The Trump administration on Monday informed Harvard University that the government found it in “violent violation” of a federal civil rights law guaranteeing the protection of Jewish students on campus, putting the university’s federal funding in jeopardy.

The Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a multi-agency group led by the Justice Department, announced findings that Harvard failed to keep Jewish students safe, violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.  Failure to address concerns “immediately” will result in the loss of “all” federal funding, the DOJ, as well as the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, promised in a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber that was viewed by the Washington Examiner.

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“Harvard may, of course, continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again,” the letter said. “As history has proven, the failure to face the reality of anti-Semitism can have catastrophic effects. The Holocaust engulfed Europe due to the ‘[d]isbelief, incredulity, and denial on the part of both victims and onlookers’ which ‘worked to the advantage of those who wanted to eradicate the Jews.’”

The letter accused Harvard’s leadership of being “in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”

The majority of Jewish students reported experiencing discrimination on campus, while a quarter felt physically unsafe, according to the task force. It reported that Jewish students, including those assaulted and spit on, concealed their ethnicity from classmates for fear of being ostracized. 

The letter credited the turmoil to Harvard’s commitment to “racial hierarchies — where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group identity and not individual merit — has enabled anti-Semitism to fester on Harvard’s campus.” 

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has made Harvard its prime example of what will happen to academic institutions that are reliant on federal funding if they are accused of unduly tolerating rampant antisemitism on campus. Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in January 2024, partly due to declining to say during a congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews violated the university’s rules on bullying and harassment.

The White House’s latest action against Harvard comes after it has pulled billions of dollars in grants and other federal funding to the university amid internal reports from the institution that the existence of many Jewish and Israeli students on campus had become “triggering” to pro-Palestinian peers who had turned their classmates into social pariahs due to their ethnicity.

Harvard has broadly continued to resist calls for wholesale reform, filing multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration and arguing the White House has overstepped its authority and encroached on the university’s right to free speech. However, Garber has at times sounded reconciliatory tones with Trump, conceding that the university has a “real problem” with antisemitism.

HARVARD APOLOGIZES, PROMISES CHANGE AFTER INTERNAL REPORTS ON ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS

Earlier this month, Trump signaled the feud could be coming to an end, saying, “It is very possible that a deal will be announced over the next week or so.”

“Many people have been asking what is going on with Harvard University and their large-scale improprieties that we have been addressing, looking for a solution,” Trump said on June 20. “We have been working closely with Harvard, and it is very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so. They have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations and appear to be committed to doing what is right. If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country.”