Internal Harvard report criticises school’s response to anti-Semitism

A pair of reports assessing the campus climate comes as the university is under fire from Trump administration.

People enter and exit the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library on the Harvard University campus. Picture: AFP.

Harvard University, under fire from the Trump administration, has released its own long-awaited reports on campus antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias that paint a critical picture of the school’s political and academic climate.

The reports depict a divided campus where students on both sides of the Middle East conflict felt unsafe in the months after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. One faculty member quoted in the report cautioned: “I’ve never seen this university so polarised. There’s a fear that divisions at this university could be existential if unaddressed.”

In a message accompanying the report, Harvard President Alan Garber called the 2023-24 academic year “disappointing and painful” and apologised for the “moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community.”

The reports come at a high-stakes moment for the nation’s oldest and most prestigious university as it battles the Trump administration. The White House, alleging the school failed to protect Jewish students, has frozen billions in federal funding, threatened its tax-exempt status and launched a probe into its foreign funding. Harvard has fought back, suing the Trump administration earlier this month.

The reports are authored by two task forces consisting of Harvard faculty and students, though no individual contributors are named. A 311-page report on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias is accompanied by a 222-page report on anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias that is equally critical of Harvard’s culture and capacity to navigate through a challenging period.

The reports describe problems the school has faced and a potential path forward, urging that change must be made from within. “We are concerned that external parties, even if well-intentioned, will seek to compel adoption of some of our proposed reforms,” the antisemitism report says at the outset.

The university laid out changes it has made or is working to implement, including defining teaching expectations to promote intellectual openness, enforcing rules around where protests can happen and ensuring admissions processes enrol students willing to engage across perspectives.

Each task force interviewed more than 500 community members and incorporated survey data. They found that the school includes departments that taught classes that denied historical facts in service to a political agenda. One professor denied Jews have any kind of historical connection to the land of Israel.

The reports trace problems back decades, describing years of compromised scholarship, diminished intellectual standards on campus and biased curriculum that led to the campus devolving into antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias after the Hamas attacks.

In particular the report cites nontenured faculty linked to political advocacy and a “laziness” around incorporating the Jewish or Israeli perspective when teaching about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the aftermath of the attacks the campus became a “space for the unfettered expression of pro-Palestinian solidarity and rage at Israel - rage that many Jewish and especially Israeli students felt was directed against them as well,” the report on antisemitism said.

“Cruel and hateful posts” regarding Israel, Jews and the Holocaust appeared on an internal Harvard social media app called Sidechat, the report says. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Globalize the intifada.” Encampments in Harvard Yard in the spring included a poster depicting Garber, who is Jewish, as a devil with horns and a tail along with maps of the Middle East devoid of Israel, the report said.

The most common experience for Jewish students was feeling ostracised. One graduate student complained their classmates peppered their speech with derogatory references to Israelis and Jews.

The report looking at anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias concluded students and staff felt “abandoned and silenced.” Conversations with the task force last spring unearthed a climate where many felt “Palestine” has become a taboo word.

Campus members shared hostilities they experienced. Doxxing trucks displaying photos and contact information of pro-Palestinian students repeatedly drove through Harvard Yard, creating a sense of panic and fear, the report said.

Harassment followed students online, including a student who told the task force they received a hate-filled email with the subject line “Burning babies alive.”

Dow Jones