# Trump Sued Over Erasing History at Parks & Harvard Sued Again

An episode of [Bloomberg Law](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/277975394), 19 Feb 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/7c892d84-801f-4c0b-b0e9-ae2b0012ff5f/59d66cc1-4cbe-4520-bd4e-b3f5018972ed/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=91224201-26a6-429d-ac3c-ae2b0012ff6d

Alan Spears, senior director of cultural resources for the National Parks Conservation Association, discusses the suit by the NPCA and other nonprofits to stop the Trump administration from erasing history and science at national parks. Then Audrey Anderson, head of the higher education practice at Bass Berry & Sims, discusses the Trump administration's latest suit against Harvard. June Grasso hosts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Law with June Grossel from Bloomberg Radio.
[0:08] Speaker 2: You cannot erase our history.
[0:11] Speaker 1: Yes it is flawed, Yes it is imperfect.
[0:13] Speaker 3: Philadelphia's mayor praised a federal judge's ruling ordering the Trump
[0:18] Speaker 3: administration to restore the displays with references to slavery at
[0:24] Speaker 3: the President's House site in the city. Last month, National
[0:27] Speaker 3: Park Service workers pried off thirty four panels about the
[0:32] Speaker 3: nine people enslaved by George Washington at his former home.
[0:36] Speaker 3: It's part of the Trump administration's drive to remove information
[0:40] Speaker 3: related to racism and slavery, sexism and LGBTQ rights, Indigenous communities,
[0:47] Speaker 3: and climate change from the nation's museums, parks, and landmarks. Well,
[0:52] Speaker 3: the National Parks Conservation Association and five other nonprofits are
[0:57] Speaker 3: suing the administration to stop it quote sustained campaign to
[1:02] Speaker 3: erase history and undermine science from national sites. My guest
[1:07] Speaker 3: is Alan Spears, Senior director of Cultural Resources for the
[1:11] Speaker 3: National Parks Conservation Association. Alan, will you give us the
[1:16] Speaker 3: timeline of the Trump administration's effort to remove certain information
[1:21] Speaker 3: about slavery, sexism, climate change, etc. From national monuments?
[1:28] Speaker 4: So we're in February of twenty twenty six, right now.
[1:32] Speaker 4: And this process got started shortly after President Trump was
[1:35] Speaker 4: reelected and re entered the White House, and in March
[1:39] Speaker 4: of twenty twenty five, he issued an Executive Order to
[1:43] Speaker 4: Restore Truth and Sanity to American History, and that was
[1:47] Speaker 4: followed two months later by a Secretarial Order, so thirty
[1:51] Speaker 4: four to thirty one, issued by Secretary Doug Bergham, Secretary
[1:53] Speaker 4: of the Interior, that essentially operationalized the President's Executive Order
[1:59] Speaker 4: for all of the agency in the Interior Department, including
[2:02] Speaker 4: the National Park Service, and so a quick review of
[2:05] Speaker 4: that history had QR codes placed in national parks so
[2:09] Speaker 4: that visitors could tattle on National Park Service employees if
[2:13] Speaker 4: they found that the interpretation of the site was a
[2:15] Speaker 4: little bit too left leaning or in their view, denigrated Americans.
[2:19] Speaker 4: And that was followed by an order for National Park
[2:22] Speaker 4: Service staff to assess everything in their interpretive inventories, whether
[2:27] Speaker 4: it was related to race or gender, or climate science,
[2:30] Speaker 4: anything that might run a foul of the Secretarial Order
[2:33] Speaker 4: or the President's Executive Order. They were required to put
[2:36] Speaker 4: that on a list and submit that list to the
[2:38] Speaker 4: Interior Department, and those lists were filled out and then
[2:40] Speaker 4: submitted over the course of the end of the summer
[2:43] Speaker 4: of twenty twenty five, and then in the fall of
[2:46] Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, we kind of went into a hiatus
[2:49] Speaker 4: where we heard some things were being removed, other things
[2:52] Speaker 4: weren't being touched, people were considering what was on the list.
[2:56] Speaker 4: And then we got started with a bang in January
[3:00] Speaker 4: when we saw the National Park Service take down the
[3:02] Speaker 4: displays at the President's House at Independence National Historical Park
[3:07] Speaker 4: in Philadelphia. And we have also seen other signs that
[3:10] Speaker 4: were taken down, a sign on sea level rise at
[3:13] Speaker 4: Fort Sumter, signs about climate change at Acadian National Park,
[3:16] Speaker 4: a couple of films videos at Lowell National Historical Park
[3:20] Speaker 4: in Massachusetts that talked about the pollution of the industrial
[3:23] Speaker 4: era and the challenging work environment for some of those
[3:27] Speaker 4: young women girls who were working in the mills and
[3:30] Speaker 4: Lowell during the Industrial Revolution in this country. And we've
[3:33] Speaker 4: seen signs about Native history and culture that have been
[3:36] Speaker 4: removed from the Grand Canyon, and we're hearing stories anecdotal
[3:39] Speaker 4: evidence of the fact that there is a large list
[3:42] Speaker 4: of sites out there, many of whom have commemorative or
[3:45] Speaker 4: interpretive materials that are related to the African American experience,
[3:48] Speaker 4: either slavery or civil rights that are on somebody's list.
