Overview

• Health and Human Services’ civil rights office said Harvard acted with “deliberate indifference” to antisemitic harassment under Title VI and has moved the case to the department’s suspension and debarment program.
• Harvard has 20 days to request a formal administrative hearing before an HHS administrative law judge on whether it violated federal civil rights law.
• The process can begin with a temporary suspension of up to one year and can lead to government‑wide debarment that blocks new grants and contracts across federal agencies.
• A federal judge in Boston earlier this month ordered more than $2 billion in frozen research funding restored, calling the administration’s actions a “smokescreen,” but the government is pursuing parallel administrative steps.
• HHS previously referred the matter to the Justice Department, a separate inquiry into the Harvard Law Review remains open, and the university disputes the findings while pointing to steps it says address antisemitism.