Trump Administration Probes Harvard Law Review Over Alleged Race-Based Discrimination

United States President Donald Trump’s administration is investigating whether Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review, a legally independent student-run organisation, violated civil rights law after the journal’s editors fast-tracked the consideration of an article written by a member of a racial minority.

The news of the probe came just hours after a federal judge agreed to expedite Harvard University’s lawsuit aimed at preventing the Trump administration from freezing $2.3 billion in federal grant funding that the Ivy League has said threatens vital medical and scientific research. According to a Reuters report, the probe by the US Department of Education and Health and Human Services, Harvard Law Review editors may have engaged in "race-based discrimination", violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Craig Trainor, the Education Department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in a statement, said that Harvard Law Review selects 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” may be as significant as, or even outweigh, the quality of the submission itself.

Meanwhile, a Harvard University representative said that the school is "committed to ensuring that the programs and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations."

During a brief hearing in Boston, US District Judge Allison Burroughs scheduled a hearing for July 21 in the case, following Harvard’s warning that the funding freeze and potential additional cuts were endangering critical research. Monday’s hearing marked the first since Harvard filed its lawsuit last week, after rejecting what the university’s president described as unlawful demands from the administration’s antisemitism task force “to control whom we hire and what we teach.”

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The demands included calls for the private university to overhaul its governance structure, revise its hiring and admissions processes to promote ideological diversity, and shut down specific academic programs. According to Reuters, Harvard has said that while it is committed to combating antisemitism, the administration's sweeping demands violate the free speech guarantees of the US Constitution's First Amendment.

Instead of pursuing a preliminary injunction to halt the funding freeze while the case proceeds, Harvard has chosen to go directly to the merits of the case—a move both the university and the US Department of Justice have asked the judge to consider on an expedited basis.

Harvard and several other universities have faced threats to their federal funding from the administration due to their handling of pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that sparked unrest on campuses last year.

These institutions have also come under scrutiny over issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as transgender policies.

Since returning to the office, Trump has intensified his crackdown on DEI programs, portraying efforts to support historically marginalised communities as discriminatory toward groups such as white people and men.

In late March, the Trump administration announced it was launching a review of approximately $9 billion in grants and contracts with Harvard, citing the university’s alleged failure to protect Jewish students from antisemitic discrimination, particularly during campus protests. Since then, the Trump administration has frozen $2.3 billion in funding to Harvard and issued threats to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status, as well as its authorisation to enrol foreign students. Additionally, it has demanded detailed information about Harvard’s foreign affiliations, sources of funding, and the backgrounds of its students and faculty.

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