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Harvard sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month, accusing the agency’s civil rights office of twisting facts and misapplying antidiscrimination law in its investigation into antisemitism at the University.
In a 28-page letter sent on Sept. 19 to HHS’s Office for Civil Rights, which was obtained by The Crimson, Harvard rejected the OCR’s June finding that the University had violated Title VI. The letter described HHS’s referral of the case to the Justice Department as “premature,” saying the agency violated its own regulations by moving the case forward before even giving Harvard guidelines to come into compliance.
In the letter, Harvard argued that the incidents cited by the HHS civil rights office were isolated, exaggerated, or involved non-Harvard affiliates, including anonymous posts on the third-party app Sidechat. Disruptions such as the pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard in May 2024, the University said, were temporary, mitigated without concessions to participating activists, and did not block students’ access to education.
Harvard’s letter also cast doubt on the validity of using the conclusions of Harvard’s task force on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, which the HHS cited in June as the basis for many of the claims in its Title VI finding. The letter described allegations of antisemitic harassment in the complaint as “uncorroborated narratives,” noting that the task force did not attempt to verify the accounts it collected, many of which were anonymous or secondhand. The letter also stated that only a small fraction of Harvard’s student body — about 2 percent — responded to the survey, which it described as “non-scientific.” Of 608 students who responded, 130 identified themselves as Jewish.
Data from the survey “cannot be used as evidence of a legal violation because they represent the views of a small, self-selected fraction of Harvard’s entire Jewish community,” Harvard wrote.
The letter insisted that the White House’s finding that Harvard had acted with “deliberate indifference” toward antisemitism was patently false. The letter pointed to active reporting systems, sanctions against pro-Palestine student groups, and the termination of employees involved in allegedly antisemitic conduct as evidence of a good-faith response.
The Trump administration wasted little time in clapping back. On Monday, HHS referred Harvard to the federal suspension and debarment process — an extraordinary step that could cut Harvard off from billions in federal grants and contracts. The agency made no mention of Harvard’s letter just days before and instead doubled down on its June finding, repeating many of the same allegations and declaring full confidence in its original Title VI determination.
For a Title VI case against Harvard to stick, a court would have to find five things to be true: the harassment of members of a protected class was severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive; it denied students access to education; Harvard had “actual knowledge” of it; it happened within the University’s programs or activities; and Harvard’s response was clearly unreasonable.
Harvard argued none of those conditions were met.
It said the HHS civil rights office leaned on scattered episodes that, while troubling, fell far short of showing a pervasive climate of hostility. Vandalism cases were investigated by police, including red paint splashed on the John Harvard statue in October 2024 and a string of swastika stickers plastered on buildings days later.
Both investigations yielded no suspects, but Harvard said they showed administrators were not ignoring threats. And an antisemitic cartoon circulated by a student group was promptly condemned by Harvard’s president, the letter noted.
The Yard encampment, Harvard wrote, ended in less than three weeks and did not stop Jewish students from going to class or using campus facilities. The letter emphasized that Harvard did not make concessions to encampment participants and cited University President Alan M. Garber ’76’s rejection of activists’ demands to review Harvard’s endowment for ties to human rights violations.
At other universities, leaders’ decision to strike deals with concessions to student protesters swiftly became fodder for Republican attacks. Northwestern University’s president announced his resignation earlier this year after coming under fire for his decision to negotiate with encampment protesters.
Harvard also argued that it did not have contemporaneous knowledge of many of the harassment or discrimination incidents cited by the OCR. Many of the complaints in the Title VI finding were anonymous, came in months late, or provided no names or dates, making it impossible to claim the University had fair notice at the time, Harvard claimed. Other conduct, like hostile posts on the anonymous social media platform Sidechat or vandalism by unidentified actors, fell outside Harvard’s programs and control, the University said.
As for indifference, Harvard insisted its record shows the opposite, touting changes that protesters have bashed as limits on free speech. Administrators pointed to stepped-up restrictions in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — including limits on library access for students and faculty who participated in reading room protests and a commitment to fund security costs for Harvard Hillel.
When it began its investigation, the HHS had alleged that Harvard lacked adequate mechanisms for students to report antisemitic harassment and that complaints often went unaddressed. Harvard said that too was wrong, arguing OCR had conflated two distinct channels — its nondiscrimination and anti-bullying process and anonymous hotline — both of which it maintained were active and handling reports.
“Title VI demands attention, not perfection,” the letter read.
Harvard also rejected the OCR’s public claims that the two parties had engaged in “extensive discussions.” In reality, the University said, “there have been no substantive discussions at all,” despite Harvard submitting responses to four separate data requests.
The University wrote that HHS also tried to penalize Harvard for failing to provide information on changes to its Title VI training, even though it had not requested documents on the training. Harvard informed the Education Department’s OCR of the updates as part of a separate investigation, only to receive no response for more than three months, according to the letter.
The HHS probe first began in February, when OCR opened a compliance review into pro-Palestine messaging worn by graduates at the Harvard Medical School’s graduation ceremonies in May 2024. Harvard submitted documents in response on March 3, 5, and 19. But in April the OCR widened its review to cover the entire University, followed days later by successive data requests.
Harvard answered them on May 2, May 5, and June 5, supplying hundreds of pages of records, policies, and correspondence. The letter said the submissions showed Harvard was engaging in good faith, not stonewalling, even as federal officials pressed forward with their violation finding.
—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.
