The GOP-led House is investigating Harvard University’s resistance to comply with civil rights laws.
Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., chairwoman of House Republican Leadership, announced the probe Wednesday due to “Harvard’s potentially improper use of federal funds.”
The two lawmakers sent a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber requesting documents and communications to aid the investigation. They also reserved the right to request transcribed interviews with university employees.
“The Committee requests documents and communications to inform its oversight of this matter, and to determine whether legislation is necessary to ensure that institutions of higher education receiving federal financial assistance are no longer able to violate the law while lucratively benefiting from the generosity of the American people,” Comer and Stefanik wrote.
The lawmakers pointed out that Harvard received “federal funding of $686 million [that] made up approximately 68% of total sponsored revenue” despite a “massive $53.2 billion endowment [that] provided $2.4 billion in total revenue for its 2024 fiscal year.
“Even as Harvard is apparently preparing to reject all federal financial assistance so it can avoid complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Harvard has received enormous sums from foreign sources, including from authoritarian governments,” the lawmakers wrote.
“In addition to Harvard’s disregard for Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Harvard also thumbs its nose at Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and its protections from sex based discrimination for institutions of higher education receiving federal financial assistance. Harvard permits men to compete in women’s athletic events, and use women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas.”
Last week, the Trump administration informed Harvard that the school would lose federal funding if it did not abide by a series of demands concerning protesters and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Harvard University President Alan Garber on Monday said the university would not comply with the administration’s demands to end DEI programs or expel pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“Instead of working with the government, you wrote to the Harvard community claiming that efforts to comply with basic civil rights law obligations would ‘surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,'” Comer and Stefanik wrote in their letter to Garber.
“Harvard is apparently so unable or unwilling to prevent unlawful discrimination that the institution, at your direction, is refusing to enter into a reasonable settlement agreement proposed by federal officials intended to put Harvard back in compliance with the law. No matter how entitled your behavior, no institution is entitled to violate the law.”
Comer and Stefanik wrote that “[i]t should come as no surprise that Harvard would continue to advocate for illegal discrimination and violate its obligations under the law, as it has a long, consistent history of defending racial discrimination and antisemitic activities on campus.”
“Harvard once placed quotas on the number of Jewish students it would admit,” they added. “And its predilection toward racial discrimination didn’t end with the civil rights era.
“Indeed, Harvard recently — merely two years ago — fought all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to defend the institution’s desire to discriminate on the basis of race in admissions programs, which were found to have violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
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