Harvard University will share thousands of employment eligibility verification forms with the federal government, its human resources office said Tuesday, after the Trump administration asked this month to review the records.
The university’s response to the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called notice of inspection comes as Harvard negotiates with the White House about a possible settlement to its monthslong clash over research funding and academic independence.
The government’s request was broad — it asked for the I-9 forms for all Harvard employees, as well as anyone else employed by the university over the previous year — but not altogether unusual. Federal officials have long had, and used, the authority to scrutinize the records, and the Trump administration has routinely harnessed that power in recent months.
The form asks people to attest to their citizenship or immigration status and includes a section for employers to review and verify the claims using various documents.
In its notice to Harvard, Homeland Security Investigations told the university it intended to use the records “to assess your compliance with the federal laws and regulations applicable to employment eligibility verification.” Violations related to I-9 forms can be handled as civil or criminal matters.
Harvard’s human resources office said Tuesday that it was not “at this time” giving the government access to forms completed by people who were in jobs “only open to students” as it weighed whether an educational privacy law protected those documents. Otherwise, the university said, it “intends to comply with federal law and accordingly will provide the requested records.”
Harvard, though, suggested it was surprised by the scale of the request, noting that “the government does not ordinarily ask an employer to disclose all of its employees’ Form I-9s and their supporting materials.”
The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government served the notice, as well as several subpoenas, on July 8.
The subpoenas were sprawling, with demands that included payroll records, years of disciplinary files and any videos Harvard had of international students protesting on campus since 2020. In its initial public statement about the demands, Harvard, without referencing the notice of inspection, described the subpoenas as “unwarranted.”
“The administration’s ongoing retaliatory actions come as Harvard continues to defend itself and its students, faculty, and staff against harmful government overreach aimed at dictating whom private universities can admit and hire, and what they can teach,” the university said then.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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