Published by the Boston Globe on 1/4/24; Story by Jim Puzzanghera Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard’s president hasn’t ended the university’s troubles with its congressional critics, who are zeroing in on hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money that flows to Cambridge every year. Gay’s decision to step down has done nothing to deter North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, who recently launched an investigation in the House Education and the Workforce Committee into the handling of antisemitic incidents at Harvard and other elite universities. The findings “could jeopardize federal funding, depending on where our investigation goes. No taxpayer dollars should flow to colleges that failed to protect students, all students,” Foxx told the Globe. “Harvard’s problems are much larger than one leader. . . .They solved one of their problems right now, I think, the short-term problem. But it isn’t solving the long term problem.” Still, Harvard probably is not at risk of losing its federal funding, higher education experts said. “At the end of the day, the resolution is unlikely to involve a complete elimination of federal funds to Harvard. That’s just extremely rare,” said Kenneth Marcus, who headed the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights from 2018-20. “But the threat of that extraordinary remedy has the potential to focus Harvard’s attention on resolving the problems.” Harvard received $676 million in federal research funding last year, amounting to11 percent of its total operating revenues, according to its annual financial report. Harvard ranked fifth in total federal funding among a group of elite private universities from 2018-2022, with $3.27 billion, according to data compiled by OpenTheBooks, a nonprofit watchdog group, and 21st in federal revenue among all degree-granting universities in 2017-2018, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Harvard students also get millions of dollars in federal financial aid. While the vast majority — 94 percent — of the $851 million in aid received by students last year came from the university, about 6 percent was from “federal government aid initiatives and other outside sponsors,” according to the financial report. The large amount of federal funding provides Congress with leverage to press Harvard for changes, said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of more than 1,700 US colleges and universities. The House education committee probably wouldn’t try to specifically target Harvard with any legislation but is looking at making changes to the Higher Education Act, which governs federal aid to universities and students, Guillory said. “If they continue to look into Harvard, whatever they may find there they may use as a catalyst for holding institutions such as Harvard to a higher degree of accountability . . . but not an effort to only isolate one institution and remove funding from one institution,” Guillory said. Many Republicans have criticized Harvard and other elite universities for liberal policies and efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion at their institutions. Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, has led the charge. She aggressively questioned Gay and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania at a Dec. 5 hearing about their response to antisemitic incidents on their campuses. Their legalistic answers were heavily criticized, leadingUPenn president Elizabeth Magill to resign and beginning the calls for Gay to step down that accelerated with the plagiarism allegations. Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, has said she wants to “defund the rot in America’s higher education” “We will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that schools that protect and encourage antisemitism are cut off from any and all federal funds,” Stefanik told the New York Post last month. Bills have been introduced in the House and the Senate to prohibit universities that authorize any events on campus deemed antisemitic from participating in federal student loan and grant programs. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and also a Harvard grad, has proposed a “woke endowment” tax of 6 percent on most universities with the largest endowments, including Harvard, MIT, and UPenn. Harvard has the nation’s largest university endowment at $50.7 billion, according to its financial report. Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, an organization that works to advance liberal education, said conservatives are politicizing higher education. “The strength of American higher education is derived from the fact that what’s taught inside and outside of the classroom is protected from direct governmental control and undue political influence,” said Pasquerella, the former president of Mount Holyoke College. “I’m afraid now we have started down this path of governmental overreach in a way that will have a profound and lasting impact on higher education.” Harvard’s handling of plagiarism allegations against Gay is the focus of a separate committee review, according to a letter sent last month by Foxx to Penny Pritzker, head of the university’s governing board, the Harvard Corporation. She questioned whether the treatment of Gay was consistent with accreditation guidelines and warned that “federal funding to Harvard is conditioned upon the school’s adherence to the standards of a recognized accreditor.” Another threat to Harvard’s federal funding comes from an investigation opened Nov. 28 by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The department has not publicly stated the reason for the investigation. But according to portions of a letter from the department seen by the Globe, it was prompted by a complaint alleging Harvard “discriminated against students on the basis of their national origin (shared Jewish ancestry and/or Israeli) when it failed to respond appropriately to reports of incidents of harassment” in October. Such investigations can result in the loss of federal funds, but usually do not, said Marcus, the former Office of Civil Rights head who also is the founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a Jewish civil rights organization. “Typically under threat of defunding, universities will agree to several changes in formal negotiations with OCR,” he said. Marcus pointed to a settlement last April between the agency and the University of Vermont after a complaint from the Brandeis Center of Jewish students facing antisemitic harassment. The university didn’t lose its federal funding but agreed to take steps to prevent future incidents, including revising its policies and training staff. “Harvard has not been willing on its own to take the type of action that is clearly required, so unfortunately more action is required from Congress, the courts, and perhaps the executive branch as well,” he said. Foxx said her committee’s investigation goes beyond the actions of the university presidents. “Harvard’s problems are much larger than one leader and if the Corporation thinks this is going to deter us, the Corporation is sadly wrong about that,” she said.