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Justice Department whistleblower says antisemitism probes targeted universities without evidence
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The American task force that investigated antisemitism at Ivy League universities after the Gaza campus protests pushed those universities into paying settlements without establishing that they had broken the law, a former Justice Department lawyer has alleged in a whistleblower complaint reported by the Washington Post.
Haley Van Erem, who spent nearly a decade in the department's Civil Rights Division before being assigned to Title VI investigations at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote that the inquiries were "marked by extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support".
The outcomes, she wrote, were "predetermined, without regard to the evidence" in a "politically mandated effort" to extract money from schools through settlement demands and funding freezes. She left the department in May 2025, saying she was unwilling to remain exposed to "politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law".
The complaint concerns the task force created by the Justice Department under then-attorney general Pam Bondi in February 2025, and centres on three universities: Harvard, Columbia and Brown. The investigating team, she wrote, did not find evidence that university leaders had systematically violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in their treatment of Jewish students.
A Justice Department spokesperson said the department stands behind the integrity of its investigations.
What the universities paid#
Columbia agreed to pay $200 million to restore access to federal funding. Brown agreed to pay $50 million to workforce development organisations in Rhode Island, with no findings of wrongdoing against it. Harvard fought, and federal judges later reversed more than $2.6 billion in cuts and dismissed the administration's lawsuit against the university.
Why this lands on a Palestinian desk#
The protests that triggered these investigations were about Gaza. Their participants included Palestinian students, and the discipline that followed — suspensions, evictions from campus housing, visa exposure for foreign students — fell heavily on them.
Antisemitism on a campus is real and must be met wherever it appears. The complaint's allegation is a different one and needs stating precisely: that a government office used that duty as an instrument, ran investigations whose conclusions were fixed in advance, and converted them into money and leverage.
If the account is upheld, the cost falls in two directions. Jewish students who face genuine hostility are left with a remedy that has been spent for other purposes. And Palestinian students learn that the argument they made about Gaza was answered not with a finding, but with a settlement negotiated over their heads.
