This Big Idea is longer than usual. We’ve put our takeaway first and included a lot of legal detail in a Q&A below, so you can read straight through or skip to the questions most on your mind.
On August 13, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) March 2026 lawsuit alleging Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and breached its federal grant agreements by certifying Title VI compliance while failing to comply.
Stearns’s ruling was narrow. He found the DOJ complaint “devoid of any factual allegations” plausibly showing that the University remained out of compliance after receiving a formal Notice of Violation from the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights in June 2025.
In other words, his reasoning turned on when the conduct alleged by the DOJ occurred; he didn't rule that Harvard had never violated Title VI, or that the University has solved its antisemitism problem. The DOJ can fail to make its legal case against Harvard while Jewish and Israeli members of Harvard’s community continue to experience antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.
Just last month, 170 Harvard faculty, staff, and affiliates signed a letter drawing attention to ongoing antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on campus, including accounts of students concealing Star of David necklaces, kippot, or connections to Israel to avoid ostracization. And The Crimson’s 2026 Senior Class Survey showed an even wider gap in perceptions of antisemitism than the year before: 52% of Jewish respondents said it was somewhat or very widespread on campus, compared with 11% of the class overall. In 2025, those figures were 15.7% and 12.4%, respectively.
Even if Stearns had considered the government’s underlying discrimination claims, those students’ accounts, or others like them, would not, on their own, necessarily establish a Title VI violation.
Take “deliberate indifference,” one of the DOJ’s core claims. That inquiry turns not only on students’ experiences of harassment, but also on the nature and extent of that harassment, what Harvard knew about it, and how the University responded. The government would have had to show that Harvard knew about the harassment and that the University’s response was legally “clearly unreasonable” under the circumstances; the existence of continued harassment on campus, or evidence that Harvard’s response was imperfect, would not by itself clear that bar.
But avoiding liability for “deliberate indifference” — or under the government’s other Title VI theories of hostile environment and intentional discrimination — is a low bar by which to judge Harvard’s broader responsibility to its community. President Alan Garber has committed the University to more: a campus where Jewish and Israeli students can “be themselves” and “express their views freely” — a community “in which every one of us can thrive.”
Since its Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias issued its report last year, Harvard has begun implementing changes across campus, and we’ll examine that progress in greater detail in the coming weeks. But antisemitism, like many other forms of bias, doesn’t have a clean endpoint at which an institution can declare the work finished.
Stearns’s dismissal may change Harvard’s legal exposure. It doesn’t change the importance of following through on the commitments it made to its Antisemitism Task Force — and of continuing to assess whether those changes are improving the ability of its Jewish and Israeli community to participate in Harvard’s mission.
Catching up on the case? Keep reading for a summary of the government’s claims, Harvard’s response, the judge’s ruling, and next steps.
What did the government argue in its complaint against Harvard?
In its March 2026 complaint and May amended complaint, the government brought three Title VI claims and a separate breach-of-contract claim:
Harvard failed to adequately respond to antisemitic harassment: The government alleged Harvard was “deliberately indifferent” to harassment and exclusion of Jewish and Israeli students on campus.
Harvard selectively enforced campus rules: The government alleged intentional discrimination, arguing that Harvard responded less forcefully to anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli misconduct than to comparable bias and discrimination involving other groups.
Harvard fostered a hostile environment: The amended complaint alleged that Harvard’s actions (and inaction) helped create and sustain a hostile campus environment for Jewish and Israeli students.
Harvard breached its federal grant agreements: The government argued that Harvard certified Title VI compliance while allegedly failing to comply, and therefore sought to recover grant funds paid to Harvard during that period of noncompliance.
How did Harvard argue for dismissal?
Harvard moved to dismiss the case on several grounds, including:
The government hadn’t demonstrated an ongoing Title VI violation: Its most recent alleged incidents were from March 2025, and Harvard argued that the University’s subsequent reforms further undercut the claims.
The government’s substantive claims fell short: Harvard argued that the complaint failed to adequately allege that the University acted with deliberate indifference toward Jewish and Israeli students on campus, intentionally discriminated against them, or fostered a hostile environment. It also argued that the government couldn’t simply repackage Title VI violations as a contract claim to claw back federal funding.
The government hadn’t followed Title VI’s required process: Harvard challenged whether the government had adequately followed Title VI’s required process (it says the government didn’t actually undertake a “genuine” effort to secure voluntary compliance)
The government’s lawsuit was retaliatory: Harvard argued that the government was punishing the University for rejecting its demands and challenging the administration in court.
What did Judge Stearns rule?
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the lawsuit because in his view, the government hadn’t sufficiently alleged an ongoing Title VI violation.
Stearns noted that the complaint focused “almost entirely” on the 2023-24 academic year, with just three incidents alleged afterward (all in March 2025). Without “diminishing any concern” about those incidents, he found them “too isolated and episodic” to plausibly suggest that “institutionalized noncompliance with Title VI persists at Harvard to this day.”
