On Tuesday, a former Justice Department civil rights attorney told Congress what many university leaders have suspected since the first funding freeze hit their inboxes: the outcomes of the Trump Administration’s recent investigations into U.S. colleges and universities were decided before the investigators finished their work.
Haley Van Erem, a veteran of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, alleges that the administration's antisemitism task force pursued findings against Harvard, Columbia, and Brown that were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence,” part of what her complaint calls a “politically mandated effort” to squeeze settlement money out of elite universities under the banner of civil rights enforcement. Hundreds of millions of dollars were frozen before the Title VI investigations that supposedly justified the freezes were even complete. A former HHS acting general counsel reportedly said the quiet part out loud, predicting Harvard would fold because the school was “over a barrel.”
Van Erem's disclosure landed days after a federal judge threw out the DOJ's own lawsuit against Harvard, ruling that the antisemitic incidents cited were "too isolated and episodic" to sustain a Title VI claim — the same judge who, in an earlier ruling on Harvard's funding cuts, said the government had used antisemitism as “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities.” Columbia paid $200 million. Brown committed $50 million...
The Essential Services Commission has cancelled the Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) accreditation of two businesses for allegedly providing false information about their energy efficiency projects...