Harvard University is in trouble with the Department of Health and Human Services. In a move separate from their loss of billions in federal funding, the Office for Civil Rights “set forth a series of demands.” University officials need to cough up any and all notes and drafts they have for a long overdue report on campus antisemitism.
Antisemitism at Harvard
Harvard University thinks their ivy covered stone walls will protect them from President Donald Trump. Their reluctance to cooperate with the administration lost them billions in federal funds.
They lost billions more along with their tax exempt status and are about to lose the right to enroll foreign students.
In a totally separate dispute, they’ve also been sitting on a very sensitive report. One detailing events of antisemitism on campus.
Either Harvard has had the report ready for a long time and suppressed it or they never even started working on it.
Health and Human Services, now under the direction of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., runs the Office for Civil Rights. The press just got their hands on a copy of a letter they sent to the Ivy League institution.
It “set forth a series of demands, including that they be sent any reports written by Harvard University’s antisemitism task force.”
All the notes, too
If the report or reports never got finalized, that’s okay. OCR wants to see “any drafts of those reports.” Also, “the names of anyone involved in preparing and editing the report.”
The letter was dated “almost a week after Harvard president Alan Garber said the school would not comply with a list of sweeping demands from the Trump administration.”
Trump’s response to that act of open defiance was “pulling $2.2 billion in funding.” Then, on Wednesday, April 16, “the administration asked the Internal Revenue Service to start the process of revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status.” Ability to enroll foreign students is the next thing to go.
The antisemitism task force Harvard had been forced to assemble “has been plagued by problems throughout its short existence.” They promised to issue a final set of findings “in the ‘early fall‘ of 2024, yet the report has still not been released.”
Co-chair Derek J. Penslar “has publicly minimized Harvard’s antisemitism problem, rejected the definition used by the U.S. government in recent years of antisemitism as too broad, invoked the need for the concept of settler colonialism in analyzing Israel, referred to Israel as an apartheid state, and more.” He’s also on the Islamophobia task force.
Jewish students told a whole bunch of horror stories and Harvard is covering them up. “Listening sessions provided abundant reports that since last October, and to some extent long before then, many Jewish students (and especially Israeli students) have been subject to shunning, harassment, and intimidation.“
