A Career Civil Rights Lawyer Says the Administration's Campus Antisemitism Investigations Were "Predetermined, Without Regard to the Evidence" — and Jamie Raskin Opens an Investigation Calling Them a "Pre-Baked Frame-Up"
On August 18, 2026, lawyers for Haley Van Erem — a career attorney who spent nearly a decade in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division before being detailed to the multi-agency antisemitism task force — filed a 28-page whistleblower disclosure with the inspectors general at DOJ and HHS and with the Office of Special Counsel. The disclosure alleges that the Title VI investigations of Harvard, Brown, Columbia and Cornell were marked by "extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support," that "the outcomes of the investigations were predetermined, without regard to the evidence," and that the whole exercise was a "politically mandated effort" to extract money through settlement demands and funding freezes. It says hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended before the investigations were finished, that Columbia investigators flagged false statements and constitutionally protected activity being cited as Title VI violations, that a Harvard-assigned attorney warned the proposed settlement demands were unrelated to remedying antisemitism and likely violated the First Amendment, and that the task force also targeted Muslim professors. Van Erem left the department in May 2025, she says, because she was "unwilling to be made vulnerable to further participation in politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law." Columbia agreed to pay $200 million over three years and Brown agreed to spend $50 million on Rhode Island workforce development, both without findings of wrongdoing. The same day the disclosure surfaced, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on House Judiciary, wrote to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon demanding documents and a transcribed interview before September 1. A Justice Department spokesperson said Van Erem "did not work on university investigations" and that the department "stands behind the integrity of these investigations."
“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real. It needs to be addressed seriously. But your "investigation" into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature.”