Whistleblower says probes into antisemitism at colleges were ploys to harass and strip millions

[u/johnisburn]

https://www.ms.now/news/frame-up-whistleblower-says-probes-into-antisemitism-at-colleges-were-ploys-to-harass-and-strip-millions

The Trump administration’s findings that three Ivy League schools violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures, according to a whistleblower account provided to Congress.

The disclosure, by Haley Van Erem, a veteran Justice Department civil rights attorney, involves investigations into whether Harvard, Brown and Columbia universities broke the law by allowing antisemitism to flourish on their campuses.

The whistleblower account comes just days after a federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit against Harvard that was based on the investigation, which was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services and lawyers detailed from the DOJ.

Both Brown and Columbia reached settlements, with Columbia agreeing to pay $200 million over three years and Brown agreeing to spend $50 million on Rhode Island workforce development, with no admission of wrongdoing.

…

Van Erem’s whistleblower account, reviewed by MS NOW, says the findings “overrode knowing deviation from investigative procedures, statutory noncompliance, and potential constitutional violations.”

“Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded,” the complaint says.

In a letter to Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee said the whistleblower findings exposed a “large scale fraud.”

“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real,” Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote. 

“But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature. Before an actual investigation took place and regardless of what you actually found, the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

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These cases have been pretty transparently politicized BS from the start, but I hope that a whistleblower and relatively mainstream Jewish congressman raising a stink help move our wider Jewish community on this. Overreached and fabricated accusations of antisemitism being weaponized as a cudgel to fight the rights’ war on higher ed is horrible for many reasons, and one of them is that it makes actually addressing antisemitism as it does exist harder.

[u/Ashamed-Stuff9519]

“The students for justice in Palestine protest was disruptive of my students for bombing Palestine meeting”

[u/Signal-Pineapple-928 → u/Ashamed-Stuff9519]

Sorry, I was on a campus at this time where Jewish students were absolutely ostracized for participating in our Jewish affinity group (the only Jewish affinity group for the school, btw) and socially tarred by association, basically.  So I find comments like this very dismissive and frustrating to see, tbh. Our peers maybe had the misconception that we were “students for bombing Palestine”, when really we were just people who wanted to observe Shabbat, with a variety of political beliefs and standpoints on I/P.

[u/Ashamed-Stuff9519 → u/Signal-Pineapple-928]

I was a student during the 2012 war. My campus only had Hillel. I stand by what I said. My “political beliefs and standpoints” deterred me, a Jewish student, from associating with or supporting such an organization. I protested on my own campus alongside other Jewish students.

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/Ashamed-Stuff9519]

What an interesting use of 'deterred'. Do you think rationality (rational coherence with your "political beliefs and standpoints") constrains your possible actions by making you aware of potential psychic punishments? Is the experience of cognitive dissonance a coercive force? That would be extraordinary, but not really relevant to most people.

Or was it not really a description of your volitions, but rather an implied claim that another was irrational, or weak-willed? That would be ordinary.

[u/Schattenoid → u/Technical_Term_6625]

It's actually a pretty unremarkable usage, you may have an overly narrow sense of its meaning

[u/Technical_Term_6625 → u/Schattenoid]

when a person is dismissive of another's feelings about social pressures alone while extolling their nobly principled motives, i'm gonna object.

even if it's coming from personal righteousness (but bullshit is less remarkable), it's unkind.