Harvard “Putting Things In Reverse Order” by Claiming Civil Rights Enforcement Will Damage Research
“The fact that there might be ancillary research grants that get harmed, Harvard can fund them. There’s nothing to prevent Harvard from funding them ….The real question is why isn’t Harvard compliant?”
The Department of Health Human Services announced earlier today that it had found Harvard University to be in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
OCR’s Notice of Violation finds that Harvard has been – and is – deliberately indifferent to the severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive harassment of Jewish and Israeli students by its own students and faculty. The findings are based on information and documents obtained during the investigation: Harvard’s policies and procedures; conclusions from Harvard’s own internal Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias; findings from a U.S. Congressional task force that investigated antisemitism on college campuses; and reliable media reports that contemporaneously depicted antisemitic episodes of vandalism, harassment, and physical violence over a 19-month period at Harvard.
I appeared on The Lead w/ Jake Tapper (CNN), my first time on that show.
Transcript auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity
Tapper (00:01):
In our national lead, a new twist in the battle between Trump, the Trump administration, and Harvard University. Today, the Trump administration’s joint task force to combat antisemitism released a letter saying that Harvard is in violent violation of the Civil Rights Act and threatened further loss of its federal funding. The letter goes on to state that Harvard has been, in some cases, deliberately indifferent, and in others, has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty and staff. Harvard responded that they are far from indifferent and they strongly disagree with the reports Conclusion, the Wall Street Journal was the first to report on the letter.
Joining us now is Cornell University Law professor in Harvard Law grad William Jacobson. Professor, thanks for joining us.
So Harvard says that they’ve made significant strides in combating antisemitism on campus, including updating its rules around using campus space for protests, taking steps to review disciplinary processes, and expanding training on combating antisemitism. From a legal perspective, how does the Trump administration prove that Harvard has been deliberately indifferent, as they put it?
WAJ (01:10):
They prove it the way you prove anything, through the facts. The complaint that was filed, or the letter, was accompanied by an over 50-page report, which had enormous detail on what the government alleges happened and what the government alleges was indifferent in the university’s reaction.
Boiling it down, the government says Harvard is only now responding because of the pressure, but up until recently had not been taking steps.
So the government’s going have to prove it the way you prove anything, through the facts.
Tapper (01:41):
And you’re a law professor who went to Harvard and you teach at Cornell. What’s your take on this? What do you think?
WAJ (01:49):
I think there’s a lot to what the government is saying. It’s not just at Harvard, it’s other places as well. There’s a campus climate of intimidation. There’s a campus climate of silencing other speech.
I think a good analogy might be the so-called heckler’s veto, that people certainly have the right to express anti-Israel viewpoints on campus, but they don’t have the right to express it in such a manner and such an intimidating factor that they prevent other people from getting an education. And that’s essentially what the government is saying, is that the accumulation of almost two years of events on the Harvard campus after October 7th is tantamount to depriving Israeli and Jewish students of their right to access in education. And that is the issue.
It’s not any one statement or any one person, and it’s not that the viewpoints expressed can’t be expressed, but they can’t be expressed in the way they’re being expressed, which is intimidation and antisemitic actions on campus.
Tapper (02:51):
I wonder what you think of how the administration is going about doing this in terms of cutting off funding. Because I read a piece in the New York Times yesterday, the Times tracking nearly every grant the Trump administration has canceled at Harvard, and they include a long-term cancer study tracking more than 100,000 women, one related to telemedicine and an opioid addiction, another one that studies advances that could one day enable Navy divers to breathe underwater without oxygen tanks. Do you think that this method of punishment, which it sounds like it could actually hurt humanity in some ways, is the most effective way to do this?
WAJ (03:32):
Well, other methods have proven ineffective. I mean, that’s the whole point of what the government’s doing, is that their attempt to cajole and to talk to Harvard, and particularly Harvard, have been unproductive.
The fact that there might be ancillary research grants that get harmed, Harvard can fund them. There’s nothing to prevent Harvard from funding them.
But if you’re going to take federal money, you have to play by the rules the federal government sets. And those rules are compliance with the Civil Rights Act.
So I think it’s a little putting things in reverse order to say the government should not be enforcing the Civil Rights Act because some programs which may be worthwhile at Harvard get damaged. The real question is why isn’t Harvard compliant?
And that’s the issue that Harvard has a long history, at least since October 7th of being one of, if not the worst campuses. And that’s really the question.
I don’t think Harvard should be able to turn it around and blame the government for enforcing the civil rights laws when Harvard agreed to take the money on the condition of complying with the Civil rights laws.
Tapper (04:35):
Professor William Jacobson, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.
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“I don’t think Harvard should be able to turn it around and blame the government for enforcing the civil rights laws when Harvard agreed to take the money on the condition of complying with the Civil rights laws.”
There. That’s the crux of the biscuit.
Harvard, like other Universities, cities, states and NGO’s got used to getting federal money and doing what they wanted. Now that someone is in charge who will hold them accountable they don’t like it. Harvard is one such place. USAID is another. Take the money but play by the rules.
Lurking quietly below the surface is something even bigger and worse for Harvard.
