The latest setback in the Trump administration’s response to the Gaza war protests that have swept through college campuses.
Published August 13, 2026
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump’s administration that accused Harvard University of failing to do enough to protect Jewish students.
The legal filing is one of many actions taken by the Trump administration in response to how top universities responded to pro-Gaza protests amid Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
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The administration has repeatedly claimed that the administration failed to adequately protect students from anti-Semitic acts during the demonstrations.
Protest organizers have long denied this premise, arguing that the administration is deliberately conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, using isolated anti-Semitic acts to justify suppressing pro-Palestinian speech.
A lawsuit filed by the Justice Department in March accused Harvard’s “faculty and leadership of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis.”
The report said Harvard’s actions did not comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal funding.
But Judge Richard Stearns said Thursday that the Trump administration’s lawsuit presented no evidence of the alleged violations.
Stearns said the incidents highlighted in the legal filing were “too isolated and episodic” to support claims of ongoing civil rights violations.
President Trump previously moved to freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding to Harvard, which the school’s lawyers say is an effort to leverage research funding in return for allowing the administration to “micromanage” the school.
A federal judge ruled last year that the freeze was illegal.
academic freedom issues
Harvard University, with an endowment of more than $56 billion, stands out from other top universities with its anti-government approach.
Other universities, including Columbia University, Northwestern University and Cornell University, have chosen to reach multimillion-dollar settlements with the Trump administration to secure funding over a series of allegations, including their handling of pro-Palestinian protests and hiring and admissions practices.
Critics say anti-Semitism has become more prominent as the regime uses immigration enforcement to crack down on pro-Palestinian supporters.
In July, Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, who has been targeted for deportation for his involvement in demonstrations and other reasons, filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging a “public-private” partnership to silence pro-Palestinian voices.
The lawsuit points to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther report, which appears to draw a blueprint similar to the Trump administration’s approach. The complaint further alleges that the Trump administration relies on outside groups such as Canary Mission and Betar to identify targeted students, faculty and staff.
A November 2025 report published by the American Association of University Professors accused the Trump administration of weaponizing civil rights laws to suppress free speech on college campuses.
The association’s analysis found that while “reprehensible acts of anti-Semitism have occurred on campuses” since 2023, the majority of federal civil rights complaints have come not from students but from “persons and entities unaffiliated with the schools being investigated.”
“The long-standing ‘Palestinian exception’ to the First Amendment now threatens to give way to a new reality,” the report states.
“Rather than being an exception to academic freedom, Palestine has become a pretext for erasing the norm altogether, as part of an authoritarian attack on the very idea of higher education autonomy and racial and gender equality.”
