Trump administration probes Harvard University and its Law Review

Thomson Reuters

· Posted: Apr 28, 2025 9:24 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 minutes ago

U.S. President Donald Trump's medication connected Monday said it was probing whether Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review violated civilian rights laws erstwhile the journal's editors fast-tracked information of an nonfiction written by a subordinate of a radical minority.

News of the caller probe came hours aft a national justice agreed to expedite Harvard University's suit seeking to artifact the Trump medication from freezing much than $2 billion US successful national assistance backing that the Ivy League schoolhouse has warned volition endanger captious aesculapian and technological research.

The announcement of the probe by the U.S. departments of Education and Health and Human Services said Harvard Law Review editors whitethorn person engaged successful "race-based discrimination" successful usurpation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"Harvard Law Review's nonfiction enactment process appears to prime winners and losers connected the ground of race, employing a spoils strategy successful which the contention of the ineligible student is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission," Craig Trainor, the Education Department's acting adjunct caput for civilian rights, said successful a statement.

A Harvard University typical said successful a connection that the schoolhouse is "committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are successful compliance with each applicable laws and to investigating immoderate credibly alleged violations."

No contiguous remark from instrumentality review

Representatives of the Harvard Law Review, a legally autarkic student-run organization, did not instantly respond to emails seeking comment.

Earlier, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs during a little proceeding successful Boston acceptable a July 21 proceeding for the lawsuit aft Harvard warned that the frost and further threatened cuts were putting probe astatine risk.

Monday's proceeding was the archetypal she has held since Harvard sued past week aft refusing to cede to what the Cambridge, Mass.,-based university's president said were amerciable demands from an medication antisemitism task unit "to power whom we prosecute and what we teach."

Those demands included calls for the backstage assemblage to restructure its governance, change its hiring and admissions practices to guarantee an ideological equilibrium of viewpoints, and terminate definite world programs.

Harvard has said that portion it is committed to combating antisemitism, the administration's sweeping demands interruption the escaped code guarantees of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Rather than question a preliminary injunction blocking the frost pending the result of the litigation, Harvard has opted to skip consecutive to the merits of the case, which some it and the U.S. Department of Justice asked the justice to rapidly address.

Tensions betwixt universities, Trump administration

Harvard and different universities person seen national backing threatened by the medication implicit however they handled pro-Palestinian protests against Israel's warfare successful Gaza that roiled campuses past year.

The schools person besides been successful the administration's crosshairs implicit different issues specified arsenic diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and transgender policies.

Since taking office, Trump has cracked down connected DEI programs that purpose to uplift marginalized groups who person faced humanities inequity. He has formed those steps aimed astatine helping minorities arsenic discriminatory against groups specified arsenic achromatic radical and men.

The Trump medication successful precocious March announced it was launching a reappraisal of astir $9 cardinal US successful grants and contracts with Harvard implicit what it says is the school's nonaccomplishment to support Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination, including during field protests.

Since then, the Trump medication has frozen much than $2 cardinal US successful backing to Harvard and threatened to portion the assemblage of its tax-exempt presumption and instrumentality distant its quality to enrol overseas students. It has besides demanded accusation connected the university's overseas ties, funding, students and faculty.