Last Thursday, Bowdoin became one of several colleges and universities to receive a notice from the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Workforce investigating institutional responses to student protests about the war in Gaza.

The letter, signed by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) and addressed to President Safa Zaki and Chair of the Board of Trustees Scott Perper, states that the committee has “questions regarding Bowdoin’s response to antisemitism on its campus, particularly related to its February 2025 encampment.” The letter refers to the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) encampment in Smith Union, which protested the College’s response to the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum.

Bowdoin protects students and staff from religious discrimination through the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance. To the Orient’s knowledge, the College does not have a formal definition for antisemitism or other forms of religious discrimination.

The committee demands that the College produce all documents related to disciplinary action taken against students or faculty involved in the encampment, a description of the understanding which led to the encampment’s disbanding and a list of all student disciplinary cases since October 7, 2023 related to antisemitic incidents and the encampment by noon on April 10.

The letter notes that Bowdoin’s receipt of federal support obligates the College to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. It is not clear in the letter what financial and legal ramifications the College may face if it doesn’t comply with Congress’s request or if the committee finds Bowdoin’s response to the encampment inadequate. The committee has not yet returned the Orient’s requests for clarification. Bowdoin’s Schedule of Federal Awards for fiscal year 2024  cites the College’s total expenditure of federal awards at $9,493,488.

In an email to the Orient, Professor of Government Andrew Rudalevige stressed that it is difficult to make conclusions about the letter and its implications given how little is known.

“Congress has a constitutional right to conduct oversight to gauge how federal laws are working with an eye towards improving those laws,” he wrote. “But that oversight does require a legislative purpose, and that purpose has to be narrowly tailored to the information Congress needs to do its lawmaking. It cannot use the oversight process as a stalking horse for a criminal investigation.”

Rudalevige cited Trump v. Mazars USA, LLP (2020), which established that congressional investigations must be backed by clearly defined legislative objectives.

“I am confident that the Bowdoin administration will act in good faith to protect Bowdoin students against the disclosure of information that does not fit into these categories,” he added.

The detainments of graduate students Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, from Tufts University and Columbia University respectively, demonstrate both the Trump administration’s recent investigations into political dissent on college campuses across the nation and the threat of deportation or other legal consequences potentially faced by international students as a result of expressing their political opinions on U.S. foreign policy. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department has revoked as many as 300 student visas since Jan. 30, many held by pro-Palestine protesters.

First Amendment attorney Robert Bertsche, who sits on the board of the New England First Amendment Coalition, labeled the letter to Bowdoin an “act of intimidation” from Congress. He affirmed that peaceful protest is protected under the First Amendment, even if it violates College policy.

“A free exchange of non-violent views should be encouraged and not discouraged, and I think this intervention by the federal government has the effect of discouraging the free exchange of ideas,” Bertsche said.

Professor of Government Janet Martin wrote in an email to the Orient that the letter is a “serious matter” and stressed the statutory basis for Congress’s oversight powers.

“It is likely that the College has had requests for information in the past from Congressional committees,” Martin wrote. “Members of Congress and committees are consumers of information from their constituents. They need input and the expertise Colleges can offer and oversight need not be hostile.”

The committee issued similar letters to other schools where students protested the war in Gaza, including Pomona College, Barnard College, Northwestern University and Sarah Lawrence College. Pomona claims that it will comply with Congress’s request but will protect personally identifiable student information “consistent with the relevant privacy laws,” including the 1974 Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). 

Martin affirmed that student privacy laws may limit the type of information that the College can provide to the committee about the disciplinary process following the encampment.

“Compliance with the request can be a challenge for the College given privacy laws meant to protect students. The Congress cannot take action against the College, but the Committee, and especially the Chair of the Committee and subcommittee Chair, control the release of information,” Martin wrote.

The Department of Education (DOE) is launching similar investigations. In March, the DOE, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal bodies canceled $400 million worth of federal grants and contracts to Columbia University while they investigated the university’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in response to student protests last spring. Columbia renegotiated its funding after making changes to disciplinary and protest policy and placing several academic programs under review, including the Center for Palestine Studies and the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

“President Trump has been clear that any college or university that allows illegal protests and repeatedly fails to protect students from anti-Semitic harassment on campus will be subject to the loss of federal funding,” the DOJ press release reads.

Martin’s major concern is that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Attorney General Pamela Bondi are copied on the letter—a move she sees as an encroachment on the separation between congressional and executive powers.

“This is most unusual in that Congress and the executive are two distinct branches of government,” she wrote. “As we have seen in a number of recent instances, executive branch action has been taken to stop funding, cut staff, dismantle programs [and] target specific universities or states in a retaliatory fashion.”

While it is unclear what the committee’s investigation may yield, Martin wrote it’s possible that if the committee finds the College’s documentation and disciplinary action to be insufficient, it may issue a subpoena or require Zaki and Perper to testify in a hearing, potentially with other college presidents facing similar scrutiny.

Both Zaki and Senior Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Scott Hood told the Orient that high-ranking College administrators do not have any further updates as they review the letter.