DOGE Team Member Details Backlash After Leaving Harvard to Work for Agency

‘I dropped out of Harvard and came here to serve my country, and it’s been unfortunate to see lost friendships,’ the staffer says.

Elon Musk speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House, Feb. 11, 2025. Alex Brandon/AP Photo

A staffer of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said on May 1 that he dropped out of Harvard University to join the advisory commission and described losing friends and facing social ostracization at his former school afterward.

DOGE leader Elon Musk and his team sat down with Fox News host Jesse Watters for an interview that aired on Thursday evening, discussing some of their findings after auditing various federal agencies.

One DOGE member, Ethan, said he dropped out of Harvard University to join the advisory commission, which President Donald Trump created by executive order earlier this year to find waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government.

Ethan said he has received threats and lost friends after joining DOGE.

“Young folks of [DOGE] have gotten email threats from reporters and the public alike. Speaking for myself, I dropped out of Harvard and came here to serve my country, and it’s been unfortunate to see lost friendships,” he said.

“Most of campus hates me now, but I think fundamentally, I hope, people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed.”

Earlier this year, a source familiar with DOGE’s operations—who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to not having authorization to speak with the media—told The Epoch Times that several young members of the DOGE team had faced threats after various reports revealed their names to the public.

The source said that federal law enforcement had been dispatched to protect family members of DOGE staffers after their names were leaked to the press.

Some anonymous users on the social platform Bluesky had made posts disclosing DOGE employees’ names and faces, and in one post, the words “Dead or Alive.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who leads the House DOGE Caucus’s defense and veterans’ affairs portfolio, told The Epoch Times that “if those people broke the law by doxxing these folks and doing that and threatening them, they should be thrown into prison.”

“I don’t mean jail. I don’t mean a fine,” he added. “People that are doing these death threats need to go to prison, or it’s not going to stop.”

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin wrote in a public letter to Musk and DOGE recruiter Steve Davis that those “discovered to have broken the law or even acted simply unethically” against the advisory commission would be pursued “to the end of the Earth” in the name of accountability.

On Thursday, DOGE member Ethan said he was inspired to join DOGE to pursue governmental reform.

“I think the value of this and the impact here is so much more vast than anything you could learn in a classroom doing computer science,” he said.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration after the president froze $2 billion in funds, accusing the university of not doing enough to quash anti-Semitism on campus and of not eliminating its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

On Wednesday, Trump suggested that Harvard would no longer receive any government grants, in response to the school’s refusal to adhere to the requirements the administration stated were necessary to eliminate discrimination.

Harvard accused the Trump administration of forcing it to allow micromanagement of its academic affairs at the threat of jeopardizing the “institution’s ability to pursue medical breakthroughs, scientific discoveries, and innovative solutions.”

T.J. Muscaro contributed to this report.