[3:52] Speaker 4: And we may yet see additional operations coming from the
[3:55] Speaker 4: Trump administration, from the Secretary of the Interior, from the
[3:58] Speaker 4: National Park Service to remove or erase, or sensor or
[4:02] Speaker 4: sanitize elements of our shared national narrative as it is
[4:06] Speaker 4: interpreted by our National Park Service.
[4:08] Speaker 3: Is it any reference to slavery, LGBDQ writs, climate change, etc.
[4:15] Speaker 3: How are they deciding what's objectionable? Are there any parameters?
[4:20] Speaker 4: Oh, that's a great question. There is no transparency in
[4:23] Speaker 4: this process, and so, as an advocacy organization, the National
[4:27] Speaker 4: Parks Conservation Association is engaged in the game of whack
[4:30] Speaker 4: a mole where we've got something happening at the Independence
[4:35] Speaker 4: Park in one week, and then something happening at the
[4:38] Speaker 4: medgrin Early Evers Home potentially the next week, and so
[4:41] Speaker 4: it goes. So there is no transparency, There doesn't seem
[4:43] Speaker 4: to be any process. And sometimes we've got directives coming
[4:46] Speaker 4: down from above get rid of this, or we've got
[4:50] Speaker 4: people in National Parks who themselves are trying not to
[4:52] Speaker 4: get in any kind of trouble thinking all right, maybe
[4:55] Speaker 4: we ought to take that down or that program that
[4:58] Speaker 4: we were going to have on enslave people in the
[5:00] Speaker 4: underground railroad. Maybe let's postpone that. But the challenge right
[5:04] Speaker 4: now is we don't have a clear sense of exactly
[5:06] Speaker 4: what's happening, So it makes it really difficult to react
[5:08] Speaker 4: to that. What I can tell you is based on
[5:11] Speaker 4: your question, we know now that the word transgender has
[5:15] Speaker 4: been scrubbed from National Park Service interpretation, and we know
[5:18] Speaker 4: that it's been scrubbed from the interpretive arrays at the
[5:21] Speaker 4: Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan that was the site of
[5:23] Speaker 4: the LGBTQ Uprising in the summer of nineteen sixty nine
[5:27] Speaker 4: that launched the modern LGBTQ civil rights and human rights era.
[5:31] Speaker 4: And that protest, that uprising was led by transgender activists,
[5:36] Speaker 4: and so they have been excised from the history of
[5:38] Speaker 4: an event that they started and helped to organize and lead.
[5:41] Speaker 4: And we are seeing also at the President's House and
[5:44] Speaker 4: other places. It seems as if there are some folks
[5:48] Speaker 4: in the administration who believe that restoring truth and sanity
[5:52] Speaker 4: actually means getting rid of any references to anything related
[5:55] Speaker 4: to race, or gender or sexual orientation, labor class, women's rights,
[5:59] Speaker 4: or climate science that makes some people feel uncomfortable. And
[6:02] Speaker 4: so the idea is you take those things out of
[6:04] Speaker 4: the interpretive array and you can go and have a
[6:07] Speaker 4: fine time at any national park that you want to visit,
[6:10] Speaker 4: and you will never have to learn anything or think
[6:12] Speaker 4: critically about any issue, because we are just going to
[6:14] Speaker 4: look at the unfiltered, unalloid progress of this country from
[6:17] Speaker 4: start until the current time right now, when it's been
[6:21] Speaker 4: nothing but progress, progress, progress. And I would just round
[6:24] Speaker 4: out those comments by saying, this is an amazing country.
[6:28] Speaker 4: We have a broad and diverse history. It's complex. I
[6:30] Speaker 4: think the complexities are the things that make it interesting.
[6:34] Speaker 4: We have joined with allies to defeat fascism, we have
[6:37] Speaker 4: brought inspiration political, scientific, cultural to all parts of the globe.
[6:42] Speaker 4: We've cured dread disease. And there are times when we
[6:45] Speaker 4: have failed to live up to the better angels of
[6:47] Speaker 4: our nature. That's us too, And so when it comes
[6:50] Speaker 4: to national parks and historic interpretation, we want the full
[6:53] Speaker 4: story to be told in our national parks because we
[6:56] Speaker 4: can handle the truth, and we've got to have that truth.
[6:58] Speaker 3: And what are you hoping to accomp with your lawsuit.
