Back Up, Congress. Your Probe Is Useless.

Once again, Congress is in Harvard’s hair — and this time, the accusations are even more absurd than before.

Last month, Rep. Virginia A. Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, attacked Harvard for easing sanctions on pro-Palestinian protestors, accusing the University of failing to provide a safe learning environment for Jewish students and thus violating its responsibilities under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The House probe is a prime example of political theater. After subpoenaing a whopping 57,000 pages of documents, our legislators have found nothing substantial. The Committee’s main criticism? That the Harvard College Administrative Board chose to relax disciplinary regulations on the students who were initially sanctioned for participating in the pro-Palestine encampment last spring.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits universities receiving federal funding from discriminating based on “race, color, or national origin.” The Committee claims that by not sufficiently punishing pro-Palestinian students, Harvard has discriminated against Jewish students.

This argument is clearly riddled with flaws, and it highlights just how out-of-touch our legislators are from the reality of our campus climate. More alarmingly, the Title VI claim represents a dangerous government intrusion into the sphere of higher education, threatening the very foundations of academic freedom and open discourse that universities are designed to foster.

First of all, the encampment itself was not discriminatory — take it from an actual Harvard student who walked by it every day. Protests were peaceful and nonviolent. There were no direct threats against Jewish students. Unlike protests from peer institutions spotlighted in the media, there was never a need to call in the police.

Congress must know all these things — they certainly have enough information from us. And yet, the Committee continues to theatrically lambast higher education, levying the same vague, virulent, and vitriolic accusations at Harvard that it used over a year ago. Indeed, unlike the Committee’s probe into Columbia, where university administrators themselves perpetuated discriminatory stereotypes against Jews, the Committee’s probe into Harvard hasn’t uncovered anything of the kind.

Naturally, many Harvard students likely disagreed with the goals of the encampment, including divestment from Israel. But disagreement with protesters — or even discomfort at their rhetoric — is not enough to constitute discrimination.

When the action in question is not the university’s own speech, but rather its sanctions on student speech, the bar should be exceptionally high to find a university in violation of Title VI. Punishing students is a significant step — Harvard rarely does it — and doing so clearly has a chilling effect on campus discourse.

If Harvard were a state university, protesters’ speech would be protected by the First Amendment. It therefore seems deeply problematic for the government to punish Harvard with a Title VI violation for choosing not to penalize speech that would almost certainly be protected at our peer institutions. To do so would effectively require private institutions to restrict speech more heavily than the Constitution’s own standard, creating a perverse incentive for private universities to over-censor student expression out of fear of losing federal funding.

Furthermore, Congress’s civil rights argument actually applies much more easily in the opposite direction: If Harvard had chosen to strongly discipline pro-Palestinian protestors, it would have treated them differently from student protestors, like those in the Harvard Living Wage Campaign or the Occupy Harvard movement, who erected encampments without major disciplinary consequence.

And, even if Congress could somehow justify their insistence that Harvard police its students’ speech, they have conveniently neglected to acknowledge how Harvard took action against the protestors both during and after the encampment.

University President Alan M. Garber ’76 issued a statement directing the protestors to remove the encampment, placed at least 22 students on involuntary leaves of absence, and managed to successfully and peacefully clear the encampment before Commencement. In addition, the Harvard College Administrative Board initially suspended five students and barred 15 seniors from graduating at Commencement. While the suspensions were ultimately reversed, these punitive measures indicate that Harvard seriously responded to the encampment with a measured approach.

Finally, if there are legitimate concerns about discrimination on campus, the appropriate venue for investigation is the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, not Congress.

Notably, the Department of Education is currently investigating Harvard over accusations of anti-Palestinian discrimination — yet Congress has not seen fit to open an investigation themselves. It seems their probes are more motivated by politics than a desire to protect students.

Foxx’s accusations demonstrate why legislators should not meddle in university affairs. It is not Congress’s business to pressure universities to censor or overly punish student speech out of fear of losing federal funding. By doing so, legislators completely undermine institutions of higher education, which should be crucibles for ideas, even — or perhaps especially — controversial ones.

We must resist these misguided attempts to weaponize civil rights laws for political power, ensuring higher education protects free expression and promotes open dialogue. Harvard’s measured response to last semester’s protests demonstrates a commitment to these principles, not a heinous violation of civil rights.

This isn’t the first time Congress has meddled in Harvard’s affairs, and it won’t be the last. But for the sake of higher education, Congress must step back and allow our competent educational institutions to navigate these complex issues without the threat of political retribution hanging over their heads. The health of our democracy and the integrity of our educational system depend on it.

Calvin D. Alexander, Jr. ‘27, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Comparative Literature and Music concentrator in Adams House.