As rumors swirl that Harvard University will soon capitulate to the Trump administration and pay a $500 million fine, it’s important to speak out against university officials who bow down to authoritarianism. I’ve argued for why Columbia and Brown were wrong to settle, how their agreements endanger academic freedom, and why these agreements leave universities more vulnerable to future attacks by the Trump regime.

But it is also important to reiterate the fact that the reasons cited by the Trump administration for why Harvard must pay this money are lies. The Trump administration’s assertion that Harvard has committed antisemitic discrimination against Jews is a series of falsehoods fabricated by an antisemitic president and his obedient bureaucrats who seek to punish their perceived political enemies on fraudulent grounds.

On June 30, 2025, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism issued the finding that “Harvard University is in violent violation of Title VI.” No one knows what a “violent” violation is, since this bizarre term has never been used before, but the result was inevitable. Since Harvard had already been punished for imagined antisemitism far more harshly than any college in American history, with billions of dollars in grants cut off without due process, the finding of guilt was an inevitable ex post facto determination.

Still, it’s important to examine this absurd finding of antisemitism at Harvard in depth, because it sets a standard that all colleges will be expected to obey, and because it requires the worst attacks on free speech ever ordered by the federal government.

Most of the government’s report comes not from any investigation of its own, but from Harvard’s own self-examination of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration’s Notice of Violation against Harvard is almost comical for its lack of evidence of any wrongdoing committed by Harvard.

The Trump administration concluded, “We find that these and other actions contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard,” citing a large number of cases of people engaged in peaceful expression, including several silent “study-in” protests at Harvard libraries. Incredibly, Harvard’s unjustifiable repression of silent, nondisruptive protests, which included banning dozens of students and faculty from the library, was used by the government as evidence that Harvard has done too little to protect Jewish students.

When carrying a piece of paper into a library is punished by Harvard, it’s a travesty. When Harvard punishes its students and faculty for carrying a piece of paper into a library and this is cited by the government as insufficiently repressive of free speech, it’s a disaster.

This also shows why Harvard may be willing to cut a deal with the government, despite the humiliation required to bow down before Trump: The repression demanded by the Trump regime is precisely what the Harvard administration has inflicted upon its students and faculty and wants to expand. Censorship is not an unfortunate side effect of any deal with Trump; it may be Harvard’s goal to use this agreement to provide an excuse for crushing dissent even more than it already has.

The other primary evidence against Harvard cited by the Trump administration was a 2024 Harvard survey of 2,295 students, faculty and staff that found 61 percent of Jewish respondents felt there were academic or professional repercussions for expressing their political beliefs, and 15 percent of Jewish respondents said they did not feel physically safe on campus. But the Notice of Violation completely omits the fact that the same survey found that a much higher proportion of Muslims feared professional repercussions (92 percent) and feared for their physical safety (47 percent).

The surveys indicate that Islamophobia at Harvard is a far worse problem than antisemitism. Yet Harvard hasn’t taken any significant actions against Islamophobia, and Harvard hasn’t adopted a new definition of Islamophobia to prohibit double standards in criticizing Muslim nations. And the Trump administration has done nothing despite the far greater fears expressed by Muslims at Harvard.

Is there antisemitism at Harvard? Sure, there’s antisemitism everywhere, just as there is racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia and every other form of bigotry. But we don’t hold universities responsible for banning these ideas under threat of massive government retaliation. In fact, we demand exactly the opposite: Colleges must protect hateful ideas and refuse to censor them.

Far from being “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitism as the Notice of Violation claims, Harvard has bent over backward to suppress free speech, ban protests, denounce its own students and faculty, and punish people without due process, all in the name of censoring criticism of Israel. It’s difficult to name an American college that has done more to suppress free speech in the name of fighting “antisemitism” than Harvard, but no amount of repression will ever satisfy the Trump regime.

I don’t want people to think that Harvard as an institution is free from antisemitism. Harvard has indeed engaged in antisemitism and deserves condemnation for doing so. In April, Harvard administrators banned Jews from holding a Passover seder, by far the most clear-cut example of institutional antisemitism at Harvard. Banning Jews from conducting a religious ceremony on campus is clearly antisemitic. But in this case, Harvard’s antisemitism was directed at Jews critical of Israel, so naturally the Trump administration completely ignores it.

Even though it’s wrong for Harvard to try to suppress Jewish religious activities for political reasons, this isolated example of antisemitic repression would not justify a government investigation, let alone a finding of a “violent violation.” Private colleges should have wide discretion to make bad decisions, even those that violate their own standards of free expression and the religious rights of their students, without being subjected to government penalties.

Likewise, the anti-Palestinian bias evident in Harvard’s repression of pro-Palestinian protests on campus is also a clear double standard and violation of Title VI’s rules protecting students based on national origin. But moral criticism, not government control, is the best way to fix the problem.

I’ve argued that the repressive demands made against Harvard by the Trump regime are a blueprint for the obedience all colleges will be required to observe. The same is true of the fake “antisemitism” finding against Harvard, which provides a model for what future Title VI “investigations” will be. The government will make a list of every protest and controversial view expressed on a campus, quote a few right-wing students looking for a Columbia-style payday about how they are trembling in fear at hearing ideas they don’t like, and conclude that the university failed to do enough to protect the sensitive feelings of conservative students against the horrors of being criticized.

Although this charade of antidiscrimination law has begun with the Trump administration pretending to care about antisemitism, it won’t be long before men start complaining about the hostile environment caused by feminists, white guys express their fear of anyone uttering the word “diversity” and, of course, all the straight people and devout Christians who are oppressed by the gays. If this kind of ridiculous evidence of “harassment” is accepted against a university for allowing free speech, then it can be equally applied by the Trump administration to any college that permits students and faculty to criticize right-wing dogmas about race, gender or sexuality.

If Harvard submits to the Trump administration, it will be endangering its own finances, abandoning the values of academic freedom and betraying its students and faculty. But even worse, Harvard’s obedience will give the Trump administration license to pursue every college, for every implausible reason, until they submit.