Harvard hit with congressional subpoena over antisemitism claims

US congressional Republicans are again escalating their political attacks on higher education, issuing a first-ever subpoena to compel a broad release of data from Harvard University.

Leading Republicans have found value in portraying Harvard and other top universities as antisemitic in orientation, and they opened a new legal front in that campaign last month by demanding that Harvard produce documents detailing their handling of such complaints.

The request from the education committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives sought “all reports of antisemitic acts or incidents and related documents and communications” dating back to January 2021.

In response, Harvard has produced more than 2,500 pages of documents and has said it is looking for more.

In issuing the subpoena, the chair of the House education committee, Virginia Foxx, offered no explanation of what records might be missing. But she complained that about 40 per cent of the submissions from Harvard were already publicly available.

“It is my hope that these subpoenas serve as a wake-up call to Harvard that Congress will not tolerate antisemitic hate in its classrooms or on campus,” Ms Foxx said.

The Ivy League university said it would keep trying to satisfy the Republican lawmakers. “While a subpoena was unwarranted, Harvard remains committed to cooperating with the committee and will continue to provide additional materials, while protecting the legitimate privacy, safety and security concerns of our community,” a university spokesperson said.

US universities and Harvard in particular have been long-standing targets of conservatives who view advanced education as too often incompatible with their worldview. Republicans seized at the opportunity presented by the outbreak of violence in Israel in October, arguing that widespread student protests on behalf of Palestinians being killed in Gaza were fundamentally antisemitic in nature.

The high point of that campaign to date was the congressional hearing in December, led by Ms Foxx, where three female presidents of top US universities were repeatedly badgered by Republicans decrying signs of pro-Palestinian sympathies on their campuses.

That led soon afterward to the resignations of two of the presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Claudine Gay of Harvard.

Conservative lawmakers and wealthy donors have promised to maintain and expand such pressure. That’s included moves by top donors to install their allies on a Harvard leadership board, and to use artificial intelligence technology to generate plagiarism allegations against top university officials.

The committee led by Ms Foxx has been aiding the campaign to weaponise allegations of plagiarism – a tactic that contributed to Professor Gay’s resignation. Harvard has given the committee more than 1,000 pages of documents on that topic.

Congressional subpoenas can compel in-person testimony and the production of documents, though the legislative orders also can be fought in court on grounds of relevance and need. But US higher education has generally been wary of fighting such attacks in the political arena, given its heavy reliance on the embrace of lawmakers and philanthropists.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com