He also rejected the government’s argument that its claim for retrospective monetary relief during the period of Harvard’s “less contestable” 2023-2024 Title VI noncompliance could overcome the complaint’s failure to allege an ongoing violation.
In response to the government’s concern that it would be “virtually impossible for the United States to win a Title VI” because defendants could simply come into compliance once threatened with funding loss, Stearns wrote that Title VI enforcement is intended “not to penalize” recipients, but to secure compliance.
What didn’t Judge Stearns rule on?
Importantly, the only issue Stearns decided was whether the government had plausibly alleged an ongoing Title VI violation. He said he would “begin (and end)” with that argument. Although he addressed some of the government’s alternative theories in explaining why the case couldn’t proceed, he didn’t resolve those disputes, including:
Whether the complaint established deliberate indifference or intentional discrimination
Whether the government satisfied Title VI’s procedural requirements
Whether the government could, as a general matter, use a breach-of-contract theory to recoup funds paid during an earlier period of alleged noncompliance
Whether the lawsuit was retaliatory
How was this case different from Harvard’s federal funding lawsuit?
This time, the government was suing Harvard. In Harvard’s 2025 federal funding freeze lawsuit, Harvard v. HHS, the University sued the federal government after HHS and other agencies froze or terminated billions in research funding over Harvard’s alleged antisemitism-related Title VI violations. In this case, DOJ v. Harvard, the DOJ sued Harvard over its alleged Title VI noncompliance.
The government sought to avoid the procedural problems that had plagued its funding freeze.
In Harvard v. HHS, federal agencies froze Harvard’s funding before completing the procedures Title VI requires. Harvard made that procedural failure a central argument in challenging the freeze, and U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ultimately ruled the government’s actions unlawful.
In this case, HHS first opened a Title VI investigation in February 2025, issued Harvard a Notice of Violation on June 30, and says it then attempted to secure voluntary compliance before referring the matter to the DOJ for enforcement.
It was pending before a different judge. Harvard v. HHS was heard by Burroughs; DOJ v. Harvard was assigned to U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns (JD ’76), who also presided over two antisemitism Title VI cases against Harvard: Students Against Antisemitism (brought by the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law) and Shabbos Kestenbaum (MTS ‘24), each settled last year.
What’s next?
The immediate result is that the government’s lawsuit is dismissed. But Stearns resolved the case on the question of ongoing noncompliance without needing to consider many of Harvard’s other arguments for dismissal — a ruling University of Richmond School of Law professor Carl Tobias described as “rather narrow.”
Following the Court’s decision, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “the government disagrees with the ruling” and is “assessing next steps.” If the government appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (which it has two months to do), it would need to persuade the court that Stearns read Title VI too narrowly as a forward-looking statute. If successful, the case could be remanded to Stearns for consideration of the arguments he did not reach.
The government appealed its adverse rulings in its federal funding freeze and international student visa eligibility lawsuits against Harvard, both of which are currently before the First Circuit.
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FYIs
Latest FAS Restructuring Round Lays Off 75 Social Sciences Staff
Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has laid off 75 staff across its social sciences unit, affecting more than 30% of social science employees within the scope of the restructuring. Another 15 employees were offered a new or changed role or the option to take a layoff, according to documents obtained by The Crimson.
The cuts included 65 layoffs in the Division of Social Science and 10 at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS). At IQSS, 17 of 27 in-scope positions were affected, including seven employees offered a different role or the option to take a layoff. Some IT support previously provided by IQSS is also shifting to centralized Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT), which was not included in the initial workforce-planning review.
The reductions are part of the broader FAS restructuring aimed at closing its longstanding $350 million structural budget deficit. Under the new “federated” model, administrative functions such as human resources and finance will be consolidated, with staff grouped to support multiple academic units. FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra has said the new administrative structure is expected to be in place by mid-October.
Major restructuring rounds in the Divisions of Science and Arts & Humanities have yet to happen. The Crimson previously reported that FAS could lay off up to 25% of administrative staff in the restructuring.
Pritzker Says U.S. Is Falling Behind China in Research and Innovation
Speaking at a July Aspen Strategy Group forum, Pritzker framed the trend as an economic, national security, and military concern. She urged the U.S. to consider how to avoid falling further behind over the next five to 15 years.
Former Secretary of State and current Stanford Hoover Institution director Condoleezza Rice pushed back, saying she didn’t “completely buy” the dominance of Chinese universities and noting that Chinese leaders still seek to send their children to U.S. universities.
In June 2026, Harvard fell to third overall in the Nature Index behind the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Zhejiang University. It ranked first in health sciences and social sciences but fell outside the top 10 in applied sciences, biological sciences, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, and physical sciences. Although Nature changed its methodology this year, complicating year-over-year comparisons, Harvard’s publication output increased only 0.6% while the database grew 10.8%, meaning it lost ground relative to other institutions.
