Ex-DOJ Lawyer Says Antisemitism Probes Into Harvard, Columbia and Brown Had Predetermined Outcomes

A former career attorney in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is accusing the Trump administration of rigging its own antisemitism investigations at Harvard, Columbia and Brown before a shred of evidence was reviewed.

Haley Van Erem, who spent nearly a decade at DOJ, filed a 28-page whistleblower complaint Tuesday with the inspectors general at DOJ and Health and Human Services, plus the Office of Special Counsel, according to the Associated Press. She also sent it to the House Judiciary Committee, according to ABC News.

Her core claim: DOJ and HHS leadership "departed from longstanding investigative practices designed to ensure due process, accuracy and legal compliance," and in some cases opened investigations with "little to no factual predicate." When staff attorneys raised objections, the complaint says, they "were sometimes admonished and their concerns were often disregarded."

If true, it means federal civil rights enforcement got used as a pressure tool rather than a fact-finding process.

What the complaint alleges school by school

At Brown University, according to the complaint, witness interviews and document review actually concluded there was no Title VI violation. DOJ leadership pushed for a settlement anyway. Brown ultimately settled with the federal government to get funding restored, per ABC News.

At Columbia, the complaint alleges DOJ ran an accelerated timeline driven by media coverage rather than a normal investigative process.

At Harvard, the complaint says "extraordinary funding freezes and sweeping proposed settlement terms, including provisions affecting curriculum, governance, endowment funds" were pursued before any investigation had actually established a Title VI violation.

Van Erem says she was involuntarily reassigned from DOJ's Civil Rights Division to HHS to work these cases, and that the HHS team was originally told to look at antisemitism allegations tied to medical school commencement ceremonies, flagged by a New York Post story, before the scope ballooned to cover entire universities, according to the AP. She left DOJ in May 2025, saying she was "unwilling to be made vulnerable to further participation in politically motivated investigations unsupported by facts and contrary to law."

The other side: DOJ says the antisemitism problem is real, and a lawsuit just got tossed on narrow grounds

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon pushed back hard after a separate but related setback. U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns, a Clinton appointee, dismissed the administration's antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard, ruling the government failed to prove an ongoing civil rights violation, according to Breitbart, citing NPR. Stearns said the case leaned too heavily on isolated incidents from the 2023-24 academic year.

That's a narrow legal ruling about proving a continuing violation. It is not a finding that antisemitism didn't happen at Harvard, and Dhillon said the administration disagrees with the decision and is "actively investigating antisemitism nationwide," citing "indictments, prosecutions, settlements, and investigations across the country."

The underlying concern about campus antisemitism is not manufactured. An Anti-Defamation League report, detailed by Fox News, found 27.3% of Jewish students reported observing antisemitic behavior by faculty, not just fellow students, in a January 2025 survey conducted with Hillel International and College Pulse. The ADL documented professors allegedly canceling classes so students could attend anti-Israel protests and, in one case tied to UC Berkeley, offering extra credit for attending a pro-Palestinian lecture series, though UC Berkeley told Fox News it has "no record" of that extra-credit offer. Separately, DOJ has sued UCLA over an alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students during a 2024 protest where agitators reportedly beat and pepper-sprayed students, per Fox News.

Campus antisemitism since October 7, 2023 was a documented, serious problem that deserved federal attention. Yet a career civil rights attorney is now alleging, under whistleblower protection, that DOJ leadership skipped the actual fact-finding and went straight to predetermined settlement demands anyway.

What's proven, what's alleged, and what's not resolved

Proven: Brown settled with DOJ for restored funding. Harvard's lawsuit was dismissed on narrow grounds by a sitting federal judge. The ADL's survey data on faculty conduct is documented and sourced.

Alleged but not proven: that outcomes were predetermined "without regard to the evidence" in a "politically mandated effort," as Van Erem's complaint puts it. No inspector general has yet ruled on these claims. No court has evaluated the whistleblower's specific allegations.

Unresolved: whether the DOJ and HHS inspectors general will open formal investigations, and whether Congress compels testimony. Rep. Jerry Nadler's office and other House Judiciary Democrats are pushing to publicize the complaint, but Judiciary Committee Republicans, who control the chamber, have not announced hearings on it as of this writing.

The Justice Department has not issued a detailed public rebuttal to the specific allegations in Van Erem's complaint. Until the inspectors general weigh in, this is a documented allegation from a credentialed former insider, not an adjudicated finding.