Watchdog lawyer presses for debt documents to be revised
The disclosure to potential investors in documents for Harvard’s planned new $675 million tax-exempt bond offering doesn’t give enough warning about the risks, a watchdog group says.
The National Jewish Advocacy Center, a nonprofit legal group that works to combat anti-Semitism, wrote on Monday, March 30 to lawyers working on the bond offering.
“We write regarding potentially materially inadequate disclosure in the Preliminary Official Statement,” says the letter, signed by Marc Greendorfer and shared with the Washington Free Beacon, warning that the statement, “fails to provide sufficient disclosure concerning Harvard University’s role in fostering antisemitism and the resulting financial, regulatory, and reputational risks to investors.”
“Public reporting, including recent coverage by Ira Stoll in the Free Beacon, outlines significant litigation and governmental risks facing Harvard, including a newly filed lawsuit by the United States Department of Justice. In addition, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s report, ‘How Campuses Became Hotbeds: The Radical Rise of Antisemitism on College Campuses,’ and its 2024 predecessor House report, ‘Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed,’ document extensive evidence of antisemitism at Harvard, referencing the University’s culpability dozens of times. Numerous private lawsuits have also been filed by individuals alleging antisemitic discrimination,” the letter says.
“Despite this,” the letter continues, the offering document “contains only conclusory, boilerplate disclosure. It provides no meaningful analysis of the scope, likelihood, or magnitude of these risks. It omits discussion of the House reports, fails to address the potential consequences of adverse outcomes in federal litigation (including risks to approximately $2.2 billion in research funding), does not analyze the financial impact of a potential loss of 501(c)(3) status or additional governmental funding and does not meaningfully address ongoing reputational harm. These risks are not speculative; they have occurred and will continue to occur.”
The letter says that “boilerplate disclosure is inadequate.”
“Relevant securities laws’ anti-fraud provisions apply and require materially complete and accurate disclosure,” the letter says, urging Harvard and its bankers “to promptly revise and expand” the offering document “to ensure that investors are fully informed of these material risks.”
“While disclosure need not be exhaustive and shouldn’t be speculative, it must be substantive and specific,” the letter says. “We hope this matter can be resolved promptly and without the need for formal proceedings. However, if it is not addressed in a timely manner, we are prepared to pursue all available legal remedies.”
The Massachusetts Development Finance Agency did not provide a response to a query about the disclosure issue. Key staffers working on the offering at Harvard, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley also did not respond to a query about the letter and whether they plan to revise the offering document to provide more robust disclosure.
It’s the second legal issue to arise related to the offering. Earlier this week, the Free Beacon reported that some of the nation’s foremost legal scholars expressed concerns about the state’s requirement that Harvard “agrees that no part of the Project, so long as it is owned or controlled by the Institution, shall be used for any sectarian instruction or as a place of religious worship or in connection with any part of a program of a school or department of divinity for any religious denomination.” Law professors said that amounted to discrimination that unconstitutionally interferes with the free exercise guaranteed by the First Amendment as interpreted by recent rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Harvard has been upping its borrowing in recent years as its finances have come under pressure amid an outbreak of anti-Semitism and a concomitant decline of intellectual rigor and vitality on the campus. The federal government sued Harvard March 20, 2026, over what the Justice Department’s complaint calls the university’s “toothless non-response to the ongoing relentless antisemitic on-campus discrimination.” Harvard has insisted it is in compliance with the antidiscrimination laws and blamed the Trump administration, even though at least two federal judges have been critical of Harvard’s response to the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. “Harvard failed its Jewish students,” Judge Richard Stearns found in August 2024. And even Judge Allison Burroughs, who found in Harvard’s favor at trial in an admissions case in which she was later overturned by the Supreme Court, has ruled, “It is clear, even based solely on Harvard’s own admissions, that Harvard has been plagued by antisemitism in recent years and could (and should) have done a better job of dealing with the issue … Harvard was wrong to tolerate hateful behavior for as long as it did.”
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