2026-08-18T14:42:00-0400 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿—— 一名前司法部律师表示，特朗普政府向其职业民权律师施压，要求调查哈佛、哥伦比亚和布朗大学校园内的反犹主义指控，尽管此举没有事实或法律依据。
海莉·范·埃雷姆是司法部民权司的资深律师，她在马里兰州民主党众议员杰米·拉斯金周二公开的一份举报人投诉中指控，卫生与公众服务部和司法部的政治领导层不当施压工作人员，对上述三所学校做出不利裁决。
在离职前，范·埃雷姆是被借调到卫生与公众服务部协助调查大学校园反犹主义指控的几名司法部律师之一。
“司法部和卫生与公众服务部的高级官员背离了旨在确保正当程序、准确性和法律合规性的长期调查惯例。范·埃雷姆女士和她的同事们面临着压缩的调查时限，这损害了确保调查结果合理且准确的能力，”她的代理律师团队——政府问责项目在随投诉提交给国会议员的一封信中写道。
“至少在部分调查中，几乎没有任何事实依据足以启动调查。当他们提出问题、表达法律疑虑或试图记录反对意见时，有时会受到斥责，他们的担忧也常常被无视，”这封信写道。“综合来看，这些情况让律师们有理由相信，某些执法结果在收集和评估相关证据之前就已确定。”
司法部发言人否认了这些指控，并表示范·埃雷姆并未参与这些特定调查。
“在司法部任职期间，海莉·范·埃雷姆并未参与大学调查。对于所有相关事项，司法部始终坚守这些调查的公正性，”该发言人说道。
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻已联系卫生与公众服务部征求评论。
就在这名举报人投诉公开的几天前，一名联邦法官驳回了司法部针对哈佛的诉讼，该诉讼指控哈佛未能保护犹太和以色列学生，违反了《民权法案》第六篇。
马萨诸塞州的美国地区法官理查德·斯特恩斯在裁决中指出，政府援引的涉嫌歧视案例“过于孤立和偶发”，不足以支持违反《民权法案》第六篇的联邦民权侵权行为。该法案禁止接受联邦资助的实体实施歧视。
与走上法庭抗辩的哈佛不同，布朗和哥伦比亚大学与联邦政府达成和解，以解决类似的反犹主义《民权法案》第六篇指控，并恢复其联邦资助。
范·埃雷姆的举报人投诉已提交给司法部和卫生与公众服务部的监察长以及特别 Counsel 办公室。投诉揭露了许多资深前民权司律师普遍存在的担忧，即由领导该司的助理司法部长哈米特·迪隆主导下，民权调查被政治化。
迪隆彻底改变了该司以往调查针对少数族裔歧视的传统方式，转而优先处理其他事项，包括打击允许支持巴勒斯坦抗议活动的校园、调查大学校园内的多元化、公平与包容政策，以及专门设立一个保护持枪权的部门。
根据举报人投诉，负责调查布朗大学的律师并未证实存在任何违反《民权法案》第六篇的行为，反而认定该校对发生的少数几起事件做出了迅速且有效的回应。投诉称，尽管得出了这一结论，政府仍施压并与该校达成了和解。
布朗大学在发给哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的一份声明中指出，其达成的和解“并非任何政府机构认定存在过错的结果，布朗大学否认存在任何过错或违反联邦法律的行为”。该校补充道，“布朗大学从未被告知任何认定该校违反法律的调查结果”，且和解中解除的联邦资金冻结“曾对布朗大学的科研任务和财务可持续性造成巨大挑战”。
与此同时，在针对哥伦比亚大学的调查中，投诉称工作人员被要求在事实和法律审查完成前，加速发布针对该校的调查结果。因此，她的律师表示，政府依赖了“缺乏依据的指控”以及“新闻报道或诉讼文件”和受第一修正案保护的活动。
最后，在哈佛案中，投诉称在政府提前提议切断该校资金并在任何调查完成前寻求和解时，司法部律师提出了严重的法律疑虑。
“调查结果早已 predetermined，完全无视证据，”她的律师在举报投诉中写道。“在完成《民权法案》第六篇调查和调查团队的结论之前，这些大学已被暂停数亿美元的资金，且调查团队的结论常常被无视。”
哥伦比亚广播公司新闻也已联系哈佛和哥伦比亚大学征求评论。
在写给迪隆的一封信中，众议院司法委员会 ranking 成员拉斯金要求她移交与针对这三所学校的联邦调查相关的特定通讯和记录。
“美国大学和医学院内的反犹主义确实存在。需要严肃应对。但你针对反犹主义的‘调查’是虚假的，是一场预先策划好的构陷行动，本质上完全是政治操作，”他在周二的信中写道。
“在开展实际调查之前，且无论你实际得出何种结论，整个项目的目的都是骚扰顶尖大学的教授和管理人员，限制他们的言论自由和学术自由，并剥夺目标机构已根据申请 merits awarded 的数亿美元拨款，”他补充道。
亚历克西斯·波泽尔参与了报道。
Former DOJ lawyer alleges Trump administration abused investigative process to target Harvard, Brown and Columbia
2026-08-18T14:42:00-0400 / CBS News
Washington— The Trump administration pressured its career civil rights attorneys to investigate allegations of antisemitism at the university campuses of Harvard, Columbia and Brown even though there was no factual or legal basis to do so, according to a former Justice Department attorney.
