Fear of the new Trump administration, legal setbacks and hypocrisy perceived by faculty and donors appear to be creating a new dawn at Harvard University, with Jewish and conservative students each winning new campus protections a day apart.

Students Against Antisemitism and the Ivy announced a legal settlement Tuesday, including undisclosed "monetary terms," in its "deliberate indifference" lawsuit against Harvard, which a President Clinton-nominated federal judge greenlit last fall. 

While Harvard admitted no wrongdoing, the Ivy League college agreed to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which includes anti-Zionist discrimination, in its anti-discrimination policy and antisemitism training for students and staff.

An FAQ page will warn that "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any Harvard activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists" or demanding Jews "state a position on Israel or Zionism" can violate its policy.

Critics of legally recognizing the IHRA definition – not at issue at Harvard – include prominent Democrats and Republicans and an ideological cross-section of free speech groups, who argue it chills constitutionally protected speech and creates "a new speech code." 

As they were walking into a Job Creators Network (JCN) event at the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill on Wednesday on "Protecting Conservative Voices at Harvard," Harvard Salient leaders learned the university had ordered faculty deans who govern the 12 undergraduate residential houses to let them distribute their conservative campus newspaper door-to-door.

They spent nearly a year lobbying their way up the administrative chain to overrule a handful of deans who banned the practice in their buildings, an outcome that Salient President Sarah Steele called "delicate" despite an upward swing for the newspaper, which now has prime office space and will cohost its second annual conference on campus next month.

Harvard responded to a query from Just the News but did not confirm by deadline what it told the faculty deans regarding the newspaper.

Its settlement with Jewish students marks another victory for pro-Israel advocates in the year since Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned following her disastrous congressional testimony on the college's tolerance for genocidal campus slogans and plagiarism allegations.

Filed Tuesday with U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns, who twice knocked down the university's attempts to get out of the litigation, the motion for dismissal with prejudice is accompanied by a related settlement and dismissal of litigation by The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and its Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education.

The parties said the settlement obligations build on Harvard's own measures over the past year, ensuring that "discrimination and harassment against Jewish and Israeli students are treated in the same manner and with the same urgency as all protected groups."

The newly applied IHRA antisemitism definition is paired with examples from the Department of Education's 2021 and 2024 guidance. Harvard's new FAQ document will detail "discriminatory or harassing conduct that targets Jews, Israelis, or Zionists" that may violate its antidiscrimination policy.

It will publish annually a report on its response to discrimination based on "Title VI-protected traits" since October 2023, the month of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians and anti-Israel responses on American campuses including Harvard.

The university will also hire a "designated individual" in the Office for Community Conduct to "consult on all complaints of antisemitism and supervise the preparation of the annual reports required under both settlements" as well as ensure the policies apply "a single standard for all students, including Jewish and Israeli students."

It's adding resources "to the study of antisemitism" including an annual symposium and "official partnership with a university in Israel," training by an expert in the IHRA definition and "examples to all OCC staff involved in reviewing complaints of discrimination," and paying "certain SAA members." (Brandeis's JAFE members also got undisclosed money.)

'Everywhere we go, there's a heckler's veto'

Founded in 1981 as a "moderate to conservative" Ivy League publication, the Harvard Salient resumed publication in 2021 after a hiatus dating to the Obama administration, sliding thousands of copies under every dorm and office door on campus.

It added heavy-hitters to its board last month including former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta as chair and JCN CEO Alfredo Ortiz as director, who together hosted Wednesday's event. The newspaper's president at the birth of the "critical legal movement," Acosta said he used to meet amicably with the leader of its liberal rival, The Perspective, now defunct.

The 22-staffer media organization now has its own building in Harvard Square, nicknamed "Freedom Tower," which Vice President Victoria Li said Ortiz helped them obtain because "everywhere we go, there's a heckler's veto." She told Just the News it costs about $80,000 a year to lease, made possible by their successful fundraising.

That's where the Salient produces its six print issues a year and semi-daily Substack articles, hosts its own events and acts as a "hub" for other organizations, including a Jewish study group and a nonpartisan debate society, according to Steele, who interrupted her studies for nine years to work as a professional ballerina in D.C.

While it tables every year at the recruitment fair alongside the powerhouse daily The Crimson, "the social pressure is tremendous" not to publicly associate even by scanning its QR code, she said. Having its own building is a big help: "You have to be part of the furniture." 

It restarted amid a "crescendo" of liberal "uniformity" and one writer even got a "public death threat" from another student, and praise tended to come off the record, Steele said.

The Salient lets writers use pen names to "allow for sincere and open discourse," the website says, with one going by "Jane Austen." Writer Caleb Chung said people often ask something like "why you don't transfer to Hillsdale," the conservative college.  

Sliding copies under residents' doors is necessary on a campus where their newspapers in public spaces were often gleefully trashed and students were afraid to be seen reading them, Salient Managing Editor Richard Rodgers, a Navy veteran, told Just the News. 

Steele believes the faculty deans who banned distribution in their dorms, which house hundreds of students each, caved to student complaints "out of convenience" while telling Salient staff the newspaper was a fire hazard or "environmentally unfriendly" or, falsely, that the ban applied to all publications, not just theirs.

It once spent 36 hours on probation, with Salient staff protesting that "students receive every other publication without complaint," she said. Harvard then actually banned all publications rather than permit the Salient, Rodgers said. 

The newspaper's leaders are sanguine on Harvard's new leadership under President Alan Garber. The outstanding question is the lower levels of the administration, Steele said.

Ortiz lamented that conservatives have "ceded the Ivy League to the liberal left" even as Harvard continues pumping out the biggest leaders in America. "The more we just kind of let it go, the more this kind of social-left malaise is going to infect the country."