The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Monday that it referred Harvard University for suspension and debarment proceedings, the latest creative research-funding threat the government has employed to pressure the university into policy changes.
The referral begins a process that could result in Harvard being barred from receiving grants for some time. The Chronicle wrote to several former directors of the HHS’s civil-rights office, which announced the move, seeking expert guidance on understanding it. Only Roger Severino, who served during the first Trump administration, responded on the record. “Debarment puts grant recipients on a blacklist that prohibits them from having any more contracts with the federal government,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “It is reserved for bad actors that refuse to comply with the law and Harvard has proven entirely unwilling to come into compliance with civil-rights law.”
In its announcement, the department said it referred Harvard because the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by acting with deliberate indifference toward discrimination and harassment against Jewish and Israeli students on its campus since October 7, 2023.” Just weeks ago, lawyers for Harvard blasted the health department in a 163-page letter for conducting a shoddy investigation of alleged antisemitism on campus and ignoring steps the university has already taken to better protect Jewish students and faculty members, The New York Times reported.
Monday’s announcement said both a suspension and debarment would have “government-wide effect,” suggesting they would block Harvard’s eligibility for all government grants, not just those issued by HHS, which includes the National Institutes of Health.
Neither HSS nor Harvard responded to requests for comment.
The U.S. Department of Education told Harvard officials in May that the university would be made ineligible to receive future federal grants. But referring Harvard for suspension and debarment formally starts a process through which the department must gather evidence that a grant awardee isn’t a responsible steward of federal funds, according a 2022 HHS report. The department’s civil-rights office has “notified Harvard of its right to a formal administrative hearing, where an HHS administrative law judge will make an impartial determination on whether Harvard violated Title VI,” Paula M. Stannard, the current director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement.
The department’s 2022 report said that HHS debarment typically lasts no longer than three years. Suspension would also mean Harvard couldn’t get new grants, but it applies for a shorter period and doesn’t require supporting evidence as strong as debarment does.
Harvard has spent much of 2025 attempting to fend off attacks from the Trump administration, which has frozen more than than $2 billion in funding to the university. Government officials demanded wide-ranging changes of Harvard, many of them focused on the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The university has resisted many, although not all, of those demands. In response, the Trump administration has levied a flurry of actions aimed at Harvard’s pocketbook, many justified by what the government says was inaction in the face of antisemitism on campus. In a lawsuit against the government, lawyers for Harvard argued that officials have not named “any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, and other research it has frozen.” Earlier this month, a federal district court ruled in Harvard’s favor in that case.
Meanwhile, the federal government and the university continue to negotiate to end their standoff. On Tuesday, President Trump said the administration and Harvard were “in the process of getting very close” to a deal that would restore the university’s research funding.
