Harvard has lost a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by six Jewish students accusing the school of allowing “severe and pervasive” antisemitism on campus, marking a major setback for the Ivy League university.

The district judge behind the decision, Richard Stearns, wrote in a 25-page ruling on Tuesday that Harvard neglected to address “an eruption of antisemitism” on campus “in many instances.”

“In other words, the facts as pled show that Harvard failed its Jewish students,” he added. The judge also noted he was “dubious” that the Ivy League university could claim that the violent anti-Israel protests were protected by the First Amendment. 

The case will now move through the court system, serving as a blow to the university, which has tried to defend its administration’s efforts to protect Jewish students on campus.  

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Shabbos Kestenbaum, celebrated the judge’s decision in a post on X. “Onward to victory! Today, a judge ruled that our lawsuit against Harvard WILL go to trial! Jewish students will continue to speak up. Am Yisroel Chai!” he wrote. 

He commented further in a second post: “The judge recognized what Jewish students have been saying for months: Harvard has normalized, tolerated, and accepted antisemitism on its campus. We will hold every last America and Jew hater accountable.” 

The lawsuit was filed in January by several students claiming that the school failed to address rampant antisemitism on Harvard’s campus in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7. 

The complaint seeks to order Harvard to remove faculty members and administrators who participated in spreading antisemitism on campus and to hold offending students similarly accountable. 

The civil rights law at the center of the lawsuit that bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin — Title VI of the Civil Rights act of 1964 — is the same law being used in other lawsuits filed against New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, Berkeley. 

Judge Stearns’s ruling comes just a few days after he opted to dismiss a similar lawsuit waged against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his ruling in that case, he noted that “despite MIT’s failure of clairvoyance, it did respond with a perhaps overly measured but nonetheless consistent sense of purpose in returning civil order and discourse to its campus.”

Columbia’s Jewish alumni association pitched its support for the Jewish students behind the Harvard lawsuit and used the ruling as an opportunity to call out its alma mater. “Congrats to @ShabbosK and Students Against Campus Antisemitism for this important win in the long fight to hold @Harvard  accountable,” the group wrote on X. 

“@Columbia leaders! Are you paying attention?? Don’t wait to be sued — even more than you already have been — to do the right thing,” it added.

Harvard has not yet responded to the Sun’s request for comment.