Tag: harvard

Russian-Born Harvard Scientist Detained By US Charged With Smuggling Clawed Frog Embryos

A Russian-born scientist and research associate at Harvard University has been arrested and charged with allegedly attempting to smuggle clawed frog embryos and embryonic samples into the United States, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts announced on May 14.

Kseniia Petrova, 31, was charged with one count of smuggling goods into the country.

If found guilty, she faces up to 20 years in prison, five years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000.

The charges were announced just hours after a federal judge in Vermont heard arguments in a lawsuit Petrova filed against the Trump administration alleging she has been unlawfully detained at an immigration detention center in Louisiana for months.

She was transferred out of the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to a nearby Louisiana parish jail shortly after being charged.

An initial hearing in her criminal case has been set for May 15.

Petrova, a Russian national, was first taken into immigration custody on Feb. 16 after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston following a trip to Paris.

According to prosecutors, she was stopped by Customs and Border Protection agents after her checked duffle bag was flagged for inspection, revealing biological items including a foam box containing clawed frog embryos in microcentrifuges, as well as embryonic samples in paraffin well stages and on mounted dyed slides.

Such biological products must be declared and require a permit to be brought into the country.

Prosecutors said that Petrova initially denied carrying such material in her baggage but acknowledged she had biological specimens when asked again.

She was then advised that she was ineligible for entry to the United States, at which point prosecutors say she agreed to willingly withdraw her application for admission, prosecutors said.

The Trump administration has indicated it plans to deport her back to Russia.

Keep reading

Joe Rogan Guest Reveals Facebook’s Secret Experiment That Manipulated 700,000 Users Without Warning

Joe Rogan sat down with Harvard professor and mind control expert Rebecca Lemov, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to dive into one of his favorite topics: government interference in our digital lives.

Rogan opened the conversation by saying, “There are so many different kinds of mind control.”

“One of the things we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast is, that an enormous percentage of what you’re seeing on social media in terms of interactions and debate is not real. It’s not organic,” he explained.

“It’s state-run and state-funded, and it’s whether it’s foreign governments or our government or even corporations, you’re getting inorganic discourse that’s designed to form a narrative and which is a form of mind control,” he added.

Lemov picked up on that point and took it further. Even when people know something is fake, she explained, our brains still react as if it were real.

“Yeah. I mean, I think even on a basic level, people, it’s known and studies have shown that we respond as if it were organic and real,” she said.

“Even when somebody likes a post of yours, the response is the same as, like, in-person interaction,” she added.

It’s not just governments pulling the strings, she warned. The platforms themselves are designed to influence how we feel.

“I think at the root, there is a kind of way that, on an emotional level, it’s not just manipulation of ideas,” she said, “but there’s a kind of emotional engineering that’s built into the platforms and doesn’t even demand, you know, at first, government involvement.”

Keep reading

Trump Administration Launches Civil Rights Probe of Harvard’s Hiring Practices

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating whether Harvard University unlawfully hires faculty based on race and sex, arguing that the school’s own data provides evidence of discrimination. The probe is the latest federal action against the beleaguered university, which last month sued the Trump administration over its decision to freeze more than $2 billion in aid to the Ivy League school.

In a document initiating the investigation, the EEOC cited materials on Harvard’s website—many of them now deleted—in which the school bragged about increasing the number of “women, non-binary, and/or people of color” on the faculty. The largest increase was in the share of non-white tenure-track faculty, which rose by 37 percent between 2013 and 2023.

The majority of those new hires, Harvard noted in a 2023 report, had been made in the past year.

White men, meanwhile, decreased dramatically as a share of tenure-track faculty, dropping from 46 percent in 2013 to 32 percent in 2023. Every other demographic for which Harvard collects data, including white women, rose over the same period.

Keep reading

I’m an Israeli professor. Why is my work in Harvard’s antisemitism report?

When I first saw the Harvard report on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, I didn’t expect to find myself in it. But I did, albeit without my name, my scholarship, or even my identity as a Jewish Israeli academic being acknowledged.

The report was compiled and published in response to widespread pressure from donors and pro-Israel advocacy groups. It claims to document a crisis of antisemitism on campus. But what it actually reveals is Harvard’s willingness to redefine Jewish identity in narrow, ideological terms: to exclude and erase Jews who dissent from Zionism.

I know this because I am one of them. For several years, I taught in the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative (RCPI) at Harvard Divinity School. Our program approached peacebuilding through deep engagement with histories of structural violence and power, with Palestine/Israel as our central case study. Our students read widely, traveled to the region, and met with a range of voices – including Jewish Israeli veterans from Breaking the Silence, Palestinian artists resisting cultural erasure, and Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jewish activists challenging racism within Israeli society.

