The House Education and the Workforce Committee has subpoenaed Harvard University for alleged obstruction of its weekslong antisemitism investigation, ABC News reported Friday.
The Republican-led education committee subpoenaed a university for the first time in the committee's more than 150-year history, according to a spokesperson.
The committee sent subpoenas to Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker, Interim President Dr. Alan Garber, and Harvard Management Company's Chief Executive Officer N.P. Narvekar for failing to produce "priority documents" related to the probe, which started days after the committee heard "concerning" testimony from the presidents of three prominent universities during a December hearing, according to the committee.
Harvard University has come under fire over its handling of antisemitism on campus, which has been on the rise since the start of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Shortly after the war began, a coalition of 34 Harvard student organizations released a statement in which they blamed Israel for Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel.
Later, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay came under fire after she, along with MIT President Sally Kornbluth and University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, testified before a congressional hearing on the issue of antisemitism on college campuses.
All three university presidents gave similar answers to Rep. Elise Stefanik in which they failed to unequivocally condemn antisemitism or even calls for genocide against Jews.
Gay later resigned as President of Harvard amid the backlash over her congressional testimony on antisemitism. She subsequently claimed she was the target of a sustained campaign of lies and personal insults.
The Education and Workforce Committee recently asked the university for a list of documents related the probe and gave it two weeks to produce the records.
Harvard has now been given a new deadline of March 4 at 5:00 p.m. to submit key materials related to all antisemitic acts or incidents since Jan. 1, 2021, according to the subpoena.
The committee said it's requesting documents that date back far enough for it to conduct a thorough investigation of the school's handling of alleged antisemitism.
"Harvard's continued failure to satisfy the Committee's requests is unacceptable," Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx said in a statement, obtained by ABC News. "I will not tolerate delay and defiance of our investigation while Harvard's Jewish students continue to endure the firestorm of antisemitism that has engulfed its campus."
A Harvard spokesperson told ABC News in a statement “Antisemitism has no place in the Harvard community." The spokesperson called the subpoenas “unfortunate” because the university has provided “fulsome” responses across ten submissions that directly address key areas of inquiry by the committee.