Judge who tossed Harvard antisemitism suits once signed anti-Israel ads as a student activist

Federal judge Richard Gaylore Stearns, who recently dismissed a series of antisemitism lawsuits targeting Harvard, MIT and a Harvard Business School student assaulted by protesters, has a documented history as a student anti-Israel and anti-war activist. In the early 1970s he served as a campaign aide to Senator George McGovern and, as vice-president of the United States National Student Association, signed 1967 newspaper advertisements demanding a total Israeli military withdrawal from territories captured in the Six-Day War.

Those ads, placed by groups such as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Middle East and The Cambridge Committee Calling for Respect and Humility, portrayed Israel as a destabilizing force and warned that pro-Israel pressure groups harmed American interests. The revelations, highlighted by one outlet's editorial writer, revived criticism that Stearns’ past positions may bias his recent judgments, which have favored Harvard in high-profile antisemitism cases.

Contemporary commentary notes that Republican congressmen William Springer and Carleton King entered the issue into the Congressional Record during the 1972 campaign. Stearns later told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency he did not regret signing the 1967 ad, though he called it “embarrassing” for the McGovern campaign.