Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said on Tuesday that he launched an investigation into whistleblower allegations that Trump administration officials manipulated federal Jew-hatred probes of several universities and withheld federal funding to pressure the schools into costly settlements.
“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real. It needs to be addressed seriously,” the Jewish congressman wrote to Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights.
“But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature,” Raskin wrote. “The whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”
Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director for the Deborah Project, told JNS that Raskin’s characterization of the probes is a “hoax.”
“It would be accurate to say it’s a hoax for members of Congress to say that it’s a hoax for the Justice Department to make up claims about antisemitism on college campuses,” she said. “That’s the hoax.”
Lowenthal Marcus, who leads a public-interest law firm that defends the civil rights of Jews in educational settings, told JNS that it is a “disgrace” to “weaponize hatred of the administration against addressing antisemitism.”
Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, announced the probe after the House panel published a whistleblower disclosure, which was filed the prior day and which alleges that political appointees overrode career investigators and pursued predetermined outcomes in investigations of Harvard University, Brown University and Columbia University under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The disclosure was submitted on behalf of Haley Van Erem, a former Justice Department civil-rights attorney who was temporarily assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services to work on the investigations.
Van Erem alleges that she is aware of “deviation from investigative procedures, statutory noncompliance and potential constitutional violations” and that the actions of officials led her and colleagues to believe that “the outcomes of the investigations were predetermined, without regard to the evidence.”
“Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded,” the disclosure states.
It alleges that attorneys faced “compressed timelines” that compromised their ability to ensure findings were “justified and accurate” and that when they raised legal concerns or sought to document objections, “their concerns were often disregarded.”
‘A welcome relief’ that it’s a priority
The circumstances, the disclosure states, led the attorneys to believe that “certain enforcement outcomes had been determined before the relevant evidence was collected and evaluated.”
The disclosure does not dispute the seriousness of campus Jew-hatred or the federal government’s obligation to investigate it, according to Lowenthal Marcus.
Instead, it alleges that officials pursued predetermined outcomes without completing impartial, evidence-based investigations, she told JNS.
That distinction did not alleviate her concerns about Raskin’s response.
“I know for a fact, because I’ve been fighting antisemitism on campuses since long before 2023,” she told JNS. “I wouldn’t say it was everywhere before then, but since Oct. 7, 2023, it is in many places.”
“I know, because I’ve spoken with students at Columbia and at Harvard and at Brown, where there were serious problems,” Lowenthal Marcus told JNS. “To imply otherwise is a lie.”
Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights, told JNS that “it is no secret that the career ranks of the Justice Department contain some long-time employees who do not share the current administration’s values or priorities.”
“The federal government has a legal obligation to enforce Title VI to protect Jewish students as vigorously as it does with other groups,” he said. “After years of paying insufficient attention to antisemitism, it is a welcome relief that the Justice Department has finally made it a priority.”
“No one can deny the seriousness of the problem at institutions like Harvard and Columbia,” he added. “The question isn’t so much why this administration has responded so forcefully to the problem at these campuses but rather why it wasn’t done sooner.”
The whistleblower disclosure states that Justice Department attorneys assigned to investigate alleged Jew-hatred at medical-school commencement ceremonies were informed that those investigations were “based on a New York Post article.” It called opening a probe based on a single article “highly unusual.”
Lowenthal Marcus rejected the suggestion that the federal investigations lacked an evidentiary basis.
“Somewhere, it said that it was based on one article, which is ridiculous,” she told JNS. “No one bases a lawsuit on one article.”
“Anyone who has actually investigated antisemitism on these campuses has ample proof,” she said. “I find it difficult to believe that the whistleblower says there was nothing there, and they were just using this as a pretext.”
At Brown, the disclosure states that the investigative team conducted “extensive witness interviews and document review” and concluded that the evidence did not support a Title VI violation, because the school had responded promptly and effectively to the incidents investigators identified.
It alleges that officials nevertheless declined to issue a notice of no violation and sought a settlement or other resolution.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee say that Daniel Shieh, associate deputy director of civil rights at the Department of Health and Human Services, admitted that there was “not a Title VI violation” at Brown but said “there’s no way we’re going to get a letter of no violation cleared.”
Brown reached an agreement with the administration that included a $50 million commitment to Rhode Island workforce-development programs. Columbia reached a separate agreement that included a $200 million payment to the federal government over three years.
Harvard challenged the administration in court. Richard Stearns, a U.S. district court judge, dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit last week. The suit alleged that Harvard failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students, and the judge ruled that the government had not plausibly alleged an ongoing Title VI violation.
‘Hurting population that’s already reeling’
A Justice Department spokesman disputed Van Erem’s account and told MS NOW that she “did not work on university investigations.”
“For all matters, the department stands behind the integrity of these investigations,” the spokesman stated.
Van Erem’s disclosure also claims that officials directed investigators to interview Middle East studies professors, particularly Muslim faculty members. At Brown, one Muslim professor was singled out despite no allegation of antisemitic conduct, according to Democrats on the House panel.
An official allegedly said that the interview was not to “get information” but to see “what he will say,” House Democrats said.
Raskin called the allegation evidence of “a craven willingness to racially and ethnically profile faculty members while ostensibly investigating racial and ethnic discrimination.”
“The full extent of your misconduct remains unclear,” Raskin wrote. “At the very least, you have shown gross negligence in supervising the activities of your office.”
Lowenthal Marcus told JNS that she fears the allegations and Raskin’s response could discourage institutions from taking legitimate complaints of Jew-hatred seriously. “People will ignore actual claims of antisemitism, and it will prevent institutions from responding to those who claim there’s antisemitism,” she said.
“There are people who don’t understand the legal bases for claims of hostile environment, discriminatory harassment,” Lowenthal Marcus told JNS. “You can get that wrong, and maybe something doesn’t rise to the level of antisemitism. That’s one thing.”
“But to claim that it doesn’t exist, or that anybody, including the federal government, brought a lawsuit based on one newspaper article is false,” she said. “If we’re going to provide disincentives for institutions to respond to claims of antisemitism, that’s a disaster.”
“That’s a disgrace that is doubly hurting this population that’s already reeling,” she added.
Lowenthal Marcus said that the congressional scrutiny “won’t be a one-off if it’s successful in any way.”
“The institutions—the ones who don’t want to correct the situation and aren’t interested in alleviating tensions—they will have had some cover that they can plausibly point to,” she told JNS. “And that’s that.”
