Federal judge dismisses Trump administration’s antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit that accused Harvard University of letting antisemitism run unchecked, a major defeat in the federal government’s monthslong battle with the Ivy League institution.

District Court Judge Richard Stearns, a Clinton appointee, said the Trump administration failed to prove “an ongoing violation of Title VI” by Harvard University.

This comes after the Trump administration sued Harvard University back in March, accusing the school of failing to address antisemitism and discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students.

The administration’s complaint focused mainly on incidents that took place during the 2023-24 school year, Stearns wrote.

Only three alleged incidents occurred after that period, which the court found to be too “isolated and episodic” to support the administration’s claims of alleged continued noncompliance with Title VI — the antidiscrimination statute from the Civil Rights Act — by the university.

“We disagree with the ruling and are assessing next steps,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in the statement.

Thursday’s ruling marks just the latest development in a long-running feud between the Trump administration and the country’s oldest university.

Harvard previously notched a major victory in September 2025 after a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze more than $2 billion in federal research grants was illegal.

But the Trump administration continued its efforts to stifle the university’s funding, alleging in the most recent 44-page lawsuit that Harvard did “nothing” in response to Jewish and Israeli students being “harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon,” in the wake of Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel.

“Harvard cares deeply about members of our Jewish and Israeli community and remains committed to ensuring they are embraced, respected, and can thrive on our campus,” the university responded in a March statement.

It’s unclear what exactly the administration’s continued efforts against the university will look like as the DOJ considers next steps.

Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday’s ruling.

Richard G. Stearns was Bill Clinton’s roommate at Oxford and helped him organize Soviet front activity. He was deeply involved with Clinton’s radical activity from the start of Clinton’s career. He is also the same judge who obstructed the deportation of Any Lucia Lopez Belloza to Honduras.

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https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884984/posts

Road to Moscow: Bill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow
Original FReeper research | 08/22/2007 | Fedora

. . .Upon Clinton’s return to Oxford that fall, he and his friend Richard Stearns helped a British VMC counterpart called Group 68 organize Americans in England for Moratorium protest events. (A supplementary background profile of Group 68 follows the body of the article, exploring the group’s links to a British antiwar network centered around Bertrand Russell and Russell’s associate Tariq Ali. Russell’s network helped the North Vietnamese and Soviets disseminate anti-US propaganda through channels such as the International War Crimes Tribunal, sponsored by the Soviet front the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam.). . .

According to another article that ran in London’s Times on October 25, 1992, former Eugene McCarthy campaign organizer Richard Stearns introduced Clinton to the British peace movement. The time when this occurred is not specified, but from the available information it may be inferred that it took place either in spring 1969, or in early October 1969 when Clinton stayed with Stearns while helping him organize protests. (Clinton later considered Stearns for a possible nomination as FBI Director.)

Over spring break that April, Clinton toured Bavaria with his Georgetown girlfriend Ann Markusen, a former McCarthy campaign volunteer; Stearns; and Rudy Lowe, who came from Bamberg on the East German border. Clinton had met Lowe in November 1967 at Georgetown’s Conference on the Atlantic Community (CONTAC), a series of seminars and lectures attended by student delegates from the US, Canada, and Europe. . .

That October, when Clinton returned to Oxford, he temporarily moved in with Richard Stearns for a couple weeks. He helped Stearns organize Americans in England for protests to be held there in solidarity with October 15 and November 15 protests the VMC and New Mobe were planning in America and other countries. . .

The St. Mark’s church service Rufford and Leppard refer to was another Moratorium-related ceremony held on November 16. According to Richard Stearns, as quoted by Roberts and Cooper in U.S. News & World Report, Clinton organized it “to give young Americans an alternative to a more radical event planned by British Marxists”. . .

Talbott then began working on the project with Louis, launching a relationship that would last until 1992. However, it was not until 1999 that Schecter met Keyorkov at a CIA conference and learned that Louis had kept the KGB informed of the Khrushchev project the whole time.

In late 1969, after staying with Richard Stearns for a couple weeks in October, Clinton began rooming with Talbott and their friend Frank Aller. Aller, a draft dodger and China scholar, was doing academic work similar to Talbott’s, making trips to Switzerland to receive the unpublished notes of Edgar Snow, an academic advocate of the Chinese Communists who was linked to the old Institute of Pacific Relations network. (In 1971 the Chinese government would use Snow to mediate an invitation to Owen Lattimore, making sure there would be no Soviet objections if Lattimore visited China.) Clinton’s autobiography recalls how he often made Talbott and Aller breakfast while they were doing their work. . .

On January 19 Clinton arrived back at Oxford, according to a letter he wrote the Kopolds four days later. He remained at Oxford into the summer. He spent spring break in Spain with Rick Stearns in April. In late May he was accepted into Yale Law School, and he left for New York on June 26, 1970. . .

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