‘Isolated and Episodic’: Clinton-Appointed Judge Tosses Trump Lawsuit Against Harvard Over Lack of Jewish Student Protections

A federal judge dismissed a Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard University that had alleged the school failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.

U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns of Massachusetts, a Bill Clinton appointee, ruled the federal government failed to show an ongoing violation of federal civil rights law on Harvard’s campus after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks by Hamas. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed the lawsuit in March.

“Only three incidents are alleged to have occurred after this period, all of which took place nearly a full year later (and more than one full academic year before this case was filed) in March of 2025,” Stearns wrote in his ruling.

Stearns further said the Justice Department didn’t demonstrate failures by the university after Harvard was warned in June 2025 that it was not complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The provision prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in programs that receive federal funding.

“Without diminishing any concern arising from these occurrences, the court finds them, singly and collectively, to be too isolated and episodic to support a plausible inference that any institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day,” the judge continued.

In a March press release announcing the lawsuit, the Justice Department said the university “ignored 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.’”

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“This Department of Justice will not tolerate the harassment, assault, or intimidation of Jewish and Israeli students, and neither should Harvard,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in a statement when the lawsuit was filed.

The Trump administration previously sought to freeze Harvard’s existing grants and seek repayment of grants already distributed.

The Justice Department complaint filed in March says that since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel “Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard University were harassed, physically assaulted, stalked, and spat upon.”

“For several years, Jewish and Israeli students endured a hostile educational environment,” the complaint says.

The complaint later adds, “One method by which Jewish and Israeli students were exposed to harassment was that in many cases, demonstrations occurred in classrooms and libraries where students can expect the ability to retreat to a greater measure of relief from protests than they might in a public square.”