The Wall Street Journal has broken the story “Harvard Violated Students’ Civil Rights, Trump Administration Finds.” Natalie Andrews and Douglas Belkin report:
The Trump administration informed Harvard University that its investigation found it had violated federal civil-rights law over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students, putting the federal funding of the nation’s oldest university further at risk.
The investigation is the latest in the battle between the White House and Harvard. The Trump administration has sought to make the wealthiest U.S. university exhibit A in its fight against liberal institutions it says didn’t take antisemitism and DEI concerns seriously.
In a letter sent to Harvard President Alan Garber on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal, attorneys for the administration said the investigation found that Harvard knew Jewish and Israeli students felt threatened on its campus and acted with deliberate indifference.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” the letter states. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
Harvard didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
NR quotes more of the letter putting Harvard on notice:
The Monday letter notes that a majority of Jewish students on campus reported experiencing discrimination, while a quarter of them felt physically unsafe. According to the notice, Jewish and Israeli students reported being assaulted, spat on, and having to conceal their Jewish identity from their classmates. One image circulated among the student body showed a dollar sign inside a Star of David. Additionally, anti-Israel stickers were placed around campus, including an Israeli flag with a swastika on it.
The letter also alleged that Harvard failed to respond to antisemitic protests: “The campus was wracked by demonstrations that flagrantly violated the University’s rules of conduct. The demonstrations included calls for genocide and murder, and denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces.” Students who participated in last year’s encampment received “received lax and inconsistent discipline.” OCR wrote, “By the end of the process, even accounting only for the students that were charged, only a fraction received some sort of discipline, and none were suspended.”
The Trump administration said Harvard did not dispute its finding “nor could it,” as “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.”
If this case involved black students and similar facts, Harvard would be out of business. As it is, it will just be inconvenienced before it arrives at an embarrassing agreement assuring the authorities it will do better in the future.
