Republicans in Congress have escalated their fight with Harvard University by issuing subpoenas to university leaders, six weeks after hearings into antisemitism on campus set in motion the resignation of Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay.
Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina who heads the House education and workforce committee that held hearings into the issue last year, ordered Harvard’s trustees to produce documents related to the issue.
Foxx accused the Ivy League university of failing to treat the inquiry into antisemitism with “appropriate seriousness” and of failing to satisfy previous requests for information.
“I will not tolerate delay and defiance of our investigation while Harvard’s Jewish students continue to endure the firestorm of antisemitism that has engulfed its campus,” she wrote.
“Given Harvard’s vast resources and the urgency with which it should be addressing the scourge of antisemitism, the evidence suggests that the school is obstructing this investigation and is willing to tolerate the proliferation of antisemitism on its campus.”
According to Bloomberg, subpoenas for information were issued to Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber; board of trustees chair Penny Pritzker; and Narv Narvekar, CEO of Harvard’s $51bn endowment.
In a statement, Harvard said it had already responded “extensively and in good faith” to congressional demands, including by submitting 3,500 pages of documents. Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Swain wrote that a subpoena was “unwarranted” but said Harvard “remains committed to cooperating with the Committee”.
A separate inquiry by House Republicans is looking into whether failures to condemn antisemitism could affect the tax-exempt status of Harvard and other universities.
The issue flared up in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, when a number of student bodies at Harvard and other universities appeared to condemn Israel without acknowledging the attack.
According to the Harvard Crimson, the subpoenas seek documents and communications regarding Harvard’s response to a controversial pro-Palestine letter signed by more than 30 student groups, the Harvard Palestinian Solidarity Committee’s “Israeli Apartheid Week”, and an altercation at an 18 October “die-in” at Harvard Business School.
Those led to claims that university heads were allowing free speech and protest rights on campus to become entangled with antisemitism, and triggered a subsequent revolt by some powerful Harvard donors as well as the appearance of “doxing” trucks on campus, calling out students who signed the pro-Palestinian letters.
At congressional hearings in December, Gay and the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Liz Magill, were accused by some of failing to denounce antisemitism clearly enough and of equivocating over “context”. The resulting outrage led first to Magill resigning and then Gay, after a firestorm of plagiarism allegations against her.
Many academics voiced resistance to the committee’s demands. Paul Reville, a professor of education policy and administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said in a January interview with the Harvard newspaper that the Republican-led requests “in the view of some people border on harassment from Congress and other sources who clearly have an agenda to undermine universities like Harvard”.
