Two panels are investigating hiring and employment practices at Harvard that lawmakers say may run afoul of federal civil rights law.
House Republicans have launched an investigation into alleged illegal hiring practices at Harvard, marking the latest investigation into the Ivy League school at the center of the Trump administration’s effort to reform higher education.
House Education Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) and House Republican Leadership Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) opened an investigation Tuesday into potentially illegal hiring and employment practices at Harvard that may be in violation of federal civil rights laws.
“Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VII) prohibits employment discrimination because of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The Committee is concerned about recent reports that Harvard University (Harvard) may be discriminating in hiring and employment on these bases,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber.
“Numerous publicly available documents produced or published by Harvard suggest that Harvard may have been and may still be unlawfully discriminating with respect to its hiring and employment practices.”
NR has reached out to Harvard for comment.
Walberg and Stefanik cited a trove of internal documents reported by conservative activist Christopher Rufo last month detailing Harvard’s race-based hiring strategy for faculty and administrative roles that appears to have discriminated against white men.
The letter also cites a Washington Free Beacon story on the Trump administration’s civil rights investigation into Harvard’s hiring practices, based largely on now-deleted materials on the school’s website celebrating its increase in the number of “women, non-binary, and/or people of color” in its faculty.
The Free Beacon story on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s investigation into Harvard references 2023 data showing white males went from 46 percent to 32 percent of all tenure track faculty over the past ten years. Moreover, the EEOC document points to several of Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate level programs and fellowships geared towards students from certain racial backgrounds.
The Republican lawmakers are asking Harvard to turn over any written guidance since January 2021 that considers demographic characteristics in hiring, even if it has been rescinded. They would also like to know specifically how Harvard employees consider immutable characteristics in the hiring process.
Stefanik and Walberg’s investigation is the latest congressional probe into Harvard’s hiring practices. Separately, the lawmakers are involved in an investigation of Harvard for its alleged ties to a Chinese Communist Party organization under sanction by the U.S. government.
The Trump administration is taking a whole-of-government approach to investigating Harvard to push the university to reform its hiring and academics. It is currently the subject of multiple investigations from the federal government tied to alleged violations of civil rights law.
The White House has canceled over $3 billion of federal funding to Harvard and is attempting to prevent the Massachusetts school from enrolling foreign students. The Trump administration began freezing federal funding to Harvard after it rejected a set of demands from the administration to increase its intellectual diversity and end far-left campus agitation.
Harvard is challenging the Trump administration’s funding cuts in federal court, a move that drew praise from liberals who support the school’s unwillingness to agree to the White House’s demands. President Trump said last month he would be revoking Harvard’s tax exempt status for pushing certain political ideologies.
Harvard is the poster child for the Trump administration’s broader fight against left-wing domination of higher education, a longtime issue conservatives have sought to confront. The administration is investigating dozens of schools for diversity, equity, and inclusion programming, as well as campus antisemitism and the promotion of gender ideology.