Harvard University on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss a Trump administration antisemitism lawsuit against the school, calling the suit “a continuation of the government’s unconstitutional retaliation campaign against Harvard.”
The Trump administration in March filed suit against the university in U.S. District Court in Boston, claiming that school administrators were deliberately indifferent to antisemitism on campus, and had failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment, physical assaults, stalking and exclusion from campus facilities.
The complaint argued that the federal government should not have to pay Harvard existing grants, and should be allowed to claw back grants already given.
The lawsuit was filed about a year after Harvard had sued the federal government, saying that the Trump administration had illegally ended its federal funding. A federal judge in that suit decided in Harvard’s favor.
Harvard’s motion to dismiss the latest case argues that the Trump administration’s suit largely cites incidents on campus from 2023 and 2024, and does not account for the steps the university had taken to improve the culture for Jewish and Israeli students.
“Harvard has engaged in sustained, institution wide efforts to identify and address antisemitism on campus,” the motion states. “These extensive and ongoing efforts are the very opposite of deliberate indifference.”
The administration’s litigation, the motion continues, is part of a government campaign to punish the university “for refusing to cede control over decisions regarding what Harvard can teach, the beliefs of the students it admits, and whom it can hire.”
A spokeswoman for the Trump administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mark Arsenault covers higher education for The Times.
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