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The House Education and Workforce Committee wants Harvard University to turn over documents about antisemitic incidents at the institution and its discipline processes and policies, as well as data on its budget and funds from foreign sources.
Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the committee, detailed 24 different requests for documents and communications among Harvard leadership in a nine-page letter sent to the university Tuesday. The committee wants the documents by Jan. 23.
“We have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Harvard’s response to the antisemitism on its campus,” Foxx wrote.
Harvard is one of several institutions facing investigations into how they have responded to reports of campus antisemitism, but it is the first to receive a document request. The University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are also among those under investigation. The probe was announced Dec. 8, and the committee has hired staff to focus specifically on the investigations and launched a tip line for students, faculty and community members to report incidents of antisemitism on campus.
The request is the latest sign that scrutiny of Harvard will not let up following former president Claudine Gay’s resignation last week amid plagiarism allegations and mounting criticism of her testimony at a House hearing last month on campus antisemitism. The committee is also looking into how Harvard responded to the plagiarism allegations.
“Harvard’s institutional failures regarding antisemitism extend well beyond one leader,” Foxx wrote.
In addition to documents and emails specifically about antisemitic incidents, the committee also is looking for more information about Harvard’s diversity, equity and inclusion offices and data on Jewish student enrollment at the university. In fact, the committee asked for documents dating back to Jan. 1, 2013, related to the recruitment, admission, enrollment and retention of Jewish students at Harvard.
