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U.S. gov't probes Harvard and its law review for 'race-based discrimination'

Published: 29 Apr. 2025, 11:19

Demonstrators rally on Cambridge Common in a protest organized by the City of Cambridge calling on Harvard leadership to resist interference at the university by the federal government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 12. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Monday said it was probing whether Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review violated civil rights laws when the journal's editors fast-tracked consideration of an article written by a member of a racial minority.

News of the new probe came hours after a federal judge agreed to expedite Harvard University's lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from freezing $2.2 billion in federal grant funding that the Ivy League school has warned will threaten vital medical and scientific research.

The announcement of the probe by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said Harvard Law Review editors may have engaged in "race-based discrimination" in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.

Representatives of Harvard and the independently operated Harvard Law Review did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Earlier, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs during a brief hearing in Boston set a July 21 hearing for the case after Harvard warned that the freeze and additional threatened cuts were putting research at risk.

Monday's hearing was the first she has held since Harvard sued last week after refusing to cede to what the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university's president said were illegal demands from an administration antisemitism task force "to control whom we hire and what we teach."

Those demands included calls for the private university to restructure its governance, alter its hiring and admissions practices to ensure an ideological balance of viewpoints, and terminate certain academic programs.

A person walks by the federal courthouse where a judge held an initial hearing in Harvard University's lawsuit seeking to block U.S. President Donald Trump from freezing billions of dollars in federal funding, in Boston, Massachusetts on April 28. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Harvard has said that while it is committed to combating antisemitism, the administration's sweeping demands violate the free speech guarantees of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Rather than seek a preliminary injunction blocking the freeze pending the outcome of the litigation, Harvard has opted to skip straight to the merits of the case, which both it and the U.S. Department of Justice asked the judge to quickly address.

"We would welcome oral argument as soon after, as your honor is able to accommodate," Steve Lehotsky, Harvard's lawyer, told the judge.

Harvard and other universities have seen federal funding threatened by the administration over how they handled pro-Palestinian protests over Israel's war in Gaza that roiled campuses last year.

The schools have also been in the administration's crosshairs over other issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs and transgender policies.

The Trump administration in late March announced it was launching a review of about $9 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard over what it says is the school's failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination, including during campus protests.

Since then, the Trump administration has frozen $2.3 billion in funding to Harvard and threatened to strip the university of its tax-exempt status and take away its ability to enroll foreign students. It has also demanded information on the university's foreign ties, funding, students and faculty.

Reuters