Harvard University responded to a Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit over demands for the Ivy League school to hand over its admissions data, denying claims made by the government.
“Harvard has been responding to the government’s inquiries in good faith and continues to be willing to engage with the government according to the process required by law,” a university spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement on Friday.
The spokesperson added that Harvard “will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach.”
The school will also comply with federal laws on its admissions policies and financial aid, while it has “complied with and continues to comply with the law under the Students for Fair Admissions” decision that was handed down by the Supreme Court.
On Friday, the DOJ filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Massachusetts against Harvard, accusing it of not complying with the administration’s demand to hand over relevant records following the landmark 2023 Supreme Court decision that scrapped affirmative action in college admissions. The DOJ sought a court order compelling the university to turn over the records.
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division, said Harvard’s alleged refusal is problematic because if it “has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it.”
As the DOJ’s latest complaint alleges: “Harvard made its most recent production of admissions-related documents in May 2025. The repeatedly extended deadlines for document production have long passed.”
The suit is the latest development in the Trump administration’s standoff with Harvard, which has faced billions of dollars in funding cuts and other sanctions after it rejected demands from the administration last year. Aside from claims the school has not complied with the DOJ on its affirmative action investigation, the Justice Department and other federal agencies have alleged Harvard and other top colleges allowed anti-Semitism to flourish on their campuses in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the subsequent conflict that started in 2023.
Harvard officials have said they’re facing unconstitutional retaliation for refusing to adopt the administration’s ideological views. The administration, separately, is appealing a judge’s orders that sided with Harvard in two lawsuits.
The White House is pressing universities across the United States to providing similar data to determine whether they have continued to factor race into their admissions decisions. The Department of Education took steps to collect more detailed admissions data from colleges after President Donald Trump ordered the department to collect such data. The administration claimed the information was needed because schools were ignoring the Supreme Court decision.
The lawsuit comes fewer than two weeks after Trump wrote in a statement on social media that his administration was seeking $1 billion from Harvard to settle investigations into various school policies.