Whistleblower Allegations Might Not Affect College Settlements

Allegations that the Trump administration’s antisemitism probes into Ivy League universities were legally baseless aren’t new. What is new this week is who’s making them.

Three former Justice Department attorneys, through their own lawyers, filed whistleblower allegations against their former employer: the federal government.

The 25-page document from the lead whistleblower says Justice attorneys were assigned to the Health and Human Services Department as part of Trump’s multi-agency antisemitism task force and then directed to find evidence of pervasive antisemitism at Brown, Columbia and Harvard Universities. But they said the evidence was insufficient and that federal officials—who had already cut off federal funding to the universities before the evidence was gathered—ignored their legal opinions and eventually settled with Brown and Columbia. A legal expert told Inside Higher Ed this week those settlements, and associated payouts, will likely stand despite the allegations.

The lead whistleblower alleges, for instance, that Daniel Shieh, the HHS Office for Civil Rights associate deputy director, said the “initial plan was for Harvard to be the first example, but when negotiations broke down, officials tried to make Columbia the example.” Shieh allegedly said that if Columbia didn’t settle, “nobody knows what is going to happen next. Maybe Brown.” He also said, according to the whistleblower, that there was “not a Title VI violation” at Brown, but “there’s no way we’re going to get a letter of no violation cleared.” (Title VI prohibits antisemitic discrimination at higher ed institutions that accept federal funding, such as student financial aid.)

The whistleblower said that instead of substantiating a violation at Brown, “witnesses, including a Jewish student leader, multiple rabbis, and faculty member from the medical school, described Brown’s consistent, proactive responses to any allegations of antisemitism.”

But Brown and Columbia settled with the Trump administration anyway last year, amid these investigations. Columbia gave up $221 million and Brown gave up $50 million; both surrendered some autonomy to the federal government in what faculty critics called capitulations that emboldened Trump officials.

Columbia’s commitments included providing the administration with admissions data, asking international student applicants “their reasons for wishing to study in the United States” and undertaking a “thorough review of the portfolio of programs in regional areas across the university, starting immediately with the Middle East.” Brown committed to adopt the Trump administration’s definitions of male and female and ban its doctors from prescribing puberty blockers to minors, among other provisions. Only Harvard fought back in court, and it’s won so far.

Asked by Inside Higher Ed whether they now regret entering into these settlements, or plan to find some way to exit them, Columbia declined to comment while a Brown spokesperson sent a long statement defending the agreement but not saying whether it seeks to exit it. Brown had faced $510 million in frozen federal research funds, with future funding also cut off.

This “posed enormous challenges for Brown’s research mission and financial sustainability, and if left unaddressed, would have undermined our ability to conduct life-saving research and to offer our students a world-class education,” the university’s statement said, adding that the settlement “permanently closed three open reviews of the University’s federal compliance with anti-discrimination laws” while restoring “medical and health sciences research funding” and preserving “the ability for our students and scholars to teach and learn without government intrusion.”

It’s unclear whether the universities could even escape the settlements, if they wished. The universities both denied wrongdoing, and the agreements don’t list any findings that the federal government may have made.

“Anything can be brought to court,” said Peter Lake, a Stetson University law professor. But he said getting out of these settlements would be “challenging, to say the least.”

“It’s not as if Brown and Columbia probably didn’t have instincts that this might have been going on anyway,” Lake said, even without the new whistleblower disclosure.

Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama and Biden administrations, said the whistleblower allegations are an embarrassment for the Trump administration and for the civil rights laws she says it’s misusing.

But Lhamon, who’s now executive director of the University of California, Berkeley’s Edley Center on Law and Democracy, said she also hopes Brown and Columbia are “embarrassed about having compromised their students’ rights, their campus rights and the health of our democracy through the agreements they entered into.”

The whistleblower allegations themselves could lead to changes, but that requires officials to pay attention to them. Generally, they don’t have to.

Some Investigators Don’t Have to Investigate

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the House Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, who published the whistleblower allegations, has launched an investigation, according to a news release this week.

“We’re heartened Congressman Raskin is obviously taking this very seriously,” said Dana Gold, senior director of advocacy and strategy with the Government Accountability Project and one of the lawyers representing the whistleblowers. But she noted that it’s not a bipartisan investigation, and the minority party doesn’t have subpoena power.