[7:01] Speaker 4: The aim of our lawsuit is to just put a
[7:03] Speaker 4: stop to history erasure and signage removal. Let's stop it,
[7:07] Speaker 4: and then let's see if we can't through other means,
[7:10] Speaker 4: perhaps even legal means, reverse that trend and then repair
[7:12] Speaker 4: what's been lost. So that's the purpose of the lawsuit.
[7:15] Speaker 4: We want to stop any additional signage removal in the
[7:18] Speaker 4: name of restoring truth and sanity to American history in
[7:20] Speaker 4: our national parks.
[7:22] Speaker 3: So you're hoping for an outcome similar to that in
[7:25] Speaker 3: the Philadelphia case.
[7:27] Speaker 4: That's exactly correct. Yeah, we just at this point in time,
[7:31] Speaker 4: we have an administration right now that has taken this
[7:34] Speaker 4: restoration of truth and sanity issue too far. And I
[7:38] Speaker 4: think the judge in the ruling for the preliminary injunction
[7:43] Speaker 4: spelled it out that the actions being taken by this
[7:46] Speaker 4: administration related to the Philadelphia case are capricious and arbitrary.
[7:50] Speaker 4: We certainly feel like that's the case nationwide with some
[7:53] Speaker 4: of the things that have been removed. You know, it
[7:55] Speaker 4: takes the National Park Service months and sometimes years to
[7:58] Speaker 4: develop interpretive arrays and sign that get placed in national parks.
[8:02] Speaker 4: They consult with historians and museum collections specialist and ethnographers
[8:08] Speaker 4: and archaeologists and community members and descendant communities and historians
[8:12] Speaker 4: from outside the agency to get together and develop really good, accurate,
[8:17] Speaker 4: inclusive interpretation that will benefit the public and enlighten the
[8:21] Speaker 4: public and enhance public knowledge about our history. What's happening
[8:24] Speaker 4: right now is it seems that there's somebody is in
[8:26] Speaker 4: charge of an algorithm that any time it finds anything
[8:29] Speaker 4: in a brochure or on a National Park Service interpretive
[8:31] Speaker 4: sign that mentions the word slavery or the initials LGBTQ,
[8:35] Speaker 4: it gets yanked out or it gets flagged for removal.
[8:38] Speaker 4: That's not a rigorous historical academic process, and I think
[8:44] Speaker 4: it's hurting us more than it's helping us at this
[8:46] Speaker 4: point in time. Again, we've got a very complex story.
[8:49] Speaker 4: We benefit when we're able to learn about where we've
[8:51] Speaker 4: come from and about the breadth and depth of the
[8:54] Speaker 4: contributions that people from a variety of backgrounds have made
[8:57] Speaker 4: to this country to make us the people that we
[8:59] Speaker 4: are today.
[9:01] Speaker 3: So you describe this as a game of whack a mole.
[9:05] Speaker 3: You don't know where in what National park some information
[9:09] Speaker 3: is going to be taken down. So even if you
[9:12] Speaker 3: get a judge's order, how will that be enforced?
[9:17] Speaker 4: Well, that's a good question. That is also something for
[9:19] Speaker 4: the lawyers and the legal teams to figure out. And
[9:22] Speaker 4: you know, once a ruling is made, we would hope
[9:24] Speaker 4: that everybody would abide by the law and buy the findings.
[9:28] Speaker 4: And the idea is we have, at this point in
[9:30] Speaker 4: time a problem that goes well beyond signage. And I
[9:35] Speaker 4: think that's the challenge that we've got right now and
[9:37] Speaker 4: that we're trying to communicate to the public. So if
[9:40] Speaker 4: let's say the installation about enslaved people that came with
[9:44] Speaker 4: George Washington and served his family in Philadelphia when he
[9:48] Speaker 4: was president, let's say those signs are removed and they
[9:51] Speaker 4: stay down, we lose an opportunity at that site to
[9:55] Speaker 4: have a conversation about the issue of slavery and its
[9:58] Speaker 4: place in the founding era of this country. And let
[10:01] Speaker 4: me tell you, George Washington as our president, deserves a
[10:04] Speaker 4: world of credit because he's the guy that helped to
[10:07] Speaker 4: establish our democratic traditions. When he got to the end
[10:10] Speaker 4: of his second presidential term, he was standing next to
[10:13] Speaker 4: some people who were elbowing him and saying, you know,
[10:15] Speaker 4: General you know people with muskets. We know people with muskets.
[10:19] Speaker 4: We can keep you in this position for as long
[10:22] Speaker 4: as you'd like to be the supreme leader of this nation.
[10:25] Speaker 4: In Washington, to his credit, said no, I believe in
[10:28] Speaker 4: civilian leadership and peaceful transition. We're gonna have an election.
