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Harvard University on Tuesday settled Title VI lawsuits civil rights accusing the Ivy League school of responding insufficiently to antisemitism on campus.
“Today’s settlement reflects Harvard’s enduring commitment to ensuring our Jewish students, faculty, and staff are embraced, respected, and supported,” a Harvard spokesperson told the Harvard Crimson university paper.
The settlement, for an undisclosed sum, closes two lawsuits citing Title VI, which bars discrimination at federally funded educational institutions on the basis of race, color, or national origin.
One filed in January 2024, from a coalition of students, alleged an atmosphere of “severe and pervasive antisemitism on campus,” citing a student groups who wrote in a much-viewed statement that Israel was “entirely responsible” for the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that started the present conflict.
It also pointed to what it called “mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty” staging protests and occupying campus buildings after the war broke out.
One of the plaintiffs from that suit did not accept the settlement and plans to continue litigation.
Another suit, from the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, filed in May 2024, made similar claims, arguing Harvard didn’t do enough to quickly respond to the Hamas attack, and pointed to allegations of antisemitism in a Harvard Kennedy School classroom and a viral confrontation between an Israel Harvard Business School Student and pro-Palestinian demonstrators the previous October.
Under the terms of the settlement, Harvard will adopt a widely used but controversial definition of antisemitism from the International Holocuast Remembrance Association, which labels some criticisms of Zionism and Israel as inherently antisemitic, including arguments which claim “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and apply “double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
The definition is already in use at places like the U.S. State Department and in some European governments, but speech advocates have warned that further applying it will chill legitimate criticism of Israel and its war in Gaza, which has been accused in international court of being a genocide.
In November, the ACLU warned Congress against a bill that would see the Department of Education adopt the definition for future civil rights investigations.
“Instead of addressing antisemitism on campus, this misguided legislation would punish protected political speech,” Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement at the time. “At a time when civil rights enforcement on campus could not be more critical, this bill risks politicizing these vital protections by censoring legitimate political speech that criticizes the Israeli government.”
The bill eventually passed the House last Congress, and was reintroduced today.
In the weeks leading up to the Trump inauguration, multiple high-profile universities accused of antisemitism have settled lawsuits, including the University of California system and Brown University.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump threatened to pull funding and accreditation from schools that allow what he called “antisemitic propaganda,” and to deport foreign student protesters.
He has also nominated New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be his UN ambassador, who aggressively questioned university presidents, including the then-president of Harvard Claudine Gay, about antisemitism during a hearing in the House in 2023.
Gay later resigned, in part over allegations she didn’t do enough to combat antisemitism on campus.
