Harvard University initially received plaudits for its resistance to the Trump administration. After all, the list of demands the administration sent Harvard — apparently accidentally — was insanely onerous. They weren’t the sort of demands Harvard, or any university, could actually accede to while remaining a center of learning in any real sense.

Last week, though, The New York Times reported that the Trump administration is escalating its conflict with Harvard (or as I call it, Tufts on the Charles), perhaps most menacingly with the potential of a federal civil-rights violation investigation.

The turnaround has been quick:

Harvard has basked in acclaim from White House critics for fighting back so far. After Mr. Trump threatened the school’s federal funding, Harvard sued the administration, and legal experts said the university has a strong case.

But behind closed doors, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board have acknowledged they are in an untenable crisis. Even if Harvard quickly wins in court, they have determined, the school will still face wide-ranging funding problems and continuing investigations by the administration.

Some university officials even fear that the range of civil investigations could turn into full-blown criminal inquiries.

Given that this is Trump 2.0, we can safely assume that the administration will fire absolutely everything it can at the university in the hopes that some of it will stick. After all, Trump has unlimited taxpayer funds with which to go after his enemies, and he can do so using both legitimate and illegitimate complaints, allowing the courts to sort it all out (and potentially ignoring court decisions he dislikes).

What might these investigations look like? In a letter sent to the university last month, Andrea R. Lucas, the acting chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Trump administration laid out its argument:

I. . . believe that since at least 2018 and continuing thereafter, Harvard may have violated and may be continuing to violate Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act] by engaging in a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants in hiring, promotion (including but not limited to tenure decisions), compensation, and separation decisions; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development, and other career development programs.

Lucas notes that until recently Harvard touted, right on its website, the reduction in the proportion of white male faculty members:

Her letter also highlights a bunch of programs, across Harvard’s sprawling system galaxy of academic offerings, geared at bringing more non-white students and academics into the fold.

I can’t speak to the legal particularities here, and there are definitely explanations for the above graph that don’t involve illegal discrimination. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if the Trump administration does engage in a thorough investigation here, it is unlikely to come away empty-handed. That’s because all sorts of different liberal institutions have been engaging in discrimination on the basis of race for years, now, which may have turned out to be a very bad decision!

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