[10:31] Speaker 4: We're going to let the next person come in and
[10:33] Speaker 4: take over the presidency. So our democratic traditions extend to
[10:38] Speaker 4: George Washington and his ability to be that self effacing.
[10:41] Speaker 4: And he was also a guy who owned several enslaved Africans.
[10:45] Speaker 4: And I think we need to be at a place
[10:47] Speaker 4: where we can walk, chew gum and think difficult thoughts
[10:49] Speaker 4: all at the same time. And so what we hope
[10:52] Speaker 4: through this lawsuit is to suggest to the administration and
[10:56] Speaker 4: to the people in America that this is an important issue.
[10:59] Speaker 4: We don't need to erase our history. We don't need
[11:03] Speaker 4: to hide from our history. We benefit all of us
[11:06] Speaker 4: by being able to think critically about things that happened
[11:09] Speaker 4: in our past that still very much influence us to
[11:12] Speaker 4: this day. So in that regard, the lawsuits starts with
[11:15] Speaker 4: the notion of stopping history erasure and signage removal, but
[11:18] Speaker 4: it goes well beyond that. It's a much more important
[11:21] Speaker 4: and challenging issue that we're facing right now.
[11:24] Speaker 3: Alan, I'm curious about something. So websites have been scrubbed
[11:28] Speaker 3: of information about slavery, sexism, climate change, etc. Is that
[11:34] Speaker 3: erased information stored somewhere so you can restore it right
[11:39] Speaker 3: away when you get a judge's order, or do you
[11:42] Speaker 3: have to go through some other kind of process to
[11:45] Speaker 3: develop the information Again.
[11:48] Speaker 4: It's a little bit like the novel Fahrenheit four or
[11:50] Speaker 4: five one where the people wander around in the woods
[11:52] Speaker 4: and they've memorized all the poetry and the science and
[11:55] Speaker 4: the literature, and they share those oral histories with young
[11:58] Speaker 4: people so that at some point in time in the
[12:00] Speaker 4: future they can come back and maybe republish all the
[12:02] Speaker 4: books that have been burned. We're not quite at that
[12:05] Speaker 4: stage at this point in time, but we do have
[12:07] Speaker 4: an organization called Save our Signs, and we do have
[12:10] Speaker 4: people who have taken photographs of websites, screen captures of websites,
[12:15] Speaker 4: so we do have a sense of before and after,
[12:18] Speaker 4: and I think there will be the ability to rebuild
[12:21] Speaker 4: and repair. But I would also tell you this, there
[12:24] Speaker 4: were some reports or some people who suggested that the
[12:26] Speaker 4: National Park Service at the President's home in Philadelphia were
[12:30] Speaker 4: ripping down these displays and maybe even tossing them into
[12:34] Speaker 4: garbage cans. That's not what happened. They were taken down carefully.
[12:37] Speaker 4: They have been put in a place whereby as they
[12:39] Speaker 4: have been ordered by a judge. At some point in time,
[12:41] Speaker 4: we hope to see them restore to their rightful place
[12:43] Speaker 4: at the President's home display on enslaved people. And so
[12:47] Speaker 4: we do have ways that we can recover this information,
[12:50] Speaker 4: even if it has been sanitized or erased from a website.
[12:53] Speaker 4: But the lawsuit that we have initiated is to make
[12:56] Speaker 4: sure that we don't lose anything else.
[12:57] Speaker 3: Any closing thoughts.
[12:59] Speaker 4: You know, we've got people who are concerned about history
[13:02] Speaker 4: being a little bit too woke. But I'll tell you
[13:05] Speaker 4: from my own personal perspective that when I do my
[13:07] Speaker 4: ancestry research, it only takes me about two generations to
[13:10] Speaker 4: get back to my first enslaved ancestor. And my parents
[13:14] Speaker 4: were working here in Washington, d C. In the nineteen
[13:18] Speaker 4: forties and the nineteen fifties. In the early nineteen sixties,
[13:21] Speaker 4: when despite the fact that they had good incomes and
[13:23] Speaker 4: good jobs. There were certain places they couldn't go, certain
[13:26] Speaker 4: restaurants where they couldn't walk through the front door and
[13:28] Speaker 4: sit down and have a bite to eat, hotels where
[13:30] Speaker 4: they couldn't spend the night, and even, quite frankly, some
[13:33] Speaker 4: national parks where they didn't go to because they felt
[13:36] Speaker 4: like segregated circumstances would keep them out. So for me,
[13:40] Speaker 4: this isn't DEI, this isn't woke. It's my family history,
[13:44] Speaker 4: and that history, for my family and other families needs
[13:46] Speaker 4: to be respected and it needs to be maintained as
[13:49] Speaker 4: part of our shared national narrative.
[13:51] Speaker 3: Preserving our history is so important. Thanks so much, Alan
[13:55] Speaker 3: for joining me today. I hope you'll come back again.
