Harvard officials in June called the administration’s charge and investigation “unlawful retaliation.”
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Escalating the ongoing legal battle between the Trump administration and Harvard University, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has asked a federal judge to compel Harvard to hand over records related to its hiring practices, The New York Times reported.
In April, the EEOC accused the university of violating Title VII by discriminating against white, male, Asian and heterosexual applicants. It cited archived data from the Harvard website that showed the percentage of tenured, white male faculty at the university on the decline while the percentages of tenured female faculty and professors of color have risen. The EEOC filed the civil rights charge four days after Harvard sued the Trump administration for withholding $2.2 billion in funding, according to the Times.
This latest suit accuses Harvard of noncompliance and asks the judge to enforce a June subpoena seeking more documents related to the EEOC’s investigation.
“There is reason to believe that these trends and the underlying pattern or practice of discrimination based on race and sex have continued in 2024 and are ongoing,” Andrea Lucas, chair of the EEOC, wrote in the April charge.
Harvard officials in June called the Trump administration’s charge and investigation “unlawful retaliation” that “asserts a legally and logically incoherent theory of discrimination,” the Times reported.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration filed a similar suit against the University of Pennsylvania in an attempt to access information about Jewish employees at the university. In June, the commission withdrew its subpoena.