It was, by design, intellectually and politically challenging. It exposed students to the complexity of the region and the diverse, often conflicting, ways Jews and Palestinians narrate their pasts and imagine their futures.

But according to the authors of Harvard’s report, this was not legitimate scholarship nor responsible pedagogy; it was, essentially, simply antisemitic ideological indoctrination.

How the report supposedly arrives at and justifies such characterizations of our program illustrates how slanderous distortions are routinely deployed to suppress the arguments and identities of ‘the wrong kind’ of Jews. The report quotes from public events we hosted as part of RCPI, including a webinar on my book about American Jewish activists who engage in Palestinian solidarity work because of—not in spite of—their Jewish identity. Rabbi Brant Rosen, a Reconstructionist rabbi and founder of Tzedek Chicago, and Dr Sara Roy, a distinguished scholar of Palestine and daughter of Holocaust survivors, offered thoughtful responses.

Yet the report reduced that event to a vague description of “one speaker” praising “Jewish pro-Palestinian activists,” ignoring that the speaker was me—a Jewish Israeli professor—and that my interlocutors were also Jewish. Rosen’s reflections on his disillusionment with Zionism were dismissed as a “conversion narrative,” as if spiritual or ethical evolution were evidence of antisemitism.

In another webinar I moderated, Rosen and the Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin debated the place of Zionism in synagogue liturgy. Boyarin disagreed with Rosen’s liturgical revisions but affirmed their shared ethical commitments. The report cherry-picked Boyarin’s comment—“I am deeply in sympathy with your political and ethical positions”—to suggest the event lacked “viewpoint diversity.” The irony is hard to miss: a conversation between three Jews, from very different traditions, becomes evidence not of diversity, but of its absence.

Keep reading

Harvard Law Review Awards $65k Fellowship to Student Charged in Assault of Israeli Classmate: Report

The Harvard Law Review is awarding a $65,000 fellowship meant to serve “the public interest” to Ibrahim Bharmal, the Harvard Law School student who faced criminal charges for assaulting an Israeli classmate, according to a new report.

Bharmal is one of this year’s recipients of the Harvard Law Review Fellowship, Ira Stoll of The Editors reported. The program supports “recent Harvard Law School graduates”—Bharmal is set to graduate this month—with “a demonstrated interest in serving the public interest through their work and scholarship.” It comes with a $65,000 stipend that funds each fellow’s work “in a public-interest related role at a government agency or nonprofit organization.” For Bharmal, that work will come at the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Los Angeles office, according to Stoll.

The move comes at a tumultuous time for both the Harvard Law Review and Harvard Law School. The Trump administration is probing both entities over internal documents, first reported in the Washington Free Beacon, that show editors at Harvard Law Review use race to select both editors and articles for publication. At least one private attorney, former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, plans to sue the journal over the practice, ordering its editors on Friday to preserve documents that he plans to subpoena.

The law review claims to be separate from the law school, something a spokesman for Harvard, Jeff Neal, emphasized in a statement to the Free Beacon. The fellowship could undercut those claims. A Free Beacon review found that Harvard’s database for grant and fellowship opportunities, known as CARAT, advertises the fellowship. That advertisement states that a “committee of Harvard Law School and Harvard Law Review alumni in public interest careers chooses finalists from the set of applicants, and a faculty committee interviews the finalists to select fellows,” indicating Harvard faculty members signed off on Bharmal as a recipient.

Keep reading

President Trump Announces He’s Stripping Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status After Woke College Defied Five Key Demands From Trump and Sued Instead

One of the nation’s premier colleges is about to learn that defying President Trump is a grave mistake.

This morning, Trump posted on Truth Social that he will be taking away far-left Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school refused to comply with five key demands from his administration and sued instead.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote. “It’s what they deserve!”

As The New York Post notes, Harvard’s tax exemptions have played a key role in helping the school amass the largest university endowment in the entire country. It currently stands at roughly $53 billion, with $2.4 billion ‘earned’ in the 2024 fiscal year.

As ABC notes, Trump had previously demanded Harvard lose its tax-exempt status after the university refused to comply with the administration’s commonsense demands, including actions on antisemitism and the use of DEI on campus.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Department of Health and Human Services on April 11, along with other federal agencies, issued Harvard a letter demanding five key reforms if it wished to continue receiving federal research funding.

The demands were:

  • Shuttering of all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs;
  • A university-wide “viewpoint audit” to eliminate leftist ideological monocultures;
  • Forced hiring and admissions practices to ensure conservative representation;
  • Defunding and disbanding of radical pro-Hamas student groups;
  • And complete transparency on foreign funding sources.

After Harvard refused, the Trump administration on April 15 froze $2.2 billion</> in federal grants to Harvard due to its coddling of antisemitism and bigotry on campus.

Harvard sued the Trump Administration a week later to restore the funding.

