House Committee Will Subpoena Harvard for Documents Relating to Antisemitism

A congressional committee said Friday that it would serve subpoenas on Harvard University in a hunt for documentation of whether the university tolerated antisemitism on its campus.

The move is part of an expanding Republican effort to investigate elite universities for their response to pro-Palestinian student demonstrations, especially after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. The committee has also started investigations into Columbia, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania. But Harvard is the first to receive subpoenas.

The Israel-Hamas war has exposed deep political divisions among Harvard students, faculty members and alumni, which contributed to the resignation last month of Claudine Gay, the university’s first Black president.

Harvard, like many other universities, has said it must protect Jewish students while also protecting free speech, but critics have said that university officials have allowed demonstrations to veer into antisemitism.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce said the subpoenas would go to Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber; the head of its governing corporation, Penny Pritzker; and N.P. Narvekar, the chief executive officer of its management company, which handles the university’s endowment.

The subpoenas did not come as a surprise, since in the last few days, the committee had reprimanded Harvard for withholding or heavily redacting documents and warned that it would take legal action.