September 2025, another federal judge ruled that the funding freeze was largely unlawful and ordered the restoration of the affected grants.
The Trump administration has appealed that decision.
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