Education Department Launches Twin Probes Into Harvard Over Antisemitism and Admissions

The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it has opened two new civil rights investigations into Harvard University — one examining whether the Ivy League institution has complied with the Supreme Court's 2023 ruling banning race-conscious admissions, and a second probing campus antisemitism complaints. The dual action comes three days after the Department of Justice filed a separate lawsuit against Harvard alleging that the university failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students from severe harassment in the aftermath of Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.

The admissions investigation centers on Harvard's refusal to turn over enrollment data that the Education Department requested in May 2025 to verify compliance with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the landmark case in which the Supreme Court struck down Harvard's race-based admissions program. Monday's announcement gave Harvard 20 days to produce the requested data or face "enforcement actions," including potential referral to the Justice Department and possible loss of federal funding. The department's Office for Civil Rights said it had received information suggesting that Harvard may have found alternative methods to achieve racial balancing in its admissions process despite the high court's ruling.

The antisemitism investigation builds directly on findings from Harvard's own internal task force, which documented in a January 2025 report that Jewish and Israeli students had been subjected to what the task force called "severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive" harassment — including being barred from study groups, shouted down at events, and physically intimidated on campus. The Justice Department's Friday lawsuit drew extensively from that same report. The Education Department's new investigation will examine whether Harvard's response to those findings was adequate under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Harvard pushed back forcefully. University spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement that the new probes represent "the government's latest retaliatory actions against Harvard for its refusal to surrender our independence and constitutional rights." The university has resisted a series of Trump administration demands — including requirements to share records on foreign funding, overhaul hiring practices, and restructure governance — framing them as politically motivated attacks on academic freedom. Harvard has already had roughly $2.2 billion in federal grants frozen or rescinded since January as the administration escalated pressure on elite universities.

The simultaneous launch of multiple probes reflects a broader Trump administration strategy of using federal regulatory and legal tools to force compliance at universities seen as bastions of progressive culture. Other elite institutions including MIT, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania have faced similar scrutiny over antisemitism, foreign funding, and admissions practices. Legal experts are divided over how far the administration's leverage extends: while the threat of losing federal funding is significant for research universities like Harvard, civil liberties organizations argue the administration's demands exceed statutory authority. The cases are expected to generate major litigation that could eventually reach the Supreme Court.