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The Trump administration has issued Harvard a "Notice of Violation" under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for its handling of alleged discrimination against Jewish students on campus, emphasizing that it must adopt changes or lose all federal funding.
In a letter to Harvard President Alan Garber, obtained by Fox News Digital, the multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism wrote that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has finished its investigation into alleged antisemitism at the university.
"After a thorough investigation, HHS OCR finds that Harvard University is in violent violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin," the letter reads.
"The enclosed Notice of Violation details the findings of fact supporting a conclusion that Harvard has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff," it continued.
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The Trump administration has issued Harvard a "Notice of Violation" under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for its handling of alleged discrimination against Jewish students on campus. (Fox News)
The OCR investigation found that "specific and repeated examples" it uncovered establish a pattern of "unlawful and unchecked discrimination" at Harvard through direct student-on-student harassment, targeted harassment by student groups, exclusion from campus spaces and institutional-level acceptance of antisemitism, according to the notice obtained by Fox News Digital.
The letter said, as an example of harassment and discrimination, that the majority of Jewish students reported experiencing negative bias or discrimination on campus, while a quarter felt physically unsafe.
Other examples cited were Jewish and Israeli students reporting that they were assaulted and spit on and that they concealed their Jewish identity from classmates over fear of ostracization.
An image circulated across the campus community that showed a dollar sign inside a Star of David and the campus was vandalized with various stickers, including one that showed the Israeli flag with a swastika in place of the Star of David, the letter states.
The letter also pointed to the anti-Israel demonstrations on campus in the aftermath of Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023 attack on the Jewish State.
"The campus was wracked by demonstrations that flagrantly violated the University’s rules of conduct. The demonstrations included calls for genocide and murder, and denied Jewish and Israeli students access to campus spaces," it reads, adding that students who participated in the encampment demonstrations "received lax and inconsistent discipline."
Demonstrators gather on Cambridge Common to protest Harvard's stance on the war in Gaza and show support for the Palestinian people, outside Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 25, 2025. (JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
"By the end of the process, even accounting only for the students that were charged, only a fraction received some sort of discipline, and none were suspended," it added.
The letter said Harvard "did not dispute our findings of fact, nor could it" and that the school's "inaction in the face of these civil rights violations is a clear example of the demographic hierarchy that has taken hold of the University."
"Equal defense of the law demands that all groups, regardless of race or national origin, are protected," the letter reads. "Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies—where individuals are sorted and judged according to their membership in an oppressed group identity and not individual merit—has enabled anti-Semitism to fester on Harvard’s campus and has led a once great institution to humiliation, offering remedial math and forcing Jewish students to hide their identities and ancestral stories."
Harvard was informed that the failure to immediately institute adequate changes would lead to the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect its relationship with the federal government.
The university, the letter notes, "may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again."
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Harvard University President Alan Garber addresses the crowd during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University. (Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The Trump administration has already moved to cut billions of dollars in federal research funding for Harvard, in part, over its handling of alleged antisemitism and violence on campus amid anti-Israel protests.
In a recent email to faculty and staff, Harvard Kennedy School Dean Jeremy Weinstein announced staff layoffs at Kennedy, citing "unprecedented new headwinds" creating "significant financial challenges," including a "substantial proposed increase in the endowment tax" and "massive cuts to federal funding of research."
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"Harvard holds the regrettable distinction of being among the most prominent and visible breeding grounds for race discrimination," the letter to Harvard's president reads, noting the 2023 Supreme Court decision that found that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "That legacy of discrimination persists with Harvard’s continued anti-Semitism. Any institution that refuses to meet its duties under federal law may not receive a wide range of federal privileges."