[13:57] Speaker 3: That's Alan Spears, senior director of Cultural Resources for the
[14:01] Speaker 3: National Park's Conservation Association. In the latest legal clash between
[14:06] Speaker 3: the Trump administration and Harvard, the administration is suing the
[14:10] Speaker 3: Ivy League institution for allegedly failing to hand over documents
[14:15] Speaker 3: related to investigations into racial discrimination in admissions. Harvard says
[14:21] Speaker 3: it's complied with civil rights law under a twenty twenty
[14:24] Speaker 3: three Supreme Court decision that effectively barred universities from using
[14:29] Speaker 3: race as a factor in admissions, and that it's produced
[14:33] Speaker 3: more than twenty three hundred pages of admissions related documents,
[14:37] Speaker 3: but the administration wants more. At the applicant level, the
[14:42] Speaker 3: Trump administration has aggressively targeted elite universities by withholding federal
[14:47] Speaker 3: grants over alleged anti semitism, as well as racial and
[14:51] Speaker 3: ideological diversity. Though other Ivy League schools like Columbia and
[14:56] Speaker 3: Brown have reached deals with the administration, Harvard has publicly
[15:00] Speaker 3: fought back by filing its own suits against the government.
[15:05] Speaker 3: Joining me is Audrey Anderson, head of the higher education
[15:08] Speaker 3: practice at Bessberry and Simms. So, Audrey, why is the
[15:12] Speaker 3: Trump administration suing Harvard this time?
[15:16] Speaker 1: The Trump administration is suing Harvard in order to get
[15:19] Speaker 1: access to data that Harvard has about its student admissions program.
[15:27] Speaker 1: In April, the Trump administration started a compliance review of
[15:33] Speaker 1: Harvard's student admissions program in a couple of its schools,
[15:37] Speaker 1: It's undergraduate school, it's medical school, and its law school,
[15:41] Speaker 1: and among the data that it was asking for was
[15:44] Speaker 1: individual student level admissions data. And according to the lawsuit
[15:50] Speaker 1: that the government filed last week against Harvard, Harvard has
[15:55] Speaker 1: not provided that data.
[15:57] Speaker 2: To the government.
[15:58] Speaker 1: So the government now now has sued in federal court
[16:02] Speaker 1: in order to force Harvard to provide it with that
[16:07] Speaker 1: individual student level and missions data.
[16:11] Speaker 3: Harvard's produced more than twenty three hundred pages of admission
[16:15] Speaker 3: related documents, but the government is seeking a searchable electronic
[16:21] Speaker 3: spreadsheet with individual level data that identifies applicants, race and ethnicity,
[16:26] Speaker 3: economic indicators, undergraduate class rank and GPA, MCAT scores, internal ratings,
[16:34] Speaker 3: and holistic review factors and ratings. This is what's reference
[16:39] Speaker 3: to the medical school. Are they entitled to get a
[16:42] Speaker 3: searchable electronic spreadsheet?
[16:45] Speaker 1: That's a really good question, June, and that's what they're
[16:48] Speaker 1: going to be litigating over. The regulations say that the
[16:54] Speaker 1: government can require recipients of federal monies like Harvard to
[17:00] Speaker 1: provide reports, and then it also says that they can
[17:06] Speaker 1: ask for a review of the recipient's records. So if
[17:13] Speaker 1: Harvard does not already have a searchable electronic spreadsheet with
[17:20] Speaker 1: all of those fields, I think they may have a
[17:23] Speaker 1: good argument that they do not have to create it
[17:27] Speaker 1: for the government, that that's not the kind of a
[17:30] Speaker 1: report that the regulations require people to put.
[17:37] Speaker 2: Together for the government.
[17:39] Speaker 1: I think that's one of the arguments that Harvard may
[17:42] Speaker 1: make in this lawsuit.
[17:43] Speaker 3: I mean, this is all about they're examining whether there's
[17:46] Speaker 3: discrimination against white students. Right, that's correct. So go back
[17:52] Speaker 3: to the Supreme Court decision and explain what Harvard is
[17:56] Speaker 3: allowed to consider. They're not allowed to consider race, for say,
[18:00] Speaker 3: but there are other things that they can consider.
[18:03] Speaker 2: Right, Harvard can consider anything other than race.