“It’s early days to see what level of interest we’ll get from other congressional committee staff,” Gold said.

The Government Accountability Project sent the whistleblower allegations to Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. The Republicans who chair both committees haven’t announced investigations.

A spokesperson for Chuck Grassley, the Iowa senator who chairs that chamber’s committee, told Inside Higher Ed in an email only that his “office is in receipt of this disclosure and will review the information.” A spokesperson for the House committee led by Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, said in an email that “there’s no denying that antisemitism on college campuses is a serious problem. The Committee strongly supports the Administration’s work to fight this hatred.”

But how Congress responds to the allegations could change next year, depending on whether the midterm elections change which party controls the House and Senate.

The Government Accountability Project also sent the allegations to the U.S. special counsel and the Justice and HHS inspectors general. Justice’s Office of the Inspector General didn’t respond to a call left by Inside Higher Ed, while a spokesperson for the HHS Office of the Inspector General said in an email that “we received the letter and are reviewing it for appropriate action.”

The Office of Special Counsel does have to look into this. Federal law says the special counsel must at least “determine whether there is a substantial likelihood” that the whistleblower information “discloses a violation of any law, rule, or regulation, or gross mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority, or substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.” And the special counsel must do so within 45 days.

Gold said the Government Accountability Project should hear from that office about interviewing the whistleblowers. She said part of her organization’s goal “is to create opportunities for oversight entities to do their work of accountability and protecting the public interest and using evidence to comply with law.”

“When the most powerful law enforcement entity is abusing its authority to terrorize enemies, or towards political ends, we should all be very concerned when that much power can be weaponized,” Gold said, adding that “when the rule of law is turned into a weapon, as opposed to a tool for enforcement of laws on the books, then the threat to democracy is grave.”

The White House referred questions to Justice and HHS. HHS hasn’t responded to requests for comment, while Justice said in a statement, “The Department stands behind the integrity of these investigations.”

Allegations of Slanted Investigations

The lead whistleblower letter includes numerous specific allegations suggesting that the investigations weren’t motivated by actual evidence of pervasive antisemitism.

Shieh, the HHS official, allegedly said officials expanded probes that focused on medical schools to cover entire universities because “he did not think the facts surfaced through investigation to date would justify a finding of a Title VI violation at the medical schools.”

He also allegedly “explained a plan to systematically interview Middle East studies professors” at Brown, “particularly Muslim faculty,” noting an interview with one professor “was not ‘to get information’ but to see ‘what he will say.’” The whistleblower said she took that to mean trying to elicit a remark HHS could label antisemitic.

“The DOJ assignees repeatedly pushed back on having Middle East studies professors who were not connected to complaints of antisemitism on the witness interview list, but leadership refused to take them off,” the whistleblower letter says, adding that leaders didn’t pursue suggestions to also investigate allegations of anti-Muslim bias on campuses.

The lead whistleblower further says Justice lawyers were given just an hour to read the legal section regarding findings that Columbia had violated Title VI. At one point, Shieh allegedly said in “at least a moment of pause” that “it can’t be right that billions of dollars can be pulled for anything.”

Shieh also allegedly “acknowledged that the team had done a good job convincing the front office that they should move on from Brown, but unspecified ‘stakeholders’ had ‘approached the Task Force’ demanding action” and “informed the team that those stakeholders also wanted to open a compliance review into Northwestern.” (Northwestern University, which isn’t mentioned elsewhere in the whistleblower letter, eventually settled with the Trump administration, as did Cornell University.)

Members of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors are calling the whistleblower allegations “vindication.” The national AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers sued on behalf of their Columbia members over the funding freeze, but a judge dismissed the case because she said only the university had standing to sue.

“We knew that the legal process for rescinding grants wasn’t being fulfilled,” said Page Fortna, the chapter president. Nevertheless, she said she’s surprised by how “flimsy” the evidence of Title VI violations was, according to the whistleblowers. She said the complaint undermines the legitimacy of both the university’s general counsel and the Board of Trustees.

Rob Newton, the AAUP chapter’s secretary, said, “I would be surprised if this agreement is enforceable, given the way that we now know it was arranged on the side of the federal government. This is essentially a blackmail operation.”