Whistleblower Says Trump Officials ‘Predetermined’ Conclusions in Harvard Antisemitism Probe

A former Justice Department civil rights attorney accused Trump administration officials of predetermining the outcomes of antisemitism investigations into Harvard and other universities and pursuing sweeping penalties before investigators had established civil rights violations, according to a whistleblower account filed Monday.

The 25-page disclosure from Haley Van Erem also adds new detail about the settlement terms Trump administration officials were considering with Harvard in April 2025. More notably, the proposal would have required Harvard to invest in programs in Israel and place endowment money in trusts that the government could seize — provisions that had not previously been disclosed.

The proposal also called for Harvard to enter new memorandums of understanding with police, fleshing out an earlier April 3 strategy memo that contemplated requiring greater collaboration between the University and law enforcement.

The disclosure underscores that the April 11 letter — a sweeping list of demands that Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 publicly shot down as a violation of the University’s academic freedom — represented a less expansive version of some of the interventions administration officials were floating privately.

The proposed settlement is one of several previously unreported details included in the disclosure, which offers a granular window into the early days of the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Harvard.

The disclosure was submitted Monday by the Government Accountability Project on behalf of Van Erem, a former civil rights attorney at the Department of Justice, to the Office of Special Counsel and the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Service Offices of Inspector General on Monday.

The whistleblower group also shared the disclosure with the House and Senate judiciary committees, and it has since been publicized by Rep. Jamie Raskin ’83 (D-Md.).

A DOJ spokesperson said in a Tuesday statement that the department “stands behind the integrity of these investigations” and said Van Erem was not assigned to work on university probes.

But in the disclosure, Van Erem recounts an encounter with then-HHS Acting General Counsel Sean R. Keveney in which he showed her the proposed settlement terms with Harvard on a computer screen.

Keveney told Van Erem that he believed a settlement with Harvard would be easy to achieve because the University was “over a barrel,” according to the filing. Van Erem pushed back, warning of “potential First Amendment problems” if the government was monitoring curriculum and arguing that the proposed reforms extended beyond measures directly tied to antisemitism.

“There was no information to indicate these sweeping enforcement terms corresponded to any specific findings of Title VI violations,” Van Erem’s lawyers wrote in the disclosure.

The interaction reflects a broader pattern of internal pushback from career attorneys assigned to several Title VI investigations conducted by the DOJ-created interagency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism in spring 2025, which the disclosures alleges were politically motivated and out of step with historical practice.

In particular, the disclosure argues that investigations into three Ivy League universities — Harvard, Brown, and Columbia — over alleged antisemitism were “predetermined” and designed to advance “political priorities” rather than enforce civil rights.

It alleges that the investigations were carried out with the intention of “harassing and intimidating institutions,” and suffered from “gross mismanagement.” Lawyers assigned to oversee the investigations were pressured to avoid asking legal questions, creating a “chilled environment,” the filing claims.

Harvard’s case, in particular, raised red flags for DOJ attorneys because the government froze the University’s funding and sought a settlement before identifying a civil rights law violation and “without a demonstrated connection between the proposed remedies and substantiated findings of unlawful discrimination,” according to the filing.

The disclosure also details how the government’s plan to force elite universities into reform fell apart after Harvard publicly aired its grievances and sued to reclaim federal research grants.

In one incident detailed in the disclosure, government officials appeared unclear how to proceed with enforcement against Harvard by May 2025. HHS OCR Associate Deputy Director Daniel Shieh referred to a voluntary resolution agreement Harvard had signed with the Department of Education as an example of compliance but could not detail what the University had agreed to.

“Shieh explained that the initial plan was for Harvard to be the first example, but when negotiations broke down, officials tried to make Columbia the example,” the filing writes.

The disclosure comes just days after a district court judge threw out the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Harvard over its alleged violations of civil rights law, finding that the government could not point to ongoing unlawful activity.

Harvard is also under scrutiny from the Justice Department for several other potential violations of civil rights law. The department is currently investigating the University for accepting restricted financial aid gifts from China-based entities and has sued Harvard for refusing to comply with a probe into its admissions practices.

The government appealed a separate court ruling last fall that restored the nearly $3 billion in federal funding stripped from Harvard. That case is pending before the First Circuit.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @EliseSpenner.