Washington — The Trump administration informed Harvard University on Monday that it found the elite school violated federal civil rights law through its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students on campus and warned that a failure by the university to enact certain changes “immediately” would put at risk its federal financial resources.
Top Trump administration officials at the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Education, as well as the General Services Administration, notified Harvard of the findings of an investigation into alleged antisemitism at the school and concluded that it is in “violent violation” of a provision of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs that receive federal assistance.
“Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies — where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group identity and not individual merit — has enabled anti-Semitism to fester on Harvard’s campus and has led a once great institution to humiliation, offering remedial math and forcing Jewish students to hide their identities and ancestral stories,” the administration officials, which make up the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, wrote.
They warned that a failure to “institute adequate changes immediately” would lead to a loss of federal financial resources to Harvard and “continue to affect” the university’s relationship with the federal government.
The Trump administration has been engaged in an ongoing battle with Harvard and mounted efforts to punish the school on multiple fronts. Agencies have frozen billions of dollars in grants and contracts to the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university and revoked its ability to enroll foreign students. Harvard has sued the administration over its efforts, and a federal judge temporarily blocked the moves related to international students. President Trump has also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and the university is facing numerous investigations from across the federal government.
Many of the sanctions stem from what administration officials have said is the school’s failure to condemn antisemitism and protect Jewish students on campus. But the Trump administration has also taken aim at Harvard’s hiring and admissions practices, and in April, it made a series of 10 demands in a letter to university leadership. Among the changes government officials said Harvard needs to undertake are a discontinuation of its diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs and policies; implementation of merit-based admissions and hiring policies; and disclosure of all foreign funding sources.
Harvard bucked the administration’s demands, which its president, Alan Garber, said exceed the power of the federal government.
In its latest letter to Garber related to the civil rights investigation, led by the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services, federal officials accused Harvard of “being among the most prominent and visible breeding ground for race discrimination.” They cited the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling that ended affirmative action programs in higher education, which arose from a challenge to Harvard’s policies.
“Any institution that refuses to meet its duties under federal law may not receive a wide range of federal privileges,” they said.
The letter is signed by Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights; Sean Keveney, acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services; Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner for Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration; and Thomas Wheeler, acting general counsel at the Department of Education.
The officials said its investigation found that a quarter of Jewish students felt physically unsafe on the Ivy League campus, and Jewish and Israeli students were assaulted and spit on. They also cited a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on Harvard Yard last year that “instilled fear in, and disrupted the studies of, Jewish and Israeli students.”
The Trump administration said it found that “Harvard has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff.”
Amid the ongoing fight with Harvard, Mr. Trump hinted earlier this month that his administration had been in talks with the university, writing on social media that it was “very possible that a Deal will be announced over the next week or so.”
“They have acted extremely appropriately during these negotiations, and appear to be committed to doing what is right,” the president wrote. “If a Settlement is made on the basis that is currently being discussed, it will be ‘mindbogglingly’ HISTORIC, and very good for our Country.”
Mr. Trump did not provide any further details about the possible settlement or what it would resolve.
Weijia Jiang
contributed to this report.