Keep reading

Harvard Quietly Trained Members of Chinese ‘Paramilitary Organization’—After the US Sanctioned It Over Uyghur Genocide

Harvard University quietly trained members of a Chinese “paramilitary organization” on two occasions after the U.S. government sanctioned the group for its role in the Uyghur genocide. The Ivy League institution could face “a big legal problem” as a result, according to one foreign policy expert.

In 2019, Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health partnered with Beijing’s National Health Security Administration (NHSA) to launch an annual health financing course, training government staffers from across China. Harvard originally noted in a blog post that officials with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) participated in the inaugural training, but that language was scrubbed following a Washington Free Beacon inquiry.

The Trump administration sanctioned the XPCC in 2020 “in connection with serious rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” describing it as a “paramilitary organization … that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party.” But Harvard continued to train its members, once in 2023 and again in 2024. On those occasions, the Ivy League university didn’t include their participation on its webpages.

China-focused research group Strategy Risks first uncovered the 2023 training in a recent report titled, “Beijing Exercises Strong Influence Over Multiple Areas of Harvard University.” XPCC officials’ 2024 involvement, noted on the NHSA’s website, has not been previously reported.

The revelation comes as Harvard faces mounting challenges, with the Trump administration freezing more than $2 billion in federal funding over the university’s failure to combat campus anti-Semitism. Since the sanctions restrict U.S. entities from engaging with the XPCC, Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Sobolik believes Harvard could face legal trouble, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

Keep reading

Harvard Sues Trump Administration Over $2.2 Billion Federal Funding Freeze Amid Crackdown on Woke Campuses

Harvard University has filed suit against nine federal agencies in the Trump administration after the federal government froze more than $2.2 billion in multi-year research grants and $60 million in contracts.

The move was led by a coalition of executive departments, including Defense, Education, and Health and Human Services.

On April 11, the Department of Health and Human Services, along with other federal agencies, issued Harvard a letter demanding sweeping reforms if it wished to continue receiving federal research funding. The demands included:

  • Shuttering of all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs;
  • A university-wide “viewpoint audit” to eliminate leftist ideological monocultures;
  • Forced hiring and admissions practices to ensure conservative representation;
  • Defunding and disbanding of radical pro-Hamas student groups;
  • And complete transparency on foreign funding sources.

These measures, according to the government, were necessary to combat antisemitism and restore ideological balance in an institution long captured by left-wing radicals.

President Garber of Harvard fired back, stating, “The administration’s prescription goes beyond the power of the federal government. It violates Harvard’s First Amendment rights and exceeds the statutory limits of the government’s authority under Title VI.

“And it threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he added.

But the Trump administration isn’t backing down. Sources told Harvard that an additional $1 billion in research funding may soon be revoked, and the Department of Homeland Security is now threatening to revoke Harvard’s international student program. The IRS is also reportedly eyeing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

Keep reading

Harvard Professors Try Blocking Audit Into $9 Billion in Government Grants

Professors at Harvard University have filed a lawsuit aimed at halting a federal review of nearly $9 billion in government grants and contracts awarded to the school, as the Trump administration investigates antisemitism on college campuses.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Boston, claims that the administration’s audit threatens academic freedom and free speech.

It was brought by the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the national organization.

The legal challenge comes amid a broader federal effort to investigate antisemitic incidents and rhetoric on college campuses, including those at elite universities.

The Trump administration has increased scrutiny of institutions receiving taxpayer funds, particularly where student protests or faculty conduct have raised concerns.

According to the AAUP, the audit violates constitutional protections and is intended to intimidate faculty and chill campus discourse.

The Department of Justice, which is representing the administration in the case, declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Keep reading

Well, Lookie Here: Congresswoman and Harvard Prof Are Caught Planning Massive Anti-Trump Riots?

We now know the names of the people leading the “resistance” against President Donald Trump and the attacks on Elon Musk. They occupy the highest levels of Congress and the pinnacle of the Ivy League. They’ve called for more attacks against Tesla and are leading “resistance” training to get more of it on the streets. Just like they did in 2017, leading to the Summer of Love.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (☭-Wash.), who just left her perch as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth are holding “resistance” training sessions to get leftists “street ready” for mass protests against President Donald Trump. The goal is to cause so much unrest that Trump would be forced to resign. 

During a one-and-a-half-hour “resistance lab” training, Jayapal, a Seattle Marxist, and Chenoweth, who heads the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, taught students on a Zoom call how fight for “democracy” by taking to the streets in organized protests. 

Though they paid lip service to nonviolence, activists on the call were told to decide what their “risk tolerance” is for these actions. That’s another way of saying “Are you willing to get violent, go to jail, or hurt someone else?” They said the attacks on Tesla were effective at moving people to the streets. Oddly, (or is it?) they didn’t disavow the attacks on Teslas or the people driving them.

Keep reading