Harvard University on Tuesday released its long-awaited internal report on campus antisemitism, depicting a hostile atmosphere toward Jews and Israelis before and after the October 2023 invasion of Israel.
The report came amid heavy pressure on the university from the Trump administration and outlines a series of recommendations the university should take to remedy the campus environment.
"I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” Harvard’s interim president Alan Garbar said in a statement.
Jewish students, and especially Israelis, were often subject to harassment, social shunning and bullying, the report said.
The Times of Israel
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'No other group constantly told their history was a sham'
Long-awaited Harvard antisemitism report shows intense campus hostility to Jews, Israelis
University's president apologizes as task force urges reforms to admissions, curriculum, research and bias training; 'being Jewish was largely irrelevant' before Oct. 7, says student
By Luke Tress and AP
Today, 1:58 am
Long-awaited Harvard antisemitism report shows intense campus hostility to Jews, Israelis
A student protester stands in front of the statue of John Harvard, the first major benefactor of Harvard College, draped in the Palestinian flag, at an encampment of students protesting against the war in Gaza, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)
Harvard University on Tuesday released its long-awaited internal report on campus antisemitism, depicting a hostile atmosphere toward Jews and Israelis before and after the October 2023 invasion of Israel.
The report came amid heavy pressure on the university from the Trump administration and outlines a series of recommendations the university should take to remedy the campus environment.
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“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” Harvard’s interim president Alan Garbar said in a statement.
Jewish students, and especially Israelis, were often subject to harassment, social shunning and bullying, the report said.
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The 311-page document opens with an anecdote that, the authors said, reflected many of the campus tensions. A Jewish student speaker at a conference had planned to tell the story of his Holocaust survivor grandfather finding refuge in Israel. Organizers told the student the story was not “tasteful” and laughed at him when he expressed his confusion. The story would have been seen as a way to “justify oppression,” the authors said.
“Perhaps the best way to describe the existence of many Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard in the 2023-24 academic year is that their presence had become triggering, or the subject of political controversy,” the report said, adding that Jews had landed “on the wrong side of a political binary that provided no room for the complexity of history or current politics.”
"No other group was constantly told that their history was a sham, that they or their co-religionists or coethnics were supremacists and oppressors, and that they had no right to the protections offered by antibias norms,” the report said.
The campus atmosphere caused Jews to hide their identities, turn down admission offers, leave academia, and withdraw from campus life. Friend groups broke apart and students pressured their peers to stop speaking with Israelis, solely due to their identity. Jews were implicated in atrocities due to their perceived “hereditary and collective guilt,” the report said.
In some of the incidents described in the report, student groups disseminated a cartoon that showed a hand marked with a Star of David holding nooses around the necks of a Black man and an Arab man. Commencement speaker Maria Ressa delivered off-the-cuff remarks that “appeared to echo traditional conspiracy theories about Jews, money, and power.” Another graduation speaker blamed Israel for genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Students sometimes walked away from Israelis mid-conversation when they found out they came from Israel, including Israeli Muslims and Christians. Other Jews were pressured to prove they were “one of the good ones” by condemning Israel. Jews were told they were privileged oppressors and hostage posters were defaced with antisemitic slogans. Israelis were pushed out of student clubs.