Vanderbilt-WashU Follow-Up Sociology Report Flags Politicization and Narrowing Research Priorities
A sociology-specific follow-up report to the multi-university report on the state of humanities and humanistic social sciences commissioned by the chancellors of Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis argues that the field has “been compromised, to varying degrees, by the ongoing institutionalization (semi-permanent embedding) of a commitment to political goals that override the search for knowledge.”
Authored by University of Hawai‘i sociology professor Ashley Rubin, the report identifies three main concerns: (1) the growing role of activism- or advocacy-oriented sociology, which at times displaces scientific or “professional sociology”; (2) a narrowing of research toward inequality studies; and (3) censorship of or hostility toward scholars who explore taboo topics, theories, or research questions or produce politically unpopular findings.
As evidence of broader field-level norms, Rubin points to the American Sociological Association’s advocacy and political activity.
The report emphasizes that these trends are uneven and don’t establish a widespread decline in research quality. Rubin says many sociologists continue to produce high-quality work and that evidence of politicized norms is stronger than evidence that those norms have reduced the rigor of published research.
The commission’s primary, cross-disciplinary report was written by a committee of scholars from several universities, including Harvard professor of biological anthropology and human evolutionary biology Joseph Henrich.
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The Crimson: “HBS Alumnus Amit Dixit Establishes MBA Fellowship for Indian Women”
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The Boston Globe: “The Harvard COOP Lost Its Way. Can a New Type of Bookstore Mark a Turning Point?”
The Crimson: “National Labor Relations Board Rejects Harvard Appeal, Finds University Violated Federal Labor Law”
The Crimson: “All Three Dudley Administrators to Depart as Harvard Shutters Community”
The Context Window Podcast: “How People Actually Use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.” — feat. David Deming (PhD ‘10), Dean of Harvard College and economics professor at FAS, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education
Democracy Renovator: “Renovating America's Universities: How to Answer the Secretary of Education's 7 Questions” — by Harvard University professor Danielle Allen (PhD ‘01)
The Coddling Movie (Substack): “Harvard Medical School Tries Healing Itself” — by director of research at the National Association of Scholars David Randall
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The Atlantic: “Why I Quit the Tenure Track” — by former Bates professor Tyler Austin Harper
Columbia Daily Spectator: “Palestinian Students, Faculty Sue Columbia Alleging Systemic Discrimination”
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Yale Daily News: “Why Yale’s Prompt Exploring Identity Was Axed from First-Year Application”
ADL: “Antisemitism Among College Faculty and in Classrooms”
UT Austin Office of the President: “Renewing Our Core Curriculum”
Columbia Daily Spectator: “Columbia Is Reviewing Education Department Institutional Reform Directive”
The Daily Pennsylvanian: “Penn Admissions Releases AI Guidelines for Undergraduate Application Cycle”
Cornell Daily Sun: “Payments Go Out in Financial Aid Price-Fixing Suit, But Cornell Has Yet to Settle”
Jewish Insider: “American Psychological Association Postpones Vote Recognizing Jewish Representation”
Wall Street Journal: “University of Michigan Drops First-Semester Grades to ‘Curb Mental Health Crisis’”
Chronicle of Higher Education: “AI Is a Wicked Problem. That's the University's Specialty.”
New York Times: “Jason Arday, Cambridge Scholar Who Resigned Under Scrutiny, Reported Dead”
Higher Ed Dive: “Education Department: Over 1,900 colleges have overdue data submissions”
Inside Higher Ed: “States Dedicate Funds, Demolish to Shrink Maintenance Backlog”
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Chronicle of Higher Education: “Higher Ed Has Entered the Age of Alignment”
Schoolhouse: “Growing Number of Colleges Partner with Schoolhouse for 2026-27”
PostAGI Podcast: “A Scientific Breakthrough Is Not Something Everyone Already Believes” — podcast episode feat. Good Science Project executive director Stuart Buck (JD ‘12)
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New York Times: “College Has a Political Problem, but It's Not Woke Brainwashing” — op-ed by former Harvard sociology assistant professor Neil Gross
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New York Times: “Republicans Are About to Repeat the Democrats’ Biggest Mistake” — op-ed by Princeton politics professor Gregory Conti and Washington Free Beacon journalist Aaron Sibarium
Harvey: “Webinar: Thinking Critically in an Age of AI” — feat. dean of University of Texas School of Law Robert Chesney (JD ‘97)
City Journal: “Did the Collapse of Tenure Make the Academy Woke?” — op-ed by Manhattan Institute director of higher education policy and senior fellow, John Sailer
Free the Inquiry: “Universities Need Reform. It Shouldn't Matter Who's Telling Them.” — by Jake Klein
Kyle Saunders’s Substack: “‘Different Ways of Knowing’ Means Two Things. Did We Sign Up for the Wrong One?” — by Colorado State University professor Kyle Saunders