House panel subpoenas Harvard, Penny Pritzker tied to antisemitism probe

Harvard University’s Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker and other top school officials were issued subpoenas Friday by a House committee over their “continued failure” to comply with its antisemitism probe.

The Ivy League school had until Wednesday at 5 p.m. to cough up a batch of “priority documents” to the House Education and Workforce Committee — but the deadline wasn’t met, prompting the trio of subpoenas to Pritzker, Interim President Alan Garber and Harvard Management Company’s CEO N.P Narvekar.

“Harvard has repeatedly failed to satisfy the Committee’s request within a reasonable timeframe, despite being afforded several accommodations, including being given the opportunity to submit productions on a rolling basis, being offered multiple deadline extensions and having priority documents identified by the Committee,” the panel’s chairwoman, Virginia Foxx (R-NC), said in a letter accompanying the subpoenas to the three officials.

Foxx accused the school of obstructing the investigation while tolerating antisemitism on campus.

The House committee launched its investigation into Harvard’s handling of antisemitism on campus last month after former president Claudine Gay’s resignation.

Gay resigned amid plagiarism allegations and outrage over her testimony in front the panel — in which she refused to say that anyone calling for the genocide of Jews at the university would be punished.

Harvard has so far provided the panel with over 2,500 pages of documents, about 40% of which was already publicly available — but has come up short with certain requests, according to Foxx.

The committee chairwoman said in a statement she was “extremely disappointed” in Harvard’s apparent stonewalling, stating what has been sent over so far is “severely insufficient.”

“In its most recent response, Harvard failed to make substantial productions on two of four priority requests and its productions on the remaining two priority requests contain notable deficiencies, including apparent omissions and questionable redactions,” said Foxx.

The subpoenas demands various reports, communications and documents, including ones related to the school’s response to 34 student organizations blaming Israel for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state.

Foxx said she sent a final warning shot to Harvard last week, including the threat of a subpoena. She now hopes the mandate serves as a “wakeup call.”

“Harvard’s continued failure to satisfy the Committee’s requests is unacceptable,” she said. “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 the campus.

Pritzker, Garber and Narvekar have until March 4 to hand over the requested documents.