The U.S. government filed a lawsuit March 20 against Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., accusing the college of discrimination on claims it failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students during campus protests.
The lawsuit is the latest development in a monthslong struggle between the U.S. federal government and Harvard. In early 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration launched investigations at major U.S. medical schools related to alleged antisemitic incidents; Harvard quickly became a bellwether for institutions facing federal scrutiny.
Over the spring and summer, the U.S. government launched multiple rounds of funding cuts for research grants and contracts, affecting hundreds of millions of dollars previously distributed to Harvard and other universities. Harvard University filed lawsuits, and in September, a judge ordered the government to restore the nearly $2.2 billion in federal grants it had terminated.
After the steep federal cuts, the university is working to tighten its budget — and might need to further shrink it.
The latest lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, accuses Harvard of knowingly allowing harassment against Jewish and Israeli students amid campuswide protests after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attack in Israel. The lawsuit is asking the court to recover billions of dollars in taxpayer money that the federal government has allocated to Harvard.
In an online 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.”
“We will continue to prioritize this important work and will defend the University against this lawsuit, which represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government,” the statement said.
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