Harvard’s reputation rests on prestige, but its foundation has long harbored—and indeed, has long embraced—exclusion. For generations, Americans may have accepted that Harvard was elite, even aloof, but assumed its exclusivity was academic in nature.
No more. The truth is far more insidious. Exclusion isn’t incidental at Harvard—it’s institutional. It is woven into the DNA of the Crimson, the natural consequence of deliberate choices made by the Harvard Corporation, the oldest continuous corporate body in the Western Hemisphere, and university administrators.
From race-based admissions policies to the uncritical embrace of DEI orthodoxy, recent years have peeled away the façade. What’s been revealed is not merely a campus of cloistered minds but a closed caste system—insular, intolerant, and impervious to dissent.
And standing at the center of this revelation is Harvard itself: not a victim of cultural decay, but an architect of it.
Nowhere is that decay more malignant than in the elite-sanctioned discrimination directed at Jewish students, scholars, and voices. At Harvard, antisemitism has long been more than tolerated—it’s been rationalized, embedded, and enforced by the very structures that claim to champion equity and inclusion.
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–2 majority, struck down the race-conscious admissions programs at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (In full disclosure, I earned my undergraduate and law degrees at UNC.)
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that neither institution offered a compelling, narrowly tailored justification for considering race. This practice penalized Asian-American applicants while favoring others, relying on amorphous racial categories and subjective criteria.
Built atop decades of precedent from Bakke to Grutter, the decision marked a decisive break: it restored—and in some cases, inaugurated—a truly colorblind framework for academic admissions, rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
For Harvard, the implications are immediate and profound. No longer may it rely on legal camouflage for race-based “balancing” in admissions. The Court’s ruling exposed the same structural flaws that fueled the lawsuit itself—particularly the use of vague personality metrics and legacy preferences that disproportionately disadvantaged Asian-American applicants. It also curtailed Harvard’s ability to hide discriminatory practices behind the banner of “diversity.”
The ruling should have sparked a new day—and a sober reckoning across the academy.
Instead, many elite institutions shifted strategies: expanding and entrenching DEI bureaucracies under different branding but with the same ideological intent.
And as that ruling reverberated, another storm broke: the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, targeting civilians—including American citizens—with barbarity unseen in decades. What followed was not a unified condemnation of terror but an eruption of support for Hamas from students and faculty across elite campuses.
At Harvard, the moment became a mirror—exposing the extent to which antisemitism
had become normalized, tolerated, and even institutionally protected.
Together, Students for Fair Admissions and the October 7 atrocities pulled back the curtain. For many Americans, it was a shocking revelation: that at the nation’s oldest university, the environment was not merely biased—but openly hostile toward anyone out of step with the dominant ideological orthodoxy or of the wrong faith.
Then, in late October 2023, following Hamas’s mass terror attack on Israel and a surge of antisemitic demonstrations at elite universities, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay announced the creation of an eight-member Antisemitism Advisory Group, composed of faculty, alumni, and a student representative.
The group’s charge was to assess and respond to growing allegations that Harvard had become a safe harbor for harassment of Jewish students—particularly amid pro-Palestinian encampments and hostile rhetoric masquerading as academic discourse.
But the group’s early work quickly unraveled. Member Dara Horn testified before Congress that university officials downplayed antisemitism as mere “ignorance,” and the group had been granted no meaningful authority to act.
A second group was subsequently formed, the Harvard Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.
The backlash against Harvard intensified dramatically in December 2023, after President Claudine Gay—testifying before Congress—repeatedly insisted that calls for the genocide of Jews might not violate Harvard’s Code of Conduct, depending on the “context.” Her equivocations, captured in a fiery exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik, ignited national outrage.
The resulting controversy intensified scrutiny of Harvard’s leadership and contributed to the pressures that led to President Gay’s resignation last year.
The Harvard Task Force’s final report—delayed for months and published only in April 2025—did not exonerate the university—far from it.
To the contrary, it confirmed what many had long suspected: antisemitism at Harvard was not isolated, incidental, or fringe—it was systemic. Structural. Embedded in policy, culture, and silence.
Since the release of the report, scrutiny of Harvard has only intensified. The Trump administration initially extended an opportunity for the university to correct course voluntarily—urging compliance with federal civil rights laws and a good-faith effort to root out antisemitic discrimination.
In a letter dated April 11, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education laid out its terms clearly: dismantle discriminatory DEI structures, restore merit-based hiring and admissions, hold bad actors accountable, and reform programs with documented records of antisemitism. Harvard declined.
Now, the core question is whether Harvard can continue to accept federal dollars while allegedly violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by allowing an environment of harassment and exclusion against Jewish students.
The stakes—for civil rights law, higher education, and constitutional accountability—could not be higher.
This week, the Trump administration has issued a formal Notice of Violation—another significant step in the effort to hold the Harvard Corporation, a multibillion-dollar academic empire, accountable.
The findings are blunt. According to the report, Harvard didn’t merely overlook antisemitism—it allowed it to fester.
In some cases, it went further—enabling it. A joint task force led by the Departments of Education and Justice found the university’s conduct so egregious that it amounted to a “violent violation” of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
One senior administration official put it starkly: Harvard has earned “the regrettable distinction of being among the most prominent and visible breeding grounds for race discrimination” in American higher education.
The warning was clear: comply—or lose access to billions in federal funding.
The crimson mask is off. The nation—despite the efforts to mischaracterize the administration’s efforts—sees the rot.
And if Harvard refuses to change, then it is time to change how Harvard is treated as a beneficiary of substantial federal monies.
Harvard’s day of reckoning may be here, but accountability has only begun.
Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of The American Salient, and host of the Modern Federalist podcast. His commentary has been featured in American Thinker and linked across multiple RealClear platforms, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearWorld, RealClearDefense, RealClearHistory, and RealClearPolicy. X: @CharltonAllenNC
Image created by Andrea Widburg.
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