Unless Harvard bends the knee quickly and enters into a global settlement with / surrender to the Trump administration, DoJ can not only cut off Harvard’s entitlement to future federal funds, but it can also bring a False Claims Act lawsuit seek to recover 300% of all federal funds Harvard received in the past where Harvard certified to the feds that it was NOT violating federal law. (DoJ has put out press notices that it is looking to use the FCA in this fashion, and for months BigLaw firms that represent universities and federal contractors have been warning their clients that such FCA liability is very, very real.)
Therein lies the biggest risk to Harvard. Saying “well, we had a problem, but we’re now doing X, Y, and Z to fix it” has zip to do with Harvard’s admitted past acts of discrimination and antisemitism (not to mention its adjudicated discrimination in admissions (SFFA)), nor does it refute the fact that Harvard got its federal funds during that time by falsely certifying (such certifications are required annually) that it was NOT engaged in illegal discrimination.
If the Trump admin filed a FCA claim for just the last two years of federal funds, the amounts Harvard could be liable for are in the eleven figure range.
Pass the popcorn . . . .
You did great Professor, so glad your getting the props you deserve
CNN and Trapper would never have had you on , even last year
You have worked hard for change, and you deserve credit for helping the United States face the evil empire, which had its claws in every facet of our lives, retreat, if only a claw or two… it is the beginning of the end I hope…
MSFT Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith signed a friend of the courts letter along with all the other tech firms in Washington stating that if Washington did not legalize boys preying on girls in the girls bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports arenas, that Washington Tech firms would have trouble finding and retaining talent because their children couldn’t be themselves in Washington State.
So Brad Smith was basically saying that their employees are the parents of sexually deviant freaks.
Never mind how many people have fled Washington because of this to protect their kids. It’s the freaks that must be protected. Your daughter being sexually assaulted in a bathroom is a price they are willing to pay to make those freaks don’t feel awkward.
But it’s HARVARD! Harvard doesn’t have to follow the same rules as all the little people! Harvard is the bestest school in the universe! Give it money plebes!
Take the $900K plagiarist Gay is still being paid and put it towards “research “.
“that the accumulation of almost two years of events on the Harvard campus after October 7th ”
*****
Harvard has a long history of this type of behavior going back to, at least, the 1920s. During the controversy over former President Gay’s conduct, it was mentioned that in 1999, the Freshman class was 19-22% Jewish and now 3-4%. Internal communication revealed that Gay wanted it reduced to 1.5%.
When I was at D&B Software as a Project Manager the guy in the position opposite of me had a Harvard education. Senior management liked to let clients know of his college credentials and ignore my results. When he got an 8% raise and I got a 3% I went to my boss and demanded an explanation. My team had out performed his with more profitability. We got bonuses that equated to his raise but were still behind in base salary. He jumped jobs looking for a path to a directorship shortly after. I grew to dislike the Harvard and Yale types.
“Harvard “Putting Things In Reverse Order” by Claiming Civil Rights Enforcement Will Damage Research”
Someone needs to point out that this is an argument that would have been used to prolong the Tuskegee Syphilis Research.
Harvard’s attitude: we do some good things, therefore we should be excused from obeying the law. I call that the Al Capone excuse. In 1930 Al Capone ran a soup kitchen at 935 State Street in Chicago providing three meals a day to thousands of hungry Chicagoans suffering from the privations of the Great Depression. Evidently the soup was very good as people remembered it decades later. According to history dot com, Capone got supplies by bribing and extorting businesses to donate goods. Aha: the do gooders do good with other people’s money which describes Harvard’s attitude. They want to do good with tax-payer money which is obtained through the threat of force by government. Like Capone, Harvard bribes politicians. Harvard-trained lawyers control the judiciary so their crimes get excused.
Evidently the soup was very good as people remembered it decades later.
Hunger colors one’s judgment. I had an uncle who spent 17 months in a German POW camp. He said the soup was full of insects, but they ate it because they were hungry. Obviously, not “good” soup, but considered consumable at the time.
BTW, his experience led him to never turning down food for the rest of his life. If you offered it, he’d take it. Seriously. I asked him about his stomach being an apparent bottomless pit, and that’s when he told me of his time as a POW. (He was captured while behind a barn taking a dump during the battle at St. Lo,)
Well you were too effective so this will likely be the last time they bring you on the show.
We agreed a long time ago, long before these grants were at issue, that civil rights violations of the kind practiced at Harvard ALSO hurt humanity.
trying to solve the problem(s) is like trying to ask hamas to just stop
this country is about 10% tribalism and will continue to pick up steam faster as the locals fall prey to the bayonet of the leftists
do it or else…………..
GREAT interview, Professor Jacobson! You addressed numerous critical issues and expressed your views forcefully and cogently.
Brilliant! Thank you, Professor. You did yourself and those of us who believe as you do proud.
This is why the 15% cap on indirect research costs was such a strategic move. That money, usually 50-60%, was a huge slush fund to do other bad stuff. Taking it away from Universities was as significant as taking away the USAID money from NGOs. One significant change will be a reduction in invited speakers with huge fees. The days of 1hr, $50,000 DEI lectures, is a thing of the past.
Suspending students who beat up teachers and other students could harm attendance numbers.