WASHINGTON (NewsNation) — The Trump administration told Harvard University on Monday that an investigation had concluded the school was in “violent violation” of a civil rights law over its failure to protect Jewish students.
The nation’s oldest university must “immediately” reform or it will be stripped of all federal funding, according to a new letter sent to the school and viewed by NewsNation.
The letter alleges the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights found the Ivy League institution had infringed Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin.
The letter was sent to Harvard President Dr. Alan Garber by members of President Donald Trump’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.
HHS OCR determined the university “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” following the Hamas attack on Israel in Oct. 2023. The office noted that many of those people “reported experiencing negative bias or discrimination on campus.”
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The administration also underscored an incident in which images “that trafficked in obvious anti-Semitic tropes, including one that showed a dollar sign inside a Star of David,” were widely circulated among the Harvard community.
The announcement is the White House’s latest escalation as it exerts pressure on some of the nation’s elite universities to cooperate with its ultimatums. Since April, the government has moved to freeze nearly $3 billion in federal funding to Harvard and is threatening to cut all of it if the college fails to act.
Harvard has forcefully rejected Trump’s demands, which it says amount to an attempt to destroy the storied institution’s academic freedom. In April, as tensions between the two sides were rising, Gerber published an open letter in which he cast the administration’s efforts as a quest for “direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”
Gerber added: “No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
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But now, the Trump administration is ramping up the situation again.
“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,” officials said in the Monday letter.
“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,” the officials added.
Harvard rejected the Trump administration’s findings, saying not only has it shared its own comprehensive report with the government on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias but also outlined ways it has strengthened its polices and disciplined those who breach them.
“Antisemitism is a serious problem and no matter the context, it is unacceptable,” the university said in a statement to NewsNation. “Harvard has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism in its community.
“Harvard has made significant strides to combat bigotry, hate and bias. We are not alone in confronting this challenge and recognize that this work is ongoing. We remain committed to ensuring members of our Jewish and Israeli community are embraced, respected, and can thrive at Harvard.”
