The Trump administration sued Harvard University yesterday, accusing it of failing to comply with a federal investigation and seeking documents to determine whether the university had illegally considered race in its admissions process.
The move comes less than two weeks after US President Donald Trump said his administration was seeking $1 billion from Harvard to settle probes into school policies, after a news report that said Trump had dropped his demand for a payment from the Ivy League school.
A Harvard spokesperson said the university is committed to following the law and has been responding to the government’s inquiries in good faith.
“The university will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach,” the spokesperson said.
Trump’s administration has been threatening to withhold federal funds from Harvard and several other universities over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, campus diversity and transgender policies.
The Justice Department said yesterday that Harvard had “repeatedly slow-walked the pace of production and refused to produce pertinent data and documents,” including admissions policies and correspondence related to banned diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
In the complaint filed in Boston federal court, Justice Department lawyers said the documents requested will help assess whether Harvard is complying with a 2023 decision by the US Supreme Court which said that race-conscious college admissions programs are unconstitutional.
&uuid=(email))