Harvard got the headline it wanted. On August 13th, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuit accusing the university of failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment and discrimination.

Great news for Harvard’s PR team. Less helpful if the goal is to pretend the last few years never happened, because the judge who tossed the case has his own history on Israel, and it goes back decades.

Before the Bench, Stearns Had an Anti-Israel Record

In 1967, while serving as vice president of the National Student Association, Stearns signed a public letter after the Six-Day War calling for Israel to fully withdraw from territory it had captured. The letter also warned against pro-Israel “pressure groups” influencing U.S. foreign policy. A few years later, Stearns worked for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, and his Israel record became enough of an issue that political opponents started circulating it during the campaign.

He was questioned about the controversy at the time and said he didn’t regret signing the letter, even though he admitted the whole thing had become a headache for the McGovern campaign.

Fast-forward more than 50 years, and Stearns is now ruling on one of the biggest campus antisemitism cases in the country.

That doesn’t prove anything about why he ruled the way he did. But it’s obviously part of the story, especially when his old political record overlaps this directly with the issue now in front of him.

What Stearns Actually Ruled For Harvard

The Trump administration sued Harvard in March, arguing that the university had remained deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment against Jewish and Israeli students. Stearns tossed the case because he said the government hadn’t sufficiently shown that Harvard was still committing an ongoing Title VI violation after being formally notified of the problem.

He didn’t rule that the school had never failed Jewish students. He didn’t rule that antisemitism on campus was made up. He ruled that the government didn’t make this particular case well enough.

That’s a legal win for Harvard. It’s not the same thing as clearing its record.

The Funny Part? Stearns Already Said Harvard Failed Jewish Students

In 2024, Jewish students sued the university over antisemitism on campus. It tried to get that case dismissed too. Stearns refused. He allowed major parts of it to move forward and wrote that Harvard had “failed its Jewish students.”

That alone should put a little cold water on any attempt to sell this latest ruling as some sweeping vindication. The same judge who previously said Jewish students had plausibly been failed by Harvard has now tossed a different case because the government didn’t sufficiently prove that the violation was ongoing. Those two things can both be true. And they also make the full picture a lot less flattering for Harvard than the headline suggests.

Harvard Still Has the Same Record

One lawsuit getting dismissed doesn’t magically turn the last few years into a misunderstanding. Harvard has faced complaints from Jewish students, lawsuits, investigations, chaotic protests and repeated criticism over how it enforced its own rules. It has retained faculty members who have displayed clear and extreme bias against Israel and Zionism, such as Diana Buttu and Rosie Bsheer (who was even removed from a leadership position as a result).

The university has announced reforms. It has settled litigation. It has acknowledged serious problems. None of that disappears because one federal complaint didn’t survive. In fact, Stearns’s own earlier ruling is part of that record.

So Harvard can absolutely call this a courtroom win. Its lawyers got the case tossed. But when the same judge has previously written that Harvard “failed its Jewish students,” the victory is a lot narrower than the clean headline makes it sound.

And when that judge also has a documented anti-Israel political history stretching back decades, his background is going to attract scrutiny too. Not because it proves bias. But because context still counts.