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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