Harvard Corporation Members, Lawyer Visited White House

Plus, Warren denounces “blood-sucking” private equity; Biden bashes “Big Banks”

A newly released batch of White House visitor logs discloses recent visits to the White House by members of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing board, and by a WilmerHale lawyer who is representing Harvard against Jewish students who are suing the university for allowing a pervasive and hostile environment of antisemitism. 

The senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Penny Pritzker, visited the White House on November 9, 2023 and on December 6, 2023, the records show. Another Harvard Corporation member, Kenneth Chenault, visited on February 27, 2024. On that same February 27, 2024, date, Harvard’s WilmerHale lawyer, Seth Waxman, also visited the White House. A “Karen Mills” visited the White House on February 26, 2024. That may have been Harvard Corporation member Karen Gordon Mills. 

It’s not clear whether the visits were Harvard-related or whether Chenault, Waxman, and Mills were all visiting the White House over a two-day period independently and coincidentally on other business, during a period when the university was under unusually intense legal and congressional scrutiny.

In addition to being one of Harvard’s lawyers in the Kestenbaum v. Harvard case, which Waxman today asked Judge Richard Stearns to consolidate with another antisemitism case, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law v. Harvard, Waxman was also president of Harvard’s Board of Overseers from 2010-2011. The Board of Overseers is larger than the Corporation and generally has less clout, but it is also considered a Harvard governing board. Waxman also made Harvard’s losing oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard case about discrimination against Asian-American college applicants. 

Pritzker and Mills both served in the Obama-Biden administration; Pritzker was secretary of commerce and Mills was administrator of the Small Business Administration. Waxman was solicitor general during the Clinton administration. Pritzker is also serving currently as the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine’s reconstruction; the State Department announced today that she will travel to Berlin June 11 to June 12 to lead an American government delegation. 

I’m all for national service. Yet we learned here only last week that at least three current members of the Harvard Corporation gave money to elect Alvin Bragg, the district attorney who prosecuted Donald Trump. Between the Biden White House visits and the Bragg donations and the fact that Harvard’s governing board chair, or senior fellow, is literally a Biden administration official, it could start to leave the distinct impression that Harvard is siding with Biden over Trump.

After winning in 2016, Trump and Congress imposed a tax on the endowments of private universities such as Harvard. If Trump wins again in 2024, it wouldn’t be surprising to see attempts to increase that tax or to slow the flow of federal funds to Harvard.