The Justice Department moved Thursday to appeal a federal judge’s dismissal of a Trump administration lawsuit that accused Harvard University of illegally tolerating antisemitism.
The department filed a terse notice that did not detail the argument it will make to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. But it signaled the government was continuing its pressure campaign against the nation’s oldest university.
In its lawsuit against Harvard, filed in March, the Justice Department argued that the university had “turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis” and allowed years-ago protesters of the war in Gaza to defy Harvard rules “with impunity.”
A federal judge in Boston, Richard G. Stearns, ruled on Aug. 13 that the government was relying on accounts of antisemitism that were “too isolated and episodic” to support a finding that Harvard was violating civil rights law.
Judge Stearns concluded that the Trump administration, which had suggested it wanted to use a ruling in its favor to curb federal funding to Harvard, had not proven even “a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.”
The law, the judge said, was intended to entice schools into protecting civil rights, not penalize them for previous failures.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
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