People walk through Harvard Yard on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachussetts, on April 15, 2025.
Joseph Prezioso | AFP | Getty Images
The Trump administration on Monday announced the opening of two investigations into Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review after reports that the prestigious legal journal was selecting articles for publication based on their authors’ race and not merit.
The announcement comes as the Trump administration and Harvard are feuding over demands by the administration that the Ivy League university adopt a series of changes, including that it dismantle its so-called DEI programs and screen international students for ideological red flags.
The Trump administration two weeks ago said it was freezing $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard due to concerns about antisemitism on campus and other issues. Harvard last week sued the administration, challenging the legality of the freeze.
On Monday, the civil rights offices of both the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services said they would investigate allegations of discriminatory practices at the Harvard Law Review.
“The investigations are in response to information ED and HHS received about policies and practices for journal membership and article selection that may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” according to a joint statement issued by the departments.
The probes were announced three days after The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site, published an article under the headline “Exclusive: Internal Documents Reveal Pervasive Pattern of Racial Discrimination at Harvard Law Review.”
The article, citing what it said were internal documents at the Harvard Law Review that spanned more than four years, said those documents “reveal a pattern of pervasive race discrimination at the nation’s top law
journal and threaten to plunge Harvard, already at war with the federal government, into even deeper crisis.”
The article claimed that “just over half of journal members … are admitted solely based on academic performance.”
“The rest are chosen by a ‘holistic review committee’ that has made the inclusion of ‘underrepresented groups’—defined to include race, gender identity, and sexual orientation—its ‘first priority,’ according to resolution passed in 2021,” the article said.
The Free Beacon also said that the Law Review has “incorporated race into nearly every stage of its article selection process,” and that “editors routinely kill or advance pieces based in part on the race of the author.”
That joint statement Monday by the U.S. departments announcing their probe cited the Free Beacon’s article in quoting a Law Review editor who wrote that it was ‘concerning’ that “[f]our of the five people” who wanted to reply to an article about police reform ‘are white men.’ “
The statement also quoted another line in the article, which said another HLR editor suggested “that a piece should be subject to expedited review because the author was a minority.”
Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, in a statement, said, “Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission.”
“Title VI’s demands are clear: recipients of federal financial assistance may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” Trainor said. “No institution—no matter its pedigree, prestige, or wealth—is above the law. The Trump Administration will not allow Harvard, or any other recipients of federal funds, to trample on anyone’s civil rights.”
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
