Jewish student who took on Harvard in court ends lawsuit
(Reuters) - A Jewish student who sued Harvard University for allegedly ignoring antisemitism on campus ended his lawsuit against the Ivy League school on Thursday.
Alexander Kestenbaum, who is known as Shabbos, and Harvard filed a joint stipulation of dismissal in Boston federal court.
It was unclear whether they settled. The dismissal is with prejudice, meaning Kestenbaum cannot sue again.
Lawyers for Kestenbaum and Harvard did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Thursday's dismissal came four months after Harvard promised additional protections for Jewish students, as it resolved two lawsuits claiming it was a hotbed of rampant antisemitism.
The lawsuits had been brought by Students Against Antisemitism, and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Kestenbaum was a plaintiff in the Students Against Antisemitism lawsuit, but did not settle at the time.
He graduated from Harvard Divinity School last year, and has become a growing voice in a Republican-led campaign to root out antisemitism in major American universities.
Harvard is one of the chief targets, and U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has frozen or terminated more than $2.6 billion of the university's federal grants and contracts in recent weeks.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school is suing the Trump administration over grant cutoffs, mainly in medical sciences, calling them an unconstitutional attempt to curtail academic freedom and free speech.
Another Ivy League school, Columbia University, is another prime White House target in its campaign against antisemitism.
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