Hillel International to Withdraw Brief Supporting Harvard, Citing Internal Review Error

Updated July 23, 2026, at 12:01 a.m.

Hillel International will withdraw its amicus brief supporting Harvard’s fight to protect roughly $2.7 billion in federal funding, a spokesperson for the organization confirmed Wednesday evening.

“The brief was filed without having gone through our internal review process,” Kenneth Baer, a spokesperson for Hillel International, wrote in a statement to The Crimson. “As soon as the court opens in the morning, we will move to withdraw it.”

David Zimmer, who filed the Wednesday brief for Hillel International, declined to comment when reached by phone.

Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum, a former Harvard Divinity School student who later sued the University over alleged pervasive antisemitism, said Hillel International President Adam Lehman told him Wednesday evening he had not seen the brief before it was filed.

Lehman did not respond when reached by phone.

The reversal came just hours after Hillel International filed the 22-page brief with the First Circuit Court of Appeals, where the Trump administration is challenging a ruling that restored billions of dollars in frozen grants to Harvard.

The brief praised the University’s actions to curb antisemitism and urged the appeals court to uphold the ruling, calling the administration’s funding freeze a “draconian one-size-fits-all” response to campus antisemitism.

The brief had been in the works for several weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

[ Read Hillel International’s brief backing Harvard, which it later moved to withdraw. ]

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harvard Hillel Executive Director Rabbi Jason B. Rubenstein ’04 confirmed the organization was not involved in the submission or withdrawal of the brief. Harvard Hillel is independent from Hillel International.

The withdrawal comes amid swift public backlash to the brief. Several prominent Jewish public figures lamented the filing, describing Hillel’s decision to support Harvard’s legal effort as “shocking.”

Kestenbaum took to X and urged donors to stop giving to Hillel and instead support other Jewish organizations, including Chabad. He also alleged that Hillel had discouraged him from suing Harvard. (Harvard settled Kestenbaum’s lawsuit last May.)

Kestenbaum also took particular aim at the timing of the filing, noting that it was submitted on Erev Tisha Ba’av, the eve of a Jewish day of fasting to commemorate the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem.

“How can a company release an amicus and the CEO does not know that it was released?” Kestenbaum said in an interview with The Crimson. “I look forward to Hillel’s retraction, public apology, and clear articulation of how they will fight Harvard University in support of its students instead.”

Hillel International’s brief was part of a year-long legal battle to restore $2.7 billion in federal funding to the University after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 publicly rejected sweeping Trump administration demands last April.

Several other organizations filed their own respective briefs in support of the University Wednesday, including a group of nearly 11,000 Harvard alumni, the American Civil Liberties Union, and more than two-dozen other colleges and Universities.

The University won relief in September, when U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs issued a scathing opinion describing the White House’s moves to withhold funding as “arbitrary and capricious” and antisemitism as “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”

The Trump administration appealed the ruling in December, later arguing that Burroughs’ ruling would create an “absurd” regulatory framework that gave institutions accused of discrimination protections not afforded to other federal contractors.

—Staff writer Theresa F. Bartleme contributed reporting.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.