Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, sent a letter Wednesday threatening Harvard University with a subpoena to plow through the school “obstructing” its investigation into antisemitism on campus.
The “final warning” was sent to Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker and interim President Dr. Alan Garber, with Foxx saying the school’s responses to document requests have been “grossly insufficient” and setting a response deadline for Feb. 14 at 5 p.m.
The investigation into Harvard came after since-ousted President Claudine Gay testified about campus antisemitism on Capitol Hill, giving responses many Republicans believed to be inadequate in dealing with pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
“Since former-President Gay’s disastrous testimony at the Committee’s hearing in December 2023, Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, has been represented by some of the largest and most renowned law firms in America,” the letter, obtained by the Washington Examiner, stated. “Somehow, almost two months after the Committee first informed Harvard of its intent to request production of specific documents, and a month after the Committee provided particularized requests, Harvard provided only a single meaningful document to the Committee in its antisemitism investigation.”
The House Education and Workforce Committee has pushed Harvard for information related to its handling of antisemitism on campus and for information on “steps taken to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” the letter said. Despite Garber, the school’s interim president, vowing to “comply fully with the process,” lawyers for the school have primarily produced publicly available documents or documents with heavy redactions.
According to the letter, Harvard even redacted information from thousands of pages of publicly available documents when handing them over to the committee.
The committee’s investigation into Harvard started on Dec. 7, and since receiving initial requests in early January, the school has not turned over any new information, including meaningful meeting minutes from the Harvard Corporation, the Board of Overseers, and the Management Company, according to the letter.
Many of the minutes were heavily redacted, but some documents only had a single sentence unredacted, stating that the meeting included “discussion of recent developments on campus and in the broader University community related to the war in Israel and Gaza.”
“To date, Harvard has produced only one document of significance in response to the
Committee’s request: a December 18, 2023, set of recommended goals and steps to address antisemitism by Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group,” the letter stated, although the committee noted even that document was only turned over by Harvard upon explicit request.
The committee is requesting all meeting minutes from the Corporation, Overseers, and Company since Oct. 7, 2023, the date of Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israeli citizens that spurred pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the country.
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It is also requesting all emails, texts, and other documents concerning “antisemitism” from the corporation and overseers, documents related to the establishment and conduct of the President’s Task Force on Antisemitism, and the findings of disciplinary processes and other actions taken in response to “targeting of Jews, Israelis, Israel, Zionists, or Zionism since January 1, 2021.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Harvard with a request for comment.
