Trump goes for round 2 in court against Harvard, UCLA

The Trump administration is taking another swing at Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), filing antisemitism lawsuits and launching civil rights investigations against the schools after previous efforts to halt funding were thwarted in court. 

Both Harvard and UCLA were hit with lawsuits by the Justice Department over alleged rampant antisemitism on campus and violating federal antidiscrimination laws. Harvard was also hit Monday with two new civil rights investigations. 

President Trump, who has aggressively targeted colleges and universities in his second term, appears to be signaling he’s far from done with the two institutions, which both refused to cut deals after he tried to take away their federal funding last year.  

Trump has particularly singled out Harvard, reacting furiously to a New York Times report last month that his administration was backing away from its cash demands on the nation’s oldest and richest school.

“Strongly Antisemitic Harvard University has been feeding a lot of ‘nonsense’ to The Failing New York Times,” the president said on social media. “We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University.”

The federal lawsuit filed last week accuses the university of failing to protect Jewish students since the Israel-Hamas war broke out in 2023. The administration says Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that the federal government should be allowed to halt its grants and that Harvard should pay back the money it was given since the violations began. 

The Trump administration says Jewish students were physically assaulted, harassed and stalked while some faculty members supported the pro-Palestinian encampments.  

A Harvard spokesperson said the lawsuit “represents yet another pretextual and retaliatory action by the administration for refusing to turn over control of Harvard to the federal government.” 

The Trump administration also launched two new civil rights investigations against Harvard on Monday for not providing demanded admissions data to the federal government and allegedly using affirmative action in admissions despite the Supreme Court ruling in 2023 banning the practice.  

“Harvard University should know better. Its name will always be tied to the landmark Supreme Court case that found sweeping racial discrimination in admissions and the campus has been in the spotlight for tolerating egregious antisemitic harassment for years now. OCR [the Office for Civil Rights] will investigate these complaints thoroughly,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard graduate who sued the school over antisemitism and a personality for conservative group PragerU, said, “Harvard has proven that they’re both unable and unwilling to reach any type of meaningful reform. So, I’d certainly encourage the Trump administration, both publicly and privately, cut funding entirely.”

But outside experts say accusations of antisemitism, while sometimes valid, are merely a pretext.

“I think, in general, this is just more of the same from this current administration,” said Kevin Rachlin, vice president of government relations for the Nexus Project, a Jewish watchdog organization, adding, “There’s been a trend from this administration … to try to remake” higher education and reduce “the independence of it.”

They “rescinded grant dollars from these universities based on antisemitism, and really it was more about DEI or other things,” Rachlin said.  

The Harvard lawsuit came a month after the Justice Department sued UCLA for allegedly creating a hostile environment for Jewish faculty members.  

The Trump administration said UCLA failed to do more to protect Jewish faculty members who were getting assaulted and subjected to a hostile work environment. The administration wants a court to make UCLA pay an unspecified amount in damages to Jewish employees and enforce its antidiscrimination policies.  

Last year, the Trump administration paused $2 billion to Harvard and half a million dollars to UCLA, part of a series of universities that lost federal funding, with schools including Columbia and Brown universities agreeing to deals to restore the money.

But Harvard and UCLA refused, instead winning most of the money back in court.

The Hill has reached out to the Education Department for further comment.  

“The administration is very transparently here applying some policy pressure points to try to get these schools to bend to its ideological will. I say that because this administration has been very vocal about the cuts that it made to the U.S. Department of Education, many of which are concentrated on civil rights,” said Jeremy Bauter-Wolf, investigations manager on the higher education program at New America.  

“My take on this is, if there was a real care around this very important issue, they wouldn’t be cutting the staff, people who are actually in charge of reviewing and making sure that our college campuses are free from this,” he added. 

Both schools in the past year have settled lawsuits accusing them of antisemitism.  

UCLA agreed to pay $6 million in a settlement last summer, and Chancellor Julio Frenk wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal this month outlining the steps the university has taken against antisemitism, including the creation of the Initiative to Combat Antisemitism and strengthening rules regarding campus protests.  

Frenk also celebrated the school’s improvement from a “D” to a “B” grade on the Anti-Defamation League’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card. 

“At UCLA, we take this work seriously. While we have made clear progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety. Our ultimate goal is for every member of our community to feel safe, seen and fully at home on this campus,” Frenk said. 

Harvard has also settled in an antisemitism lawsuit, agreeing to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and including in its bullying policies an example of how Zionism is part of many Jewish individuals’ identity. 

“I’ve been happy to see the admission from some of these schools that there were clear incidents of antisemitism that translated into discrimination,” said Rachlin. “But, I think, addressing the culture that is creating some of these things is something very different.” 

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