Allegations that the Trump administration’s antisemitism probes into Ivy League universities were legally baseless aren’t new. What is new this week is who’s making them.
Three former Justice Department attorneys, through their own lawyers, filed whistleblower allegations against their former employer: the federal government.
The 25-page document from the lead whistleblower says Justice attorneys were assigned to the Health and Human Services Department as part of Trump’s multi-agency antisemitism task force and then directed to find evidence of pervasive antisemitism at Brown, Columbia and Harvard Universities. But they said the evidence was insufficient and that federal officials—who had already cut off federal funding to the universities before the evidence was gathered—ignored their legal opinions and eventually settled with Brown and Columbia. A legal expert told Inside Higher Ed this week those settlements, and associated payouts, will likely stand despite the allegations.
The lead whistleblower alleges, for instance, that Daniel Shieh, the HHS Office for Civil Rights associate deputy director, said the “initial plan was for Harvard to be the first example, but when negotiations broke down, officials tried to make Columbia the example.” Shieh allegedly said that if Columbia didn’t settle, “nobody knows what is going to happen next. Maybe Brown.” He also said, according to the whistleblower, that there was “not a Title VI violation” at Brown, but “...
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