President
Trump
talks
more
about
Harvard
than
people
who
actually
went
there
—
which
is
to
say
a
lot.
After
several
universities
made
like
Paul
Weiss
and
rolled
over
and
showed
the
Trump
administration
their
belly,
the
president
figured
that
Harvard
would
fold
eventually.
Columbia
paid
a
$200
million
settlement
to
restore
its
funding.
Brown
paid
$50
million
to
Rhode
Island
workforce
programs.
Cornell
agreed
to
$30
million
over
three
years.
Surely
those
dorks
in
Cambridge
would
cough
up
soon!
But
a
“settlement”
remained
elusive,
and
so
Trump
ramped
up
the
pressure.
He
tried
to
cancel
$2
billion
in
federal
grant
funding,
alleging
the
school
violated
Title
VI
by
discriminating
against
Jewish
students.
Judge
Allison
Burroughs
blocked
it
in
September
and
made
it
permanent
in
October.
He
tried
to
kick
Harvard
out
of
the
Student
and
Exchange
Visitor
Program,
effectively
banning
international
students.
Judge
Burroughs
blocked
that
too.
So
today,
the
Justice
Department
filed
a
brand
new
Title
VI
lawsuit
alleging
that
Harvard
“defied
federal
law
and
violated
Title
VI
repeatedly
by
discriminating
against
Jewish
and
Israeli
students
without
remorse.”
Third
time’s
the
charm?
The
44-page
complaint,
filed
in
the
District
of
Massachusetts,
alleges
that
Harvard
maintained
a
campus
so
hostile
to
Jewish
and
Israeli
students
after
Hamas’s
October
7
attack
on
Israel
that
it
violated
Title
VI
of
the
Civil
Rights
Act
of
1964.
Most
of
what
it
documents
are
protests
against
Israel’s
war
in
Gaza,
which
are
protected
by
the
First
Amendment.
But
clearly
Jewish
members
of
the
community
did
feel
marginalized
and
endangered.
The
complaint
points
to
students
concealing
yarmulkes
under
baseball
caps,
a
mezuzah
stolen
from
a
dorm
room,
“Heil
Hitler”
screamed
at
students
waiting
for
campus
transportation,
and
calls
to
“gas
all
the
Jews”
getting
upvotes
on
the
Harvard-only
Sidechat
platform.
Virtually
every
one
of
these
allegations
is
sourced
to
a
report
produced
in
April
of
2025
by
Harvard’s
own
Presidential
Task
Force
on
Combating
Antisemitism
and
Anti-Israeli
Bias.
In
fact,
the
school
spent
months
documenting
the
problem
in
excruciating
detail
and
settled
two
private
Title
VI
lawsuits
—
Kestenbaum
v.
Harvard
and
Brandeis
Center
v.
Harvard
—
by
adopting
the
International
Holocaust
Remembrance
Alliance’s
definition
of
antisemitism,
explicitly
extending
its
nondiscrimination
policies
to
Jewish
and
Israeli
students,
committing
to
annual
antisemitism
training,
and
establishing
a
partnership
with
an
Israeli
university.
That
certainly
undercuts
the
government’s
claim
that
Harvard
was
“indifferent”
to
the
problem
or
that
the
violation
is
systemic
and
ongoing.
The
proposed
remedy
for
this
“violation”
is
functionally
a
death
penalty
for
the
school.
The
DOJ
wants
the
court
to
declare
Harvard
to
have
been
in
violation
of
Title
VI
since
October
7,
2023,
forcing
it
to
return
billions
of
dollars
in
federal
grants
made
since
that
date,
and
cutting
it
off
from
all
federal
funds
going
forward.
How
this
will
help
Jewish
students
—
many
of
whom
participated
in
the
protests
themselves
—
is
left
as
an
exercise
for
the
reader,
although
the
complaint
gestures
vaguely
in
the
direction
of
an
outside
monitor
to
ensure
that
the
school
enforces
its
policies
against
protesters,
up
to
and
including
calling
the
cops
on
them.
This
would
a
be
a
highly
novel
application
of
Title
VI,
and
the
government
didn’t
want
to
risk
winding
up
in
front
of
Judge
Burroughs,
who
called
the
funding
freeze
a
“targeted,
ideologically-motivated
assault”
and
the
SEVP
revocation
“retaliation.”
And
so
the
DOJ
designated
the
new
case
as
related
to
Kestenbaum
and
Brandeis
Center,
so
as
to
get
in
front
of
Judge
Richard
Stearns.
Judge
Stearns
dismissed
much
those
prior
complaints,
but
he
didn’t
dismiss
them
entirely.
He
also
characterized
Harvard’s
response
to
antisemitism
as
“at
best,
indecisive,
vacillating,
and
at
times
internally
contradictory,”
finding
that
“the
facts
as
pled
show
that
Harvard
failed
its
Jewish
students.”
But
he
never
adjudicated
the
claims,
since
both
cases
settled
in
early
2025,
and
it’s
not
clear
whether
he’ll
agree
that
this
new
cause
of
action
by
the
government
is
related
enough
to
automatically
wind
up
on
his
docket.
Meanwhile,
the
president
continues
to
make
clear,
that
he’s
trying
to
precipitate
an
“untenable
crisis”
in
higher
education.
Dammit,
now
we
have
to
side
with
Harvard.
Ughhh,
well
…
GO
CRIMSON!
Liz
Dye produces
the
Law
and
Chaos Substack and podcast. You
can
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by
clicking
the
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