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House GOP investigation subpoenas Harvard amid allegations of campus antisemitism.
Emma Wordsmith
The House education committee issued subpoenas to officials at Harvard University on Friday as part of an investigation into their response to antisemitism on campus.
This marks the first time the Republican-controlled panel has subpoenaed a university in its probe of several schools amid ongoing tensions on college campuses following the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Representative Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., the committee’s chairperson, served notices to Harvard’s interim president Alan Garber, Harvard Corporation’s senior fellow Penny Pritzker, and Harvard Management Company’s CEO N.P. Narvekar on Friday.
The committee, led by Foxx, has been requesting information about antisemitism on campus from Harvard and other universities, such as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, since the controversial hearing with Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay last fall. Gay resigned after Republicans highlighted inaccuracies in her academic work.
The committee has not asked about anti-Muslim bias at Harvard, despite a separate investigation by the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights into a complaint filed by Palestinian students last month.
Read more:Harvard faces scrutiny over discriminatory practices. The complaint was raised by Palestinian students.
Harvard has submitted thousands of documents to the committee in recent weeks. However, Foxx criticized their cooperation on Friday, stating that more than 40% of the provided pages are already publicly available.
“The Committee’s main concern is quality, not quantity,” Foxx stated.
Read more:Allegations of plagiarism at Harvard fuel the Republican campaign against higher education
Harvard Responds to Subpoenas
Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton described the issuance of subpoenas as unfortunate and mentioned that the university has already provided over 3,500 pages of requested information to the committee.
“While we believe a subpoena was unnecessary, Harvard remains committed to cooperating and will continue to offer additional materials while safeguarding the privacy and security of our community,” Newton said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Foxx has set a deadline of March 4 for Harvard to comply with the requests.
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