[18:08] Speaker 1: Under the Students for Fair Admissions decision. The issue is
[18:13] Speaker 1: that the government believes two things. The government believes first
[18:19] Speaker 1: of all, that Harvard is using some race neutral things
[18:26] Speaker 1: like socioeconomic status, like maybe geographic factors as what we
[18:33] Speaker 1: call proxies for race. That what Harvard has done is said,
[18:38] Speaker 1: you know what, if we admit a bunch of low
[18:42] Speaker 1: income people, that will get us the racial balance that
[18:47] Speaker 1: we want. If Harvard's doing that, that's illegal. However, if
[18:53] Speaker 1: Harvard is saying, you know what, it's good for our class,
[18:57] Speaker 1: if we have people who are from all over the
[19:00] Speaker 1: United States, and it's good for our class. If we
[19:04] Speaker 1: have some people who are from the city and some
[19:06] Speaker 1: people who are from suburbs, and some people who are
[19:09] Speaker 1: from rural areas, that's not illegal. Even if that ends
[19:14] Speaker 1: up getting them the racial balance that they want. If
[19:18] Speaker 1: they do it because they want a balance of people
[19:22] Speaker 1: from different areas, that's not illegal.
[19:25] Speaker 2: The government, though, wants this data.
[19:27] Speaker 1: Because they want to be able to prove that Harvard
[19:32] Speaker 1: is using these race neutral factors for a racial purpose.
[19:38] Speaker 3: So is the government entitled to for example, essays that
[19:42] Speaker 3: the students write.
[19:44] Speaker 1: I think that that's another good question. They're entitled to
[19:48] Speaker 1: reasonable data, and so the court is going to have
[19:51] Speaker 1: to figure out what's reasonable. I mean, the complaint that
[19:54] Speaker 1: the government is filed says that the government needs applicant
[20:01] Speaker 1: level data to determine whether Harvard is complying with the
[20:05] Speaker 1: students for.
[20:06] Speaker 2: Fair admissions case. I'm not sure that that's even true.
[20:12] Speaker 1: If Harvard has provided all of its policies, all of
[20:17] Speaker 1: its procedures for admitting students, for example, and let's say
[20:23] Speaker 1: that those procedures say you're not to consider race, and
[20:28] Speaker 1: the people who read applications don't have available to them
[20:33] Speaker 1: the race of applicants. I think there might even be
[20:36] Speaker 1: an argument to be made there that without some kind
[20:39] Speaker 1: of reason to open a full on investigation, the government
[20:44] Speaker 1: isn't entitled to more data. That's probably a stretch of
[20:49] Speaker 1: an argument. But what's really interesting to me June is
[20:52] Speaker 1: that the government since the Trump administration, has said that
[20:57] Speaker 1: in enforcing Title six, which is the law we're talking
[21:00] Speaker 1: about here, no race discrimination if you receive federal funds,
[21:04] Speaker 1: they are no longer going to pursue cases of what
[21:07] Speaker 1: we call disparate impact. Disparate impact is you may have
[21:12] Speaker 1: a racially neutral factor that has a disproportionate impact on
[21:20] Speaker 1: We used to think about it as racial minorities. So
[21:24] Speaker 1: a classic case of that is a fire department that
[21:27] Speaker 1: has a written test for firefighters to be promoted. The
[21:33] Speaker 1: Department of Justice decades ago brought a bunch of cases
[21:37] Speaker 1: against fire department saying, look, you use this test. It's
[21:41] Speaker 1: facially neutral, but when you use it, your numbers of
[21:46] Speaker 1: black and Hispanic people who can be promoted go way
[21:50] Speaker 1: way down. It has a disproportionately racial impact, and we
[21:55] Speaker 1: get to look at that disproportionate impact and dig further
[22:00] Speaker 1: or to see if you really need to have that test.
[22:04] Speaker 1: The government under Trump said, we're not going to pursue
[22:07] Speaker 1: those kinds of cases. We don't care about disproportioned impact.
[22:11] Speaker 1: But in the way they're going after Harvard that's what
[22:15] Speaker 1: they're doing. They want to look at disproportionate impact. Harvard,
[22:19] Speaker 1: do these race neutral factors you are using in admissions
[22:26] Speaker 1: have a disproportionate impact against white people? So I see
[22:32] Speaker 1: it as really ironic that they're not calling a disproportionate impact,
[22:35] Speaker 1: but they seem to be interested in using a disproportionate
[22:39] Speaker 1: impact theory in college admissions when it hurts white people,
[22:44] Speaker 1: but they're not going to use it in other areas
[22:47] Speaker 1: where it hurts minorities.
[22:50] Speaker 3: That's interesting. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Lawn Show,
[22:53] Speaker 3: I'll continue this conversation with Audrey Anderson of Besparian Sims.
[22:58] Speaker 3: Is the timing of this latest lawsuit a little bit suspect.
