Nicolai Haugsted
Trump officials accused of using federal funding to pressure prestigious US universities.
Serious allegations about the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism on American campuses are raising questions about how federal investigations into some of the country’s most prestigious universities were conducted.
A former Justice Department lawyer claims officials pursued settlements and threatened federal funding even when investigators had not established sufficient evidence of legal violations.
Haley Van Erem, who spent nearly a decade in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, has filed a whistleblower disclosure seeking investigations by federal watchdogs. Her allegations concern a multi-agency task force established in February 2025 to investigate antisemitism at universities.
The Justice Department rejects the criticism and says it stands behind the integrity of its investigations.
Outcomes allegedly decided before evidence was complete
Van Erem’s complaint portrays a process driven partly by political objectives rather than solely by the findings of investigators.
According to the disclosure obtained by the Associated Press, some investigations were rushed, incomplete or failed to demonstrate that universities had broken federal civil rights law.
Her lawyers allege that outcomes were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence” and describe the broader initiative as a “politically mandated effort” to secure settlements and impose funding freezes.
Van Erem was reassigned to the Department of Health and Human Services to work on Title VI investigations. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs.
Initial work reportedly focused on allegations involving antisemitism at medical school graduation ceremonies. Investigations later expanded to examine universities more broadly, including Columbia and Brown.
Van Erem left the Justice Department in May 2025. Her complaint says she was unwilling to remain exposed to participation in investigations she considered politically motivated, factually unsupported and contrary to law.
Three Ivy League institutions feature prominently in the allegations: Brown, Columbia and Harvard.
Investigators examining Brown did not find evidence supporting a Title VI violation, according to the complaint. Leadership nevertheless allegedly refused to permit investigators to issue a notice clearing the university.
Instead, officials sought a settlement or another resolution despite acknowledging that investigators lacked a legal basis for such action, the complaint alleges.
Brown ultimately agreed to provide $50 million to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island as part of an agreement ending three federal investigations concerning antisemitism and alleged racial bias in admissions. No finding of wrongdoing accompanied that agreement.
Columbia presented a different situation. Investigators found evidence of discrimination there, according to Van Erem’s complaint, but she alleges that the process was accelerated before adequate fact-finding and legal review had been completed.
Some allegations used during the investigation were reportedly based on media coverage or litigation filings, while others potentially involved activity protected by the First Amendment.
Columbia eventually agreed to pay the federal government $200 million as part of an agreement restoring access to federal funding.
Harvard faced billions in frozen funding
Harvard’s confrontation with the administration went considerably further.
According to the whistleblower disclosure, officials discussed sweeping settlement demands and major funding freezes before investigators had completed work capable of establishing Title VI violations.
Sean Keveney, then acting general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services, allegedly believed Harvard would ultimately agree to a settlement because the institution was “over a barrel.”
Federal courts have since dealt significant blows to the administration’s actions against Harvard.
A judge ordered the government last year to reverse more than $2.6 billion in research funding cuts, finding that antisemitism had been used as a “smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.”
Another judge last week dismissed an administration lawsuit accusing Harvard of failing to adequately address harassment of Jewish students.
Democrat calls investigation a ‘frame-up’
The allegations have now reached Congress.
Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has publicized the whistleblower’s claims while acknowledging that antisemitism on college campuses represents a genuine problem requiring investigation.
Raskin nevertheless accused officials responsible for the university investigations of pursuing political objectives.
“Your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature,” Raskin wrote to Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
According to Raskin, the campaign sought to pressure university administrators and professors, restrict academic freedom and remove hundreds of millions of dollars in previously awarded federal grants.
Justice Department spokesperson Kiersten Pels rejected the broader criticism, saying the department “stands behind the integrity” of its investigations.
Van Erem’s disclosure has been submitted to inspectors general at both the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the Office of Special Counsel, putting her allegations before federal bodies responsible for examining potential misconduct inside the government.
