Massachusetts education officials are hailing the decision of a federal judge in Boston who dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit that accused Harvard University of turning a blind eye to harassment of Jewish students.
Thursday’s decision from U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns said President Donald Trump’s administration failed to prove an ongoing violation of federal civil rights laws. The judge said the lawsuit, filed in March, mostly focuses on incidents that took place in the 2023-24 academic year, with a few from March 2025.
The cases were “too isolated and episodic” to prove a persistent civil rights violation at the Ivy League campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the judge said.
Harvard and the White House did not immediately provide comment on the decision.
Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, said the ruling “joins a growing list of judicial decisions rejecting the Trump administration’s claims against Harvard.”
“It affirms two things that many of us have long argued: First, that Harvard is not a home to systematic antisemitism and, second, that the moves of the Trump administration are pretextual authoritarian attacks meant not to protect anyone but rather to end academic freedom and the independence of American universities,” he said in a statement.
The lawsuit accused Harvard of failing to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestinian demonstrations that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. The Trump administration argued Harvard officials did nothing as Jewish students were “harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon.”
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of American Colleges and Universities, said antisemitism must be confronted wherever it occurs on our campuses. However, she added that “the essential work of combating antisemitism must not be conflated with efforts to use federal civil rights law as a tool for political coercion or governmental control over colleges and universities.”
“Judge Stearns’s ruling underscores a fundamental principle: allegations of discrimination must be taken seriously, investigated rigorously, and adjudicated on the basis of evidence and law,” she said in a statement.
Kirsten Weld, a professor of history at Harvard, agreed that the case was “yet another instance of the Trump administration cynically weaponizing accusations of antisemitism to try and impose its ideological agenda on our university — and yet another demonstration of why universities and other institutions must not comply in advance with its unconstitutional demands.”
In a statement after the lawsuit was filed, Harvard said it “cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus.”
“Harvard has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies,” the statement read.
The government’s case sought to recover billions of dollars in federal research grants awarded to Harvard since October 2023. Trump officials argued they had a right to recoup the money under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal law barring discrimination based on race or national origin.
The lawsuit is among several actions the government has taken against Harvard since the Ivy League university refused a list of demands made by the White House after Trump, a Republican, returned to office last year. Trump officials have separately sought to cut Harvard’s research funding and limit its ability to enroll foreign students and U.S. military members.
In a separate legal case last year, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reverse more than $2.6 billion in federal funding cuts to Harvard. That decision found that the White House put unconstitutional conditions on federal funding, using antisemitism as a “smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault” on universities.