[23:02] Speaker 3: I'm June Grossol, and you're listening to Bloomberg. The Justice
[23:09] Speaker 3: Department sued Harvard University for allegedly failing to hand over
[23:13] Speaker 3: documents related to investigations into racial discrimination in admissions. It's
[23:19] Speaker 3: the latest legal clash between the Trump administration and the
[23:23] Speaker 3: Ivy League institution. I've been talking to Audrey Anderson, head
[23:27] Speaker 3: of the higher education practice at Bessbary and Simms. Is
[23:32] Speaker 3: the timing of this lawsuit suspect? Because there was a
[23:36] Speaker 3: report by The New York Times that Trump had dropped
[23:39] Speaker 3: his demand for two hundred million dollars from Harvard, and
[23:44] Speaker 3: then the President came out on truth Social and announced
[23:47] Speaker 3: that he was now seeking one billion dollars in damages
[23:51] Speaker 3: from the university, although he didn't say under what authority
[23:55] Speaker 3: he'd be seeking that money. And then all of a sudden,
[23:58] Speaker 3: you have this lawsuit. So it seems like it's part
[24:02] Speaker 3: and parcel of the same thing.
[24:04] Speaker 1: Well, I think that's going to be one of the
[24:06] Speaker 1: first arguments that Harvard makes is that this is just
[24:11] Speaker 1: more of the same. This is just more of the
[24:13] Speaker 1: government's retaliation against Harvard for its speech. You know, Harvard
[24:18] Speaker 1: right now has two lawsuits going on against the government,
[24:22] Speaker 1: where one in the district court. They're both on appeal
[24:25] Speaker 1: right now to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, but
[24:28] Speaker 1: both of those suits at won on First Amendment grounds,
[24:32] Speaker 1: saying that the government is just taking retaliatory measures against
[24:36] Speaker 1: them because they have spoken out against the government's efforts
[24:41] Speaker 1: on DEI and the government's efforts on foreign student visas.
[24:47] Speaker 3: Also adding to that the Defense Department is severing academic
[24:51] Speaker 3: ties to Harvard and ending professional military education fellowship at
[24:56] Speaker 3: the Harvard Kennedy School of Government at the end of
[24:59] Speaker 3: the cur an academic year, and that's within days of
[25:02] Speaker 3: the suit. Do you have any idea what President Trump
[25:06] Speaker 3: was talking about when he was calling for a criminal
[25:08] Speaker 3: investigation and a billion dollar fine.
[25:11] Speaker 1: The criminal investigation is a new thing June, and I've
[25:16] Speaker 1: really scratched my head. I will admit I haven't done
[25:18] Speaker 1: any research to see. I really think that's just something
[25:22] Speaker 1: that the President made up. The billion dollar fine is
[25:26] Speaker 1: a number that he's come up with before. He wanted
[25:28] Speaker 1: a billion dollar fine against UCLA as well. He mentioned
[25:33] Speaker 1: that number, So that's just a number that he's liked
[25:36] Speaker 1: to throw out there from time to time. You know,
[25:39] Speaker 1: what the press has reported, you know, mostly out of
[25:42] Speaker 1: New York Times, is that others in the government have
[25:46] Speaker 1: wanted two hundred million dollar fine out of Harvard, and
[25:50] Speaker 1: Harvard has at least so far drawn a line saying
[25:53] Speaker 1: we will not pay any amount of a fine to
[25:57] Speaker 1: the federal government, and that has been one of its
[25:59] Speaker 1: red line. But certainly I think that the Defense departments
[26:04] Speaker 1: actions and this lawsuit are just part of the government's
[26:10] Speaker 1: tactics to continue to put.
[26:12] Speaker 2: Pressure on Harvard. In order to try to get it
[26:15] Speaker 2: to settle.
[26:16] Speaker 3: Do you know how it is affecting Harvard? Is it
[26:19] Speaker 3: affecting the number of students who apply? Is it affecting
[26:23] Speaker 3: Harvard at all?
[26:25] Speaker 1: I haven't taken a look at their admissions. It has
[26:28] Speaker 1: to be making a financial impact on them. But you know,
[26:33] Speaker 1: Harvard does have a large amount of financial resources. They
[26:39] Speaker 1: floated some bonds last year in order to get some
[26:42] Speaker 1: additional funds in order to operate and in order to
[26:45] Speaker 1: fight the federal government.
[26:46] Speaker 2: But it can't go on forever.
[26:49] Speaker 1: So they have to be starting to feel the pinch
[26:52] Speaker 1: and feeling some uncertainty and just kind of overall. June,
[26:58] Speaker 1: you know the damage this is due to higher education
[27:01] Speaker 1: in terms of us losing the best and brightest researchers
[27:05] Speaker 1: who are not seeing the United States as the best
[27:09] Speaker 1: place for them to be able to research. That damage
[27:14] Speaker 1: is increasing every day as they look to go to
[27:18] Speaker 1: Europe or Canada or China in order to conduct the
[27:24] Speaker 1: most important groundbreaking research. And the United States used to
[27:28] Speaker 1: be the best place, hands down for those people to go.
[27:32] Speaker 1: And now we're losing our own researchers, and we're losing
[27:35] Speaker 1: researchers from around the world.
[27:37] Speaker 3: It's not only Harvard. The University of Pennsylvania is resisting
[27:42] Speaker 3: a subpoena for information about employees who brought complaints about
[27:47] Speaker 3: antisemitic discrimination and about those who are members of Jewish
[27:51] Speaker 3: groups on campus.
[27:54] Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that one is really troubling to me. June.
[27:59] Speaker 2: They they want the University of Pennsylvania.
[28:02] Speaker 1: To give them lists of people who have been members
[28:06] Speaker 1: of Jewish groups and who have participated in Jewish group
[28:09] Speaker 1: activities so that the government can reach out. They say,
[28:13] Speaker 1: so that the government can reach out to those people
[28:16] Speaker 1: individually and say, have you experienced anti semitism while you're
[28:21] Speaker 1: at the University of Pennsylvania. And the University of Pennsylvania said, Hey,
[28:26] Speaker 1: we're a little uncomfortable with that. How about if we
[28:29] Speaker 1: just send everybody at the university the email that you
[28:34] Speaker 1: want us to send them, saying, Hey, if you have
[28:37] Speaker 1: witnessed or been the subject of any anti semitism, here
[28:41] Speaker 1: are the people in the government who you should reach
[28:44] Speaker 1: out to because they want to hear from you. Why
[28:46] Speaker 1: don't we send that to everybody at the university? And
[28:50] Speaker 1: the government is not satisfied with that, And I cannot,
[28:54] Speaker 1: for the life of me figure out why the government
[28:56] Speaker 1: would not be satisfied with that accommodation and instead is
[29:01] Speaker 1: insisting on getting a list of the Jewish employees.
[29:06] Speaker 2: At the University of Pennsylvania.
[29:09] Speaker 3: And the schools that settled, like Brown and Columbia, are
[29:13] Speaker 3: they home free after that settlement and the government is
[29:17] Speaker 3: not interfering with them anymore.
[29:19] Speaker 1: The compliance review that Harvard is fighting about these documents
[29:25] Speaker 1: over is a compliance review that the government started at
[29:28] Speaker 1: some other schools as well. Some of the schools that
[29:32] Speaker 1: settled when they settled, this compliance review was something the
[29:36] Speaker 1: government said, Okay, we're not going to look into you
[29:39] Speaker 1: anymore under this compliance review, so they got out from
[29:43] Speaker 1: under this very compliance review by settling. There are some
[29:47] Speaker 1: other schools, however, that don't have any settlement agreement with
[29:51] Speaker 1: the government that are also part of this compliance review,
[29:55] Speaker 1: and I think that some of them may have provided
[29:58] Speaker 1: this kind of information to the government. It's my understanding
[30:03] Speaker 1: that schools that may have provided this information did so
[30:06] Speaker 1: on an anonymized basis, so they're not giving any student
[30:11] Speaker 1: names to the government, so you know exactly how they've
[30:16] Speaker 1: done it. I don't know the other thing that I
[30:18] Speaker 1: think that Harvard may come forward and say is they're
[30:23] Speaker 1: uncomfortable giving this kind of data because the government's unwilling
[30:27] Speaker 1: to say what they.
[30:29] Speaker 2: Will do with it and who they will release it to.
[30:33] Speaker 1: One of the things that's concerning about this is that
[30:38] Speaker 1: there's a lot of people in the public who are
[30:42] Speaker 1: very interested in suing universities like students for fair admissions.
[30:48] Speaker 1: So there's a lot of groups like that out there
[30:50] Speaker 1: who would love to have this kind of data so
[30:53] Speaker 1: that they can do their own analyzes and then bring
[30:57] Speaker 1: lawsuits against colleges and university And so if the government's
[31:01] Speaker 1: not promising to keep this data within the government, and
[31:06] Speaker 1: maybe even if they are promising, because there's a lot
[31:10] Speaker 1: of distrust right now, it's really quite concerning that they
[31:15] Speaker 1: may share this data with private parties who have more
[31:20] Speaker 1: time and interest in bringing civil suits.
[31:24] Speaker 3: There's always a lot of interest in bringing civil suits.
[31:26] Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Audrey, it's a pleasure to have you
[31:28] Speaker 3: on again. That's Audrey Anderson, head of the higher education
[31:32] Speaker 3: practice at bess Berry and Simms. And that's it for
[31:35] Speaker 3: this edition of the Bloomberg Law Show. Remember you can
[31:38] Speaker 3: always get the latest legal news on our Bloomberg Law Podcast.
[31:41] Speaker 3: You can find them on Apple podcasts Spotify and at
[31:45] Speaker 3: www dot bloomberg dot com, slash podcast, Slash Law, and
[31:50] Speaker 3: remember to tune into The Bloomberg Law Show every weeknight
[31:53] Speaker 3: at ten pm Wall Street Time. I'm June Grosso and
[31:56] Speaker 3: you're listening to Bloomberg

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