House Education Committee Threatens to Subpoena Harvard If It Fails to Produce Requested Documents in Antisemitism Probe

The House Education and the Workforce Committee threatened to subpoena Harvard University if the school does not turn over requested documentation related to the congressional panel’s antisemitism probe by next week.

House Education and Workforce chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) sent a letter to Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker and Harvard interim president Alan Garber, demanding that university administration comply with the investigation. According to Foxx, only one “meaningful document” has been provided to the House committee after several requests have been made since last month. The probe was opened in December.

The final warning comes about a week after Garber said Harvard would “comply fully with the process” of the investigation.

“The Committee has sought to obtain information regarding Harvard’s response to the numerous incidents of antisemitism on its campus and steps taken to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” Foxx wrote in the letter on Wednesday. “Harvard’s responses have been grossly insufficient, and the limited and dilatory nature of its productions is obstructing the Committee’s efforts.”

The one relevant document, which the committee received Friday, was the Harvard Antisemitism Advisory Group’s list of recommended goals and steps to address antisemitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. “Harvard submitted this document only after being specifically requested to do so by the Committee,” Foxx noted.

On January 29, Harvard submitted four documents showing select board minutes for the Harvard Corporation’s meetings on October 13, 19, 23, and November 6. The committee specifically requested all “meeting minutes and/or summaries, whether formal or informal” from the Harvard Corporation, Harvard Board of Overseers, and Harvard Management Company since October 7.

Harvard also provided over 1,000 redacted “pages of student handbooks, university rules, and letters from external stakeholders” on January 23, but Foxx said these were inadequate because they were already “publicly available in unredacted form.”

Harvard must hand over the rest of the materials by 5 p.m. on February 14, or else face a subpoena.

“If the above priority requests are left unfulfilled by the deadline set above, the Committee is prepared to issue a subpoena,” Foxx concluded.

The House Education Committee launched its antisemitism investigation into Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania after the schools’ three presidents failed to address rampant antisemitism on their campuses while testifying before the panel in December.

Like her colleagues, Claudine Gay, who was president of Harvard at the time, did not condemn calls for genocide against the Jewish community during the House testimony. Gay resigned in January.

Since then, Harvard has established its Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism to address the rise of antisemitic incidents on campus.