Harvard University is under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating in its hiring process in violation of the Civil Rights Act, the House Committee on Education and Workforce said Tuesday.
Harvard “may have been and may still be unlawfully discriminating with respect to its hiring and employment practices,” the House committee wrote in a letter addressed to Harvard president Alan Garber, citing “numerous publicly available documents produced or published by Harvard.”
The federal probe comes as the Trump administration has frozen nearly $3 billion in federal funding from Harvard over the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and failure to protect Jewish students amid rising anti-Semitism on campus.
President Donald Trump has also revoked Harvard’s authorization to host international students and proposed removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status if the Ivy League school “keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness.'”
The Tuesday letter accuses the Ivy League school of violating Title VII, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
The House committee, led by Rep. Tim Walberg (R., Mich.), called it “especially concerning” that reports about Harvard’s hiring discrimination emerged even after the Supreme Court in June 2023 ruled that Harvard discriminated in student admissions on the basis of race in violation of the Civil Rights Act.
According to the Tuesday letter, Harvard’s “Best Practices for Conducting Faculty Searches” document urges search committees to “ensure that the early lists include women and minorities.” The Harvard document instructs administrators always to monitor the diversity of applicant pools and “consider reading the applications of women and minorities first.”
Since 2021, Harvard has also issued “Diversity-Related Sample Interview Questions” to faculty search committees, including prompts such as “Explain how diversity played a role in your career.”
The committee’s letter flagged two Harvard programs as discriminatory: the STARS Program at Harvard Medical School, a paid summer internship open only to “underrepresented minority” students, and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, a two-year paid program that “particularly” encourages students of color to apply.
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