Federal judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard University

A federal judge in Boston threw out a government lawsuit against Harvard University on Thursday. The Justice Department had filed the case in March. It claimed Harvard broke civil rights law by not protecting Jewish and Israeli students from harassment on campus. The harassment followed the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Judge Richard G. Stearns ruled that the incidents were too scattered and irregular to prove a serious, ongoing violation. The government had wanted to recover billions of dollars in federal funding from Harvard. In a related case, another judge had already ordered the government to return 2.6 billion dollars it had cut from Harvard's funding, saying the cuts were politically motivated rather than genuinely about antisemitism.