CNN
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Flip over a trove of paperwork about antisemitism on campus or face a subpoena. That’s the ultimate warning Rep. Virginia Foxx, the Republican chairwoman of the Home Schooling and Workforce Committee, delivered to Harvard College on Wednesday because the panel seeks to advance its investigation into antisemitism on faculty campuses.
In a letter despatched to Harvard leaders, Foxx accused the Ivy League college of “obstructing” the committee’s investigation by withholding lots of the documents lawmakers are seeking and submitting others that had been publicly out there and but contained “bewildering redactions.”
“Harvard’s failure to provide paperwork requested by the Committee in a well timed method is unacceptable and won’t be tolerated,” Foxx wrote within the letter to Harvard interim president Alan Garber and Penny Pritzker, who leads the Harvard Company, the college’s high governing board.
Foxx detailed a sequence of high-priority paperwork that she needs Harvard to show over by 5 pm ET on February 14, together with assembly minutes since Hamas’ October 7 terror assaults on Israel and communications by college officers associated to antisemitism. This narrower listing excludes a number of the committee’s prior requests for data on Harvard’s variety workplace in addition to on overseas donations.
“If the above precedence requests are unfulfilled by the deadline set above, the Committee is ready to difficulty a subpoena,” Foxx wrote.
In a statment, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton mentioned the college was cooperating with the committee and “has supplied intensive data with preliminary submissions made final month and several other additional responses. We have now made eight submissions, together with one on Monday, in reference to their inquiries, and plan one other submission for Friday.”
“The protection and well-being of our college students stays our high precedence,” he mentioned.
Garber, who changed Claudine Homosexual after she stepped down final month, has signaled Harvard will cooperate with the Home investigation.
In an interview with The Crimson final week, Garber mentioned Harvard would “comply totally with the method” of the investigation.
But Foxx has repeatedly criticized Harvard for its response, beforehand describing it as “woefully inadequate” and telling CNN that lawmakers “thought Harvard would take this extra significantly.”
Within the new letter despatched on Wednesday, Foxx mentioned that to this point Harvard has produced only one “doc of significance” for the reason that request for documents was made on January 9. That doc is a set of really helpful objectives and steps to handle antisemitism by Harvard’s antisemitism advisory group. It was supplied final week.
A lot of the paperwork Harvard has turned over are publicly out there, together with greater than a thousand pages of scholar handbooks and college guidelines, in keeping with the Home committee.
A few of these paperwork comprise “inappropriate and inexplicable redactions,” Foxx wrote. In a single occasion, in keeping with Foxx, the identify of the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League was redacted from the signature of a letter that he publicly signed.