Trump administration sues Harvard for alleged civil rights violations and anti-Semitism

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging that the prestigious school violated the civil rights of its Jewish students.

The suit, filed early on Friday in a federal district court in Massachusetts, claims that Harvard failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from anti-Semitic hostility and fulfill anti-harassment policies, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The filing claims that Jewish and Israeli students faced harassment in the form of stalking and assault, including being “spat upon,” since the October 7, 2023, attack that Hamas carried out on Israel.

“For several years, Jewish and Israeli students endured a hostile educational environment,” the document read. “They were repeatedly denied access to educational facilities by antisemitic demonstrators. Fearful for their safety, Jewish students wore baseball caps to conceal their yarmulkes or kept out of sight, effectively denying them access to Federally funded educational opportunities.”

“Jewish and Israeli students were subjected to severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment on the ground of their race or national origin,” the Trump administration asserted. The administration argued that Harvard failed to properly discipline harmful behavior toward its Jewish community, violated its own policies and federal law, and is therefore misusing federal funding.

“Harvard’s response to this: do nothing,” the suit read. “Its faculty and leadership turned a blind eye to antisemitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis. Students and faculty violated Harvard’s time, place, and manner rules with impunity, rules that Harvard has and would enforce against anyone else.”

Other offenses included the university letting instructors cancel class or excuse students to “join illicit demonstrations,” allowing anti-Israeli demonstrators to occupy school libraries and allowing an anti-Israeli encampment on its campus for 20 days.

“Harvard has been and remains deliberately indifferent to what its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias deemed the ‘exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities,’” the administration declared.

It argued that by seeking and accepting federal grants from the U.S., it “certifies compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” This means that the school should comply with the prohibition of discrimination based on race if it expects to continue receiving massive sums of funding.

“Harvard is currently set to receive more than $2,615,000,000 of taxpayer money under active federal grants from the Department of Health and Human Services alone (to say nothing of other agencies),” the filing explained. “Yet Harvard defied federal law and violated Title VI repeatedly by discriminating against Jewish and Israeli students without remorse. And Harvard remains in violation of its Title VI obligations.”

The administration now seeks to recover federal funding that was doled out to the school while it disregarded federal regulations.

Harvard sued the administration last year after the government froze billions of its federal funding. A federal court judge in Boston ruled in Harvard’s favor, calling the antisemitism argument a “smokescreen” to withhold federal money.

“Anti-Semitism is a serious problem and no matter the context, it is unacceptable,” the university said in a statement. “Harvard has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism in its community.”

Trump’s administration has cracked down on several elite universities that he believes are discriminatory and overrun with left-wing ideology. Many schools have reached agreements with the White House to restore frozen federal grants.

Look, this is the kind of story that makes you wonder how long it took the Ivy League crowd to realize that "diversity" apparently doesn't include protecting Jewish kids from getting spit on and chased around campus. Harvard's big plan seems to have been to let the antisemitic circus run its course while cashing those fat federal checks, then act shocked when someone finally calls them on it. The Trump team dropping this lawsuit is basically the political equivalent of walking into a room full of trust-fund radicals and saying, "Hey, geniuses, maybe stop pretending your 'protests' aren't just Jew-baiting with better signage." And good luck to Harvard explaining to taxpayers why they should keep funding a place that treats Title VI like a suggestion box. The woke elite always think the rules are for other people, until the other people show up with lawyers and receipts.

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Harvard revokes tenure of prof. over data manipulation allegations

Harvard University just yanked the tenure of Francesca Gino, a big-shot business administration professor, after she got tangled up in accusations of cooking the books on her data. This isn’t some minor slap on the wrist. Harvard’s pulling rank, and it’s a rare move. “This is the first time it has occurred in recent decades,” a Harvard spokesperson spilled to Fox News Digital, sounding about as thrilled as a bureaucrat at a tax audit.

Losing tenure is like getting your VIP pass yanked; it’s a big deal and usually only happens if the institution thinks you’ve crossed a major line, like fudging research or breaking ethical codes. Even then, it’s a slog to strip it away, which is why Gino fought for years to keep hers.

