‘Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies … has enabled anti-Semitism to fester,’ the administration writes
Harvard University’s treatment of Jewish and Israeli students violated civil rights law, putting its federal funding at risk, the Trump administration told the Ivy League school on Monday.
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,” the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism wrote in its letter. It detailed findings from a Title VI investigation conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights, noting that a quarter of Jewish students reported feeling physically unsafe and anti-Semitic incidents, such as Jewish and Israeli students being assaulted and spat on.
The violation notice is the Trump administration’s latest escalation in its battle with Harvard over campus anti-Semitism, having already frozen nearly $3 billion in federal funding, revoked the school’s authorization to host international students, and proposed removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status. The move also typically precedes either a lawsuit from the Department of Justice or a resolution with the university, though it appears Harvard is weighing a deal.
“Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies—where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group 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 letter reads. Failing to “institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources.”
Harvard spokeswoman Sarah Kennedy-O’Reilly said the university shared its recently published anti-Semitism task force report with the Trump administration. Though the report details pervasive anti-Semitism at Harvard, Kennedy-O’Reilly said the school “strongly disagrees” with the administration’s findings.
“Harvard is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings,” she told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “Harvard has made significant strides to combat bigotry, hate and bias,” she added. “We are not alone in confronting this challenge and recognize that this work is ongoing.”
“In responding to the government’s investigation, Harvard not only shared its comprehensive and retrospective Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Report but also outlined the ways that it has strengthened policies, disciplined those who violate them, encouraged civil discourse, and promoted open, respectful dialogue,” Kennedy-O’Reilly said in a statement. “Harvard is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government’s findings.”
The Trump administration’s Monday letter, however, notes that “Harvard did not dispute our findings of fact, nor could it.”
The administration pointed to a number of examples of anti-Semitic incidents that Jewish and Israeli students faced at Harvard, noting that some “hid their kippahs for fear of being harassed and concealed their Jewish identity from classmates for fear of ostracization.” It called out images of anti-Semitic tropes that circulated, such as one showing a dollar sign inside a Star of David and stickers of the Israeli flag with a swastika in place of the Star of David.
The letter also pointed to demonstrations that “denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces” as well as the anti-Israel encampments that “instilled fear in, and disrupted the studies of, Jewish and Israeli students.”
“Even worse, individuals who participated in the encampment received lax and inconsistent discipline—and as discipline was reviewed by higher levels among the faculty, it was often downgraded,” (emphasis theirs), the letter read.
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