The Trump administration plans to leverage a law intended to punish corrupt recipients of federal funding to pressure institutions like Harvard to abandon their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, Justice Department officials announced late Monday.
President Trump’s political appointees at the department cited antisemitism on campuses as justification for using the law, the False Claims Act, to target universities and other institutions that Mr. Trump views as bastions of opposition to his agenda and a ripe populist target to rile up his right-wing base.
“Institutions that take federal money only to allow antisemitism and promote divisive D.E.I. policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights — inaction is not an option.”
The department’s use of the law is all but certain to be met with legal challenges. Last week, the Justice Department notified Harvard, which receives billions in government grants, of an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government by failing to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that effectively ended affirmative action.
The department will seek fines and damages in most instances where violations are found. But it will consider criminal prosecutions in extreme circumstances, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche warned in a memo to staff.
The initiative will be a joint project of the department’s anti-fraud unit and its Civil Rights Division, which has been sharply downsized and redirected from its historical mission of addressing race-based discrimination to pursue Mr. Trump’s culture war agenda.
Peter Hyun, a former top official at the department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said that diverting experienced prosecutors from other tasks, including investigations of fraud in health care and pandemic relief programs, would “stretch an already decimated work force.”
Even before Monday’s memo, universities across the country were bracing for a rise in False Claims Act matters, in part because the Trump administration had so quickly rewritten policies intertwined with grants and contracts.
The leader of a private university, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss legal matters, said their school had been deeply unnerved by a request for certification that all diversity, equity and inclusion programs were consistent with the Trump administration’s views of such initiatives.
The structure of the False Claims Act and the certification language could leave schools vulnerable to challenges from anyone, said the university leader, who added that their school had briefly paused some grant activity and set up a committee to scour for potential trip wires. But they were also still preparing for complaints.
The Justice Department under Mr. Trump is far from the first to use the False Claims Act against universities in recent decades.
In fact, the Civil War-era law has evolved into one of the principal ways the government goes after private institutions for potential misconduct, including violations related to financial aid.
In 2019, North Greenville University, in South Carolina, struck a deal to pay $2.5 million after the government accused it of paying “incentive compensation” in connection to recruiting students. A decade earlier, the University of Phoenix settled a case related to student recruitment for $67.5 million.
But the Trump administration’s use of the False Claims Act is part of a broader effort to pressure Harvard, the nation’s oldest, wealthiest university, to overhaul its admissions, curriculum and hiring practices to align with Mr. Trump’s political agenda.
This month, the Education Department also informed Harvard that its admissions policies were the subject of a new compliance review to determine whether the university was racially discriminating against undergraduate applicants, according to a letter from the agency that was viewed by The New York Times.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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