House Republicans Threaten Funding Cuts, Endowment Tax After Yearlong Antisemitism Probe

Updated December 20, 2024, at 3:47 a.m.

Top House Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), urged Congress to more aggressively enforce Title VI antidiscrimination provisions against Harvard and reiterated threats to strip federal research funding in a report released Thursday.

The report — which includes findings from investigations by six separate House Committees — caps a yearlong probe into allegations of antisemitism at U.S. universities, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT.

“Universities that fail to fulfill the obligations upon which their federal funding is predicated or whose actions make clear they are unfit stewards of taxpayer dollars should be treated accordingly,” the report read.

In the report, House Republicans called on Congress to pass legislation that strips eligibility for Title VI funding from U.S. universities that boycott or divest from Israel — moves they called “madness.”

The report adds weight to growing concerns among Harvard’s leaders that a second Trump administration could put Harvard’s federal funding in limb0.

The House Ways and Means Committee has previously threatened to pull Harvard’s tax-exempt status over its response to antisemitism, and the report reiterated calls for Congress to impose tax penalties on tax-exempt institutions for violations of students’ civil rights.

The report’s authors also wrote that “Congress should consider legislation that changes the endowment formula and/or the endowment tax rate,” suggesting that an endowment tax could be used to incentivize universities to “better secure their campuses.”

The House-wide report is the clearest indication to date that the next Congress will continue to pressure Harvard long after the education and workforce committee concluded their probe.

The recommendations also confirm fears from top University officials that Congress will seriously pursue financial penalties against colleges and universities they feel did not respond adequately to antisemitism. In April, Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 told faculty members in a closed-door meeting that an endowment tax was a “threat that keeps me up at night.”

In public, both Garber and Penny S. Pritzker, Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — have emphasized the importance of federal funding to Harvard’s research efforts.

“We could not carry out our mission the way we do now without substantial federal research support, nor could we provide the benefits to the nation that we do now without that support,” Garber said in an interview with The Crimson Dec. 10.

Thursday’s report reiterated the findings of a previous House report that dragged Harvard for its leaders’ behind-the-scenes deliberations on a public response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The new report once again slammed Harvard for its lightening of sanctions against students who participated in the pro-Palestine encampment last spring.

It concludes a yearlong process that began following then-President Claudine Gay’s disastrous December 2023 testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and expanded into a House-wide probe in April. Harvard has submitted more than 57,000 pages of documents to the education and workforce committee as of September 27.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton reiterated the University’s stance on combating antisemitism in a Thursday statement, writing that “across the university we have intensified our efforts to listen to, learn from, support, and uplift our Jewish community, affirming their vital place at Harvard.”

Stanley M. Brand, former general counsel to the House of Representatives, cautioned against conflating the threats with real legislative action under a Trump administration.

“The Republican Congress is going to continue to focus on the academy and draw attention to the things that they think are amiss,” Brand said. “Whether that develops into concrete legislation or not remains to be seen.”

The report also took aim at federal research grant funding under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, accusing agency officials of slow-walking investigations into antisemitism at universities that receive HHS research grants.

Harvard received $494 million in research funding from HHS in 2023, mostly via the National Institutes of Health.

The report urged institutions receiving NIH funding to appoint antisemitism task forces, review all curricular materials for “bias, discrimination, indoctrination, etc.,” and address antisemitism in their discrimination and harassment trainings.

It recommended the Trump administration make “wholesale personnel changes” at HHS and urged the NIH to speed up its timeline for investigating discrimination claims based on shared ancestry or national origin.

“The NIH has a duty to ensure that federal taxpayer funds do not support harassing or discriminatory behavior,” the report’s authors wrote.

The calls for the NIH to restrict funding for universities follows reporting by the Wall Street Journal that Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya — Trump’s nominee to lead the NIH and Garber’s former student from Stanford — is considering tying grant money directly to academic freedom measures.

In an interview with The Crimson earlier this month, Garber praised Bhattacharya’s selection. But should he act on the reported suggestions, Bhattacharya is likely to become a central figure in the push to punish Harvard financially.

The report specifically criticized Harvard’s failure to implement the recommendations to combat antisemitism outlined by Gay’s Antisemitism Advisory Group instated by former-President Gay.

“Rather than implement the AAG’s recommendations, the Task Force took months to release a weaker, less detailed set of preliminary recommendations in June 2024, which drew criticism from Harvard’s Jewish community,” the report states.

The report also cited Garber’s hesitance to condemn the slogan “From The River To The Sea” as “Antisemitic” to be a deliberate refusal to support the University’s Jewish communities.

In addition to its recommendations for federal officials, the report aimed several demands at universities, urging them to treat “discrimination against Zionists” as a civil rights violation, issue statements condemning antisemitism, and “reform admissions and hiring processes that have filled their student bodies, faculties, and staffs with pro-Hamas antisemites.”

“Universities must restore academic rigor and stop their programs from being platforms for intellectually bankrupt radicalization and indoctrination, including the perpetuation of antisemitic falsehoods,” the report read.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.