Haley Van Erem, a longtime lawyer at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, accused political leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services and DOJ of improperly pushing staff to issue adverse findings against all three schools as part of a whistleblower complaint made public on Tuesday by Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Before leaving the department, Van Erem was one of several DOJ attorneys who were involuntarily detailed to HHS to help investigate allegations of antisemitism on college campuses.
“Senior officials at DOJ and HHS departed from longstanding investigative practices designed to ensure due process, accuracy and legal compliance. Ms. Van Erem and her colleagues encountered compressed timelines to conduct investigations that compromised the ability to ensure that findings were justified and accurate,” her attorneys from the Government Accountability Project wrote in a letter to members of Congress that accompanied a copy of her complaint.
“For at least some of the investigations, there was little to no factual predicate justifying opening them. When they asked questions, raised legal concerns, or sought to document their objections, they were sometimes admonished and their concerns were often disregarded,” the letter said. “Taken together, these circumstances led the attorneys reasonably to believe that certain enforcement outcomes had been determined before the relevant evidence was collected and evaluated.”
A Justice Department spokesperson denied the allegations, and said that Van Erem was not involved in those specific investigations.
“While at the DOJ, Ms. Haley Van Erem did not work on university investigations. And for all matters, the Department stands behind the integrity of these investigations,” the spokesperson said.
CBS News has reached out to HHS for comment.
The whistleblower complaint was made public just days after a federal judge dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Harvard accusing the school of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Massachusetts found that instances of alleged discrimination cited by the government were “too isolated and episodic” to support federal civil rights violations of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination by entities that receive federal funding.
Unlike Harvard, which litigated the case, Brown and Columbia settled with the federal government to resolve similar Title VI allegations over antisemitism and have their federal funding restored.
Van Erem’s whistleblower complaint was submitted to the inspectors general for DOJ and HHS, as well as the Office of Special Counsel. It lays bare concerns that are widely shared by many longtime former Civil Rights Division attorneys about the politicization of civil rights investigations under the leadership of Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who leads the division.
Dhillon has upended many of the traditional approaches by the division to investigate discrimination against people of color, in favor of other priorities that have included cracking down on campuses that allowed pro-Palestinian protests, investigating the use of diversity, equity and inclusion policies on college campuses and establishing a section solely devoted to the protection of gun rights.
According to the whistleblower complaint, attorneys assigned to investigate Brown did not substantiate any violations of Title VI, instead determining the school had promptly and effectively responded to the handful of incidents that occurred. Despite this finding, the government nevertheless pressed for and entered into a settlement with the school, the complaint said.
In a statement to CBS News, Brown noted that its settlement “was not a result of any determination of fault by any government agency, and Brown denied any fault or violation of federal law.” The school added that “at no time was Brown informed of any finding that the University violated any law,” and that a freeze of federal funds that was lifted under the settlement “posed enormous challenges for Brown’s research mission and financial sustainability.”
In the Columbia probe, meanwhile, the complaint said staff were pressed to issue findings against the school on an accelerated timeframe and before the factual and legal review was complete. As a result, her lawyers said the government relied on “allegations that were unsupported” as well as “news reports or litigation filings” and activities that were protected by the First Amendment.
Finally, in the Harvard case, the complaint said that DOJ attorneys raised grave legal concerns after the government moved to cut off the school’s funding prematurely and sought a settlement before any investigation had been completed.
“The outcomes of the investigations were predetermined, without regard to the evidence,” her attorneys wrote in her whistleblower complaint. “Hundreds of millions of dollars were suspended from these universities prior to the completion of Title VI investigations and the investigative team’s conclusions were frequently disregarded.”
CBS News has also reached out to Harvard and Columbia for comment.
In a letter to Dhillon, Raskin, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, asked her to hand over certain communications and records related to the federal investigations into the three schools.
“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real. It needs to be addressed seriously. But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature,” he wrote in his letter on Tuesday.
“Before an actual investigation took place and regardless of what you actually found, the whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications,” he added.
Alexis Posel contributed reporting.
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