Civil rights office issues violation notice against Ivy League school over handling of antisemitism
Harvard University has violated Jewish students’ civil rights by deliberately ignoring repeated instances of harassment and failing to consistently discipline the perpetrators of its own policies, the federal government alleged Monday.
The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights sent the university a violation notice after a months-long investigation into antisemitism and complaints from Jewish and Israeli students, according to a news release.
The office determined that the university “has been – and is – deliberately indifferent to the severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment of Jewish and Israeli students by its own students and faculty,” the release states.
In a letter on behalf of the HHS Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote that Harvard will lose all of its federal funding if it fails to “institute adequate changes immediately.”
“Jewish and Israeli students were assaulted and spit on; they hid their kippahs for fear of being harassed and concealed their Jewish identity from classmates for fear of ostracization,” Dhillon wrote.
The institution received more than $794 million from the HHS department over the last two years, the news release states.
Responding, university spokesperson Jason Newton told The Harvard Crimson that the university “strongly disagrees with the government’s findings.” Newton said its leaders have taken “substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism.”
One of the reasons for the alleged violation was the university’s “lax and inconsistent discipline” of pro-Palestinian protesters, Dhillon wrote:
The campus was wracked by demonstrations that flagrantly violated the University’s rules of conduct. The demonstrations included calls for genocide and murder, and denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces.
The heart of campus was overrun by an impermissible, multiweek encampment that instilled fear in, and disrupted the studies of, Jewish and Israeli students. Even worse, individuals who participated in the encampment received lax and inconsistent discipline—and as the discipline was reviewed by higher levels among the faculty, it was often downgraded. By the end of the process, even accounting only for the students that were charged, only a fraction received some sort of discipline, and none were suspended. A member of Harvard’s own leadership called the disciplinary process “not fair” and “not right.”
Dhillon described Harvard as a “breeding ground for race discrimination,” and brought up the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard as another example. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial considerations in university admissions practices were discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional.
The violation notice is the latest in a series of on-going disputes between the university and the Trump administration.
The federal government cut Harvard’s funding earlier this year after university leaders refused to comply with directives regarding its handling of antisemitism and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In May, the Trump administration also revoked the university’s international student enrollment certification.
The university is suing over both decisions.
MORE: Harvard announces more layoffs as fight with Trump admin continues
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A protester holds a sign that reads, ‘Jews are terrorists’; Jerusalem U/YouTube