House committee subpoenas Harvard over antisemitism investigation
Chairwoman Foxx slams school’s ‘delay and defiance’; university decries ‘unwarranted’ move but pledges to cooperate with probe, amid post-October 7 rise in campus antisemitism
A US House of Representatives committee said on Friday it was subpoenaing Harvard for failing to produce priority documents related to the committee’s antisemitism investigation, a move the university said was “unfortunate” and “unwarranted.”
Harvard University was asked last month to turn over a raft of material, including documents and other items showing its responses to discrimination, to reports of antisemitic acts, and recruitment and retention of Jewish students.
“Harvard has provided fulsome and good faith responses across 10 submissions totaling more than 3,500 pages that directly address key areas of inquiry put forward by the Committee,” a university spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement. Over 2,500 pages of these documents related to the committee’s antisemitism inquiry.
Republican Representative Virginia Foxx, who chairs the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a statement that “quality — not quantity — is the committee’s concern.”
Foxx said more than 1,000 of the shared documents were already publicly available, and that Harvard had also failed to make substantial productions on two of four priority requests in its most recent response.
“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,” continued Foxx.
The subpoenas were issued to interim Harvard President Alan Garber, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker, and Harvard Management Company CEO N.P. Narvekar. The Harvard Crimson reported that the subpoenas demand the university hand over a series of documents, including a request for all meeting minutes of the Harvard Management Company between October 7 and January 2 — the day before former president Claudine Gay resigned, following allegations of plagiarism and a backlash over her congressional testimony on antisemitism.
The Harvard officials are ordered to produce the documents by 5 p.m. ET on March 4. The Harvard Crimson reported that although the officials were not ordered to testify before Congress, such a demand may be forthcoming.
“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,” the university responded.
Foxx first requested the records on January 9, writing to Garber and Pritzker to ask for documents on all reports of antisemitic incidents on campus since January 2021, including “posts by Harvard students, faculty, staff and other Harvard affiliates on Sidechat and other social media platforms targeting Jews, Israelis, Israel, Zionists, or Zionism,” as well as records of disciplinary processes to address allegations of hate and bias, and Harvard’s response to recent pro-Palestinian protests and activities. At the time, the university was given two weeks to produce the records.
The request was made as part of an antisemitism probe into elite US colleges that was launched by the House Education and the Workforce Committee after a tumultuous December 6 congressional hearing in which the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT answered evasively when asked whether calls for genocide against Jewish people violated their universities’ code of conduct. The presidents of Harvard and Penn have since resigned.
Harvard and other US colleges have simmered with tension over responses to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent offensive in Gaza that aims to wipe out the Palestinian terror group and rescue the hostages it is holding captive.
The Times of Israel Community.