Gino’s been slugging it out against these claims for nearly four years, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before the data fraud stink hit, she was a rockstar in the ivory tower, diving deep into the irony of studying honesty and ethics. Her whole gig was preaching integrity while allegedly fudging numbers to make her theories pop. The Crimson says she was raking in serious cash too, pulling over a million bucks a year in 2018 and 2019, making her the fifth-highest-paid suit at Harvard. 

Hypocrisy much?

The trouble started when some eagle-eyed scholars sniffed something off in her work and aired it out on Data Colada, a blog that checks out the veracity of studies and doesn’t mess around. 

“In 2021, we and a team of anonymous researchers examined a number of studies co-authored by Gino, because we had concerns that they contained fraudulent data,” the blog’s authors wrote, dropping a bombshell. They claimed to have found evidence of Gino playing fast and loose with data across a decade, including as recently as 2020. They took their findings to Harvard Business School in fall 2021, and you can bet that lit a fire under the administration.

Gino, not one to go down quietly, slapped a lawsuit on both the Data Colada crew and Harvard itself, per The Hill. Parts of that legal brawl are still grinding through the courts. 

Meanwhile, she’s shouting her innocence from the rooftops—or at least her website. “I did not commit academic fraud. I did not manipulate data to produce a particular result. I did not falsify data to bolster any result. I did not commit the offense I am accused of. Period,” she declared.

Before this mess, Gino was a prolific name, churning out over 140 scholarly papers and scooping up awards like they were going out of style. But now, with her tenure gone and her reputation under fire, she’s fighting to clear her name in a world where trust is harder to earn than a Harvard degree.

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Harvard settles anti-Semitism lawsuits and makes promise

Harvard University has settled two lawsuits about antisemitism that were put together by a federal judge in November 2024. These lawsuits obviously made Harvard look bad and suggested that Ivy League schools might be places where anti-Jewish hatred and support for terrorism are growing.

As reported earlier by Jewish outlet The Algemeiner, Harvard was hit with two separate lawsuits in 2024. One was from the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which claimed that Harvard didn't punish a professor who mistreated Israeli-Jewish students, even after an outside investigation confirmed it. This, they said, broke federal civil rights laws. The other lawsuit came from Students Against Antisemitism (SAA), who argued that Harvard didn't do enough to stop a wave of antisemitic actions on campus, like harassment and hate speech.

Initially, Harvard tried to get the lawsuits dismissed in court, arguing that the claims "lacked standing" and didn't hold up legally, all while stating, "the importance of the need to address antisemitism at the university," according to court documents.

With the settlement, which came just one day after President Donald Trump's inauguration — who promised to tax universities where antisemitism is widespread — Harvard avoids a long legal battle that the Jewish community might have seen as a refusal to acknowledge the discrimination faced by Jewish students.

“Today’s settlement reflects Harvard’s enduring commitment to ensuring our Jewish students, faculty, and staff are embraced, respected, and supported,” Harvard stated in a press release. “We will continue to strengthen our policies, systems, and operations to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate and ensure all members of the Harvard community have the support they need to pursue their academic, research, and professional work and feel they belong on our campus and in our classrooms.”

According to the agreement, Harvard will use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies (NDAB), recognize Zionism as central to Jewish identity, and clearly state that targeting someone because of their Zionism violates school rules.

The Harvard Crimson reported that one plaintiff, Shabbos Kestenbaum, has decided not to join the settlement and is seeking his own legal action with a new lawyer.

All other involved parties praised the case's outcome as a step forward.

“We are heartened that Harvard has agreed to take numerous important steps necessary to creating a welcoming environment free from anti-Semitic hate, discrimination, and harassment,” Brandeis Center chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement about the settlement. “We thank those within Harvard, including administrators, faculty, students, and alumni, who have worked tirelessly to achieve this result. In turn, we look forward to working with Harvard on the important work in this agreement to ensure that the rights of all students are protected.”

SAA attorney Marc Kasowtiz told Reuters, “These measures are going to be very, very protective of the interests and rights of Jewish students on the Harvard campus.”

Harvard isn't the first elite school to settle such a claim by Jewish students.

