Foxx Accuses Harvard of ‘Malfeasance’ Following Monday Document Submission

Updated March 6, 2024, at 2:00 a.m.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, slammed Harvard’s most recent document submission as “malfeasance” and said the committee is weighing further action.

“I don’t know if its arrogance, ineptness, or indifference,” Foxx said in a statement on Tuesday. “Harvard has absolutely failed to comply in good faith with the Committee’s subpoena for information about antisemitism on its campus.”

Harvard said it provided approximately 1,500 pages of documents on Monday in its 11th submission to the committee since it launched an investigation into antisemitism on campus.

Monday’s submission was the first since the committee subpoenaed interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81, and Harvard Management Company CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar.

But Foxx said that many of the documents were “duplicates” of items provided in previous submissions.

“Heavy redactions throughout the production made several documents useless,” Foxx said. “The Committee is weighing an appropriate response to Harvard’s malfeasance.”

The committee’s subpoena, however, included documents that were previously requested voluntarily. The subpoena instructed Harvard to still produce documents even if other individuals or organizations already had “non-identical or identical copies of the same documents.”

A Harvard spokesperson told The Crimson Tuesday that the University did not double count previously submitted documents, having submitted 4,900 pages to the committee in total since January.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement Monday that the University “continues to respond, in good faith” to the congressional investigation.

Foxx’s statement also indicates that many of the more sensitive documents provided by Harvard — likely disciplinary records and meeting minutes of the University’s governing boards — were redacted, something the committee intends to fight.

Now that Harvard has submitted material under investigation, the committee must decide if it will vote to hold Garber, Pritzker, and Narvekar in criminal contempt of Congress. Such a path would force the case to a floor vote by the full House and then referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office for prosecution.

But in order for Garber, Pritzker, and Narvekar to be charged, the committee must justify that the subpoenaed material is necessary to perform its legislative function.

Stanley M. Brand, former general counsel to the House of Representatives, said that the committee could instead decide to negotiate behind the scenes with Harvard’s lawyers.

“Some of this stuff is pretty sensitive. And so the University lawyers would have to decide — is there a middle ground they could take that would protect the privacy interests and the other interests they have and still satisfy the committee?” he said.

“It’d be a give and take,” he added.

—Staff writer Emma H. Haidar can be reached at emma.haidar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @HaidarEmma.

—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at cam.kettles@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles.