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Trump Sued Over Erasing History at Parks & Harvard Sued Again · Bloomberg Law

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?
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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.
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Speaker 4: The aim of our lawsuit is to just put a
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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,
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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
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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,
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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