The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, is another missive in a protracted battle between the administration of President Donald Trump and the elite university.
“The United States cannot and will not tolerate these failures and brings this action to compel Harvard to comply” with federal civil rights law, the Justice Department wrote in the lawsuit, “and to recover billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies awarded to a discriminatory institution.”
Harvard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit comes after negotiations appear to have bogged down in the months-long battle with the Trump administration that has tested the boundaries of the government’s authority over America’s universities. What began as an investigation into campus antisemitism escalated into an all-out feud as the Trump administration slashed more than $2.6 billion in research funding, ended federal contracts and attempted to block Harvard from hosting international students..
In a pair of lawsuits filed by the university, Harvard has said it’s being unfairly penalized for refusing to adopt the administration’s views. A federal judge agreed in December, reversing the funding cuts and calling the antisemitism argument a “smokescreen.”
Even so, Harvard and the Trump administration have held some negotiations, and the two sides have reportedly been close to reaching an agreement on multiple occasions. Last year, the administration and the university were reportedly approaching a deal that would have required Harvard to pay $500 million to regain access to federal funding and to end the investigations. Almost a year later, Trump upped that figure to $1 billion, saying that Harvard has been “behaving very badly.”
At the same time, the administration was taking steps in a civil rights investigation that had the potential to jeopardize all of Harvard's federal funding, including federal student aid.
In June, the Trump administration said a civil rights investigation had led to a formal finding that Harvard tolerated antisemitism.
In a letter sent to Harvard, a federal task force said its investigation had found the university was a “willful participant” in antisemitic harassment of Jewish students and faculty. The task force threatened to refer the case to the Justice Department to file a civil rights lawsuit “as soon as possible,” unless Harvard came into compliance.
Harvard, along with several other universities, were the scene of sometimes violent anti-Israel protests in the wake of the October, 2023 massacre of more than 1200 Israeli men, women and children by Hamas terrorists from Gaza. Despite the fact Jews were the victims, the university students attacked Israel for its response to that massacre.