In June, Columbia University settled a lawsuit where it was accused of failing to provide a safe learning environment during rowdy pro-Hamas protests at the end of the school year. The settlement included hiring "Safe Passage Liaisons" to watch over protests and "walking escorts" to protect students. Other parts of the agreement offered "accommodations" for students whose studies were affected by protests and new security measures for controlling who enters the school.

In July, New York University (NYU) settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed amount after three students claimed the university was "deliberately indifferent" to antisemitic discrimination. Like Harvard, NYU agreed to formally acknowledge Zionism as part of Jewish identity.

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The Harvard Piggy Bank is Getting Lighter

It's beginning to look a lot less like Christmas for Harvard University's coffers. The Harvard Crimson reported on Tuesday that billionaire hedge fund manager and huge donor Kenneth C. Griffin would be pausing his donations to the institution of woke learning.

Griffin threw $300,000,000 to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the past. He said during his keynote address to the Managed Funds Association in Miami on Tuesday that he is putting a pause on his purse due to the DEI woke policies of the university.

 

“I’d like that to change and I have made that clear to members of the corporate board,” he said, referring to the garbage policies Harvard has implemented. “But until Harvard makes it very clear that they’re going to resume their role as educating young American men and women to be leaders, to be problem solvers, to take on difficult issues, I’m not interested in supporting the institution.”

Griffin, 55, said he was tired of  "whiny snowflakes" promoting their far-left, progressive yet backward ideas like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.

“Will America’s elite university get back to their roots of educating American children – young adults – to be the future leaders of our country or are they going to maintain being lost in the wilderness of microaggressions, a DEI agenda that seems to have no real endgame, and just being loss in the wilderness?” he asked.

Griffin, who is the owner and CEO of Citadel, is also not a fan of Jew hatred. He confirmed that he will follow the lead of Bill Ackman and refuse to hire those anti-Semites who signed an open letter calling for the boycott of Israel after Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and civilian Gazans butchered, tortured, burned and beheaded people of Israel last October 7.

The hedge fund manager, who graduated from the university in 1988, has donated, to date, a staggering $500 million to the university.

His generosity was acknowledged by the Crimson, which explained:

Griffin is arguably one of the most generous Harvard donors in the University’s modern history. The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is named after him as well as Harvard College’s financial aid office. His decision to stop donating could have major financial implications for the University, which is already struggling to contain a wave of donor backlash.

Griffin is the second billionaire donor to suspend contributions to the university in recent months. Billionaire philanthropist Leonard V. Blavatnik, who gave $200 million to Harvard Medical School in 2018, similarly announced late last year that he would be suspending his donations to the institution.

In October, after the attack in Israel, shipping and chemicals magnate Idan Ofer and his wife Batia -- worth an estimated $14 billion -- resigned from the executive board of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government due to their anger about the anti-Semitic student groups on campus that supported the Hamassholes. 

Griffin's announcement comes several weeks after the university's far-left Erkel-look-alike president, Claudine Gay, reluctantly announced her resignation after giving Congressional testimony in which she refused to condemn calls by Harvard students for genocide as well as a growing body of evidence that she was a serial plagiarizer.

Despite her obvious failures, Gay repeatedly refused to resign and reportedly threatened to sue Harvard University if she were removed. She now just teaches wokeness and earns over $900,000 annually.

Eventually, she succumbed to the pressure and handed in her resignation, although somewhat predictably blamed it on "personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus" rather than her personal failures.

When in doubt, shout racism!

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Retired professor whose academic work was allegedly plagiarized calls for Harvard's Gay to be fired

Gay: "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ."

If you've ever had anything stolen from you, especially if it's something you made for yourself, you can understand what it must feel like when your academic research and writing was stolen via plagiarism. Well, retired Vanderbilt University professor Dr. Carol Swain certainly does.

Dr. Swain is allegedly one of several of Harvard President Claudine Gay's victims whose work has been stolen and she is calling for Gay to be fired. 

"Fire Claudine Gay posthaste," Dr. Carol Swain posted Thursday on X, as part of a social media post titled "some free unsolicited advice for Harvard University."

