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A federal judge dismissed Harvard Business School graduate Yoav Segev’s discrimination lawsuit against Harvard, ruling on Thursday that Segev failed to show he experienced severe and pervasive antisemitism on campus.

Segev sued in July over the University’s response to an alleged assault he faced at a pro-Palestine protest outside the Business School in October 2023. Segev alleged that Harvard had violated his rights under Title VI, the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination based on shared ancestry, by not meaningfully disciplining two student-employees involved in the incident.

Harvard moved to dismiss Segev’s claims in October. On Thursday, Stearns sided with the University, writing that Segev failed to provide sufficient evidence of any of the claims in his suit.

“While the court does not condone an assault on a fellow student by campus protestors, nothing in the Amended Complaint plausibly supports the notion that his assailants’ conduct was motivated by race-based antisemitism,” Stearns wrote.

He dismissed Segev’s complaint without prejudice, meaning that Segev may choose to sue again.

Stearns’ order is the latest victory for Harvard in a series of lawsuits accusing the school of failing to combat antisemitism on its campus following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza. A previous lawsuit, filed by alumni in February 2024, was also dismissed by a judge, who ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing.

But Harvard has chosen to settle many of the lawsuits outside the courtroom. In January, it struck agreements with two groups that had sued over Title VI claims, promising to clarify its nondiscrimination protections for Jewish and Israeli students, partner with an Israeli university, and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.

Harvard reached an additional, confidential settlement in May with Divinity School graduate Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum. Originally a plaintiff in one of the suits settled in January, Kestenbaum had opted to continue suing Harvard under different counsel, citing dissatisfaction with the terms of the settlement. Segev attempted to join Kestenbaum’s lawsuit, but his bid was turned down by a judge in April.

Although several of the complaints cited the October 2023 incident as evidence of antisemitism on campus, Thursday’s motion marks the first time that a judge has ruled on whether or not the protesters’ actions were antisemitic. A separate assault and battery case against the two students involved in the incident was dropped after both agreed to participate in a pretrial diversionary program.

At the 2023 die-in, Segev was pushed out of the crowd by a group of protesters after he attempted to film participants. Segev alleged in his suit that the incident was motivated by antisemitism, a claim that Stearns roundly rejected.

He was unconvinced by Segev’s claim that the protesters’ use of controversial pro-Palestine slogans — including “from the river to the sea” — could prove that they were motivated by antisemitism. Segev’s complaint did not show that protesters viewed the slogans as antisemitic, Stearns wrote.

Even if the protesters’ ejection of Segev was based on a bracelet he wore to show his support for Israel, Segev could not demonstrate they were “acting based on antisemitism rather than disagreement with the underlying political message,” Stearns wrote.

Stearns also dismissed the charges of conspiracy that Segev brought against both Harvard and the University’s police department for allegedly failing to fully cooperate with a federal investigation of the October 2023 incident, writing in the order that, “nothing in the Amended Complaint plausibly establishes the existence of a conspiracy.”

Stearns rejected Segev’s claim in the suit that he had been further subjected to antisemitic harassment at a student event he attempted to attend in November 2023, where he alleged that administrators kept a separate list of Jewish students, labelling them as “peaceful” or “protestors.”

While Stearns declined to rule on whether the event was an instance of antisemitism, he argued that Harvard’s response to a single incident was insufficient to show the “severe and pervasive harassment” that Segev had claimed.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com.