Trump administration sues Harvard, alleging school didn’t protect Jewish students as settlement talks go nowhere

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration slapped a new multibillion-dollar lawsuit against Harvard University on Friday, alleging that the school is in violation of a civil rights law and has failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from discrimination.

It is asking a federal judge to require the school to pay back millions in grant payments and halt more than $2.6 billion in existing grants.

The complaint marks the latest effort by President Donald Trump and his team to ratchet up pressure on the Ivy League school as high-level talks toward a settlement have failed to produce a resolution.

After months of fits and starts, negotiations had been heating up in early February – until The New York Times reported that the White House had dropped demands for a financial payment from the university, citing multiple unnamed sources. Trump subsequently doubled down on his demands, saying that his administration was “now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages.”

Negotiators “were close – and they ghosted,” an administration official told CNN on Friday, saying that there has been “no communication” and that Harvard has been “dragging their feet.”

In a statement, the university said it “has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism and actively enforces anti-harassment and anti-discrimination rules and policies on campus.”

The lawsuit, Harvard added, “represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.”

Allegations of a ‘hostile’ environment for Jewish students

Friday’s lawsuit alleges that Harvard is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal funding, due to what the Trump administration describes as “a hostile educational environment” for Israeli and Jewish students.

The school has been “deliberately indifferent,” the lawsuit alleges, pointing to examples including protests in classrooms and libraries and students who were “spit on in the face for wearing a yarmulke, stalked on campus, and jeered by peers with calls of ‘Heil Hitler,” among others, that took place between the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel until present day.

“Harvard University has failed to protect its Jewish students from harassment and has allowed discrimination to wreak havoc on its campus,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told CNN in a statement.

Harvard has previously said that the school is “far from indifferent” when it comes to addressing antisemitism on campus.

“Antisemitism is a serious problem and no matter the context, it is unacceptable. Harvard has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism in its community,” the university’s communications director Jason Newton said in a statement after a Trump investigation concluded last year that the school was in “violent violation” of the Civil Rights Act.

The administration is asking the judge to declare Harvard in breach of its contract with the federal government because it is in violation of the law, which would mean the school would not receive additional grant payments. It has also requested that the court “rescind and award the United States restitution of all grant payments made to Harvard during the time of Harvard’s noncompliance with Title VI, along with the appointment of an independent outside monitor, which the school has resisted.

Harvard and the Trump administration have been sparring in court for months after the officials in Washington took several dramatic steps last year to retaliate against the university after it refused to bend to the president’s will. Among those steps was an attempt to cut off the school’s ability to host foreign students and the freezing of billions of dollars in federal research funding.

A judge in Boston concluded that both efforts were unlawful, and the government’s appeal of those decisions is currently underway at the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is stacked with appointees of Democratic presidents.

In the meantime, the Trump administration has continued to find new and creative ways to exert pressure on the elite institution using multiple levers of the federal government. The Department of Education placed the university on “Heightened Cash Monitoring” status due to what it described as “growing concerns regarding the university’s financial position.” The Department of Commerce has also targeted the school’s patents, among other moves.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with comment from Harvard.

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