"She can be relieved of duties until the terms are negotiated."

Can anyone blame Swain? She is a senior fellow at the Institute for Faith and said that Harvard must hire the best man or woman for the job who can "steer the university back towards sanity."

"Appeasing the Marxist identity politics mob should not be a consideration. The person for the job might be a middle to older age white Jewish man who believes in classical liberalism," she said.

Swain called for Gay to step down last week after Harvard officials chose to accept her antisemitic stance on Jewish students being threatened with genocide and harassment, but the woke folk at the school stood behind her in spite of that and of a probe that found "instances of inadequate citation." That kind of finding had it been of a Harvard student would have caused serious disciplinary action, even expulsion from the university to take place, but in the case of an affirmative action leader, not so much.

On Thursday, Swain also recommended that leaders of Harvard have a "sit down conversation" with the academics who Gay plagiarized from and apologize to alumni, students, parents and donors who have "been harmed and embarrassed" by Gay's behavior. Swain said:

"Have a sit down conversation with the people who have been harmed by the plagiarism of Gay, and the system that protects her. Recognize that Harvard’s systematic racism and classism have far reaching effects. Apologize to alumni, students, parents, and donors who have been harmed and embarrassed."

Gay, you may recall, refused to directly respond to Rep. Elise Stefanik's (R-NY) question at a congressional hearing on Dec. 12 as to whether the calling for genocide of Jews was  against Harvard policy. Gay's apparently coached reply was to say that it depended upon the context but Rep. Stefanik called her out on it and still she responded with the same garbage answer.

But back to the alleged plagiarism. The Washington Free Beacon reported that in four papers published between 1993 and 2017, including her doctoral dissertation, Gay "paraphrased or quoted nearly 20 authors—including two of her colleagues in Harvard University’s department of government—without proper attribution," according to the news site's analysis.

Since the first reports of plagiarism were uncovered, the same news outlet said that Harvard "received a complaint outlining over 40 allegations of plagiarism" against Gay on Tuesday.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Swain, a former Democrat, has been supportive of many conservative issues in the past and even served on former President Trump's "1776 Commission," that showed how false the so called "1619 Project" was about slavery and American history.

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Magill resigns as UPenn President--time to clean the ivy from the houses

The smirk says it all

New York Congresswoman, Elise Stefanik (R-NY) applauded the resignation of Liz Magill of UPenn who resigned from the post on Saturday for refusing to condemn anti-Semitism as a form of harassment against Jewish students. 

Magill, along with ivy league school presidents Clauding Gay, of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth, of MIT, testified at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday where Rep. Stefanik asked Magill if "calling for the genocide of Jews violate[s] Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?"

L to R: Fraus Magill, Gay, Kornbluth

"If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes," Magill responded, later adding, "It is a context-dependent decision."

"This is unacceptable. Ms. Magill, I’m gonna give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" Stefanik then asked.

Magill and the rest of her cohorts did a River Dance around the question and refused to condemn the anti-Semitism that runs rampant at her school and the others, where Jewish students have to fear for their safety, and in at least one case at UPenn, had to lock themselves in a room to avoid have violence perpetrated against them.

Rep. Stefanik applauded the resignation of University of Magill on Saturday after hearing about the resignation. 

Rep. Elise Stefanik

"One down. Two to go," Stefanik posted to X Saturday. "This is only the very beginning of addressing the pervasive rot of antisemitism that has destroyed the most "prestigious" higher education institutions in America. This forced resignation of the president of @Penn is the bare minimum of what is required. These universities can anticipate a robust and comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, funding, and overall leadership and governance."

"@Harvard and @MIT do the right thing. The world is watching," she added.

Board of Trustees Chairman Scott L. Bok wrote in a statement Saturday that Magill has resigned.

"I write to share that President Liz Magill has voluntarily tendered her resignation as President of the University of Pennsylvania. She will remain a tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law," Bok wrote.

So yes, it's one down, two to go, but let's not stop there. Many schools across the country are allowing blatant anti-Semitism to fester like puss pimples on the butts of the women of the Squad. It's ugly and has no place in the world's greatest nation.

And closing the borders might be a good start to deal with part of the problem too.

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