The Patriot Post® · Harvard's Internal Report Says It Failed on Combating Anti-Semitism

Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, pogrom against Israel, it has been a rude awakening to most Americans to see how college campuses erupted in support of the horrific terrorists. The very ones who committed the atrocities were the ones they cheered. Harvard University, though not quite as prominently as Columbia University, faced a firestorm of controversy over its decision not to crack down on campus anti-Semitism.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay infamously said in a congressional hearing that anti-Semitic slogans chanted on campus weren’t actually anti-Semitic if they were used as a public statement and not targeted at individuals. She justified not intervening on “freedom of speech” laws.

College campuses aren’t havens for free speech. They have codes of conduct and bylaws to protect students against “hate speech.” As we have seen over and over again in countless contexts, however, leftists use the phrase “hate speech” very loosely. It only applies when it’s used against a group the Left is trying to protect. It is not applied fairly to all groups.

In February 2024, Harvard put together a task force to determine exactly how much anti-Semitism was happening on the Ivy League campus. This week, the report was finally published. The task force’s findings were thorough and, as far as one can tell, honest.

As the report notes:

Race began to enter conversation as a lens through which to view the Israel-Palestine conflict. At first, the conflation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with racial thinking and racism in America was raised only to be rejected, as when Charles Cheever ‘03 wrote that viewing the conflict as one between races misses the fact that Israelis and Palestinians are racially diverse, and that countries in the Middle East each have distinct cultures and histories. Shira Fischer '01 also noted that describing the conflict as one of racial oppression was wrong. Towards the end of the decade, however, Nimer Sultany argued that prominent Israeli politicians, including foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, expressed views that were discriminatory against Palestinians in a way reminiscent of American Jim Crow laws. Their views, Sultany wrote, indicated the presence of a bigoted undercurrent in Israeli society that chose Jewish supremacy over equal rights for all citizens.

Moreover, in the early 2000s Jewish students with liberal social and political values began to feel isolated from left-oriented communities on campus. For example, Tova Serkin '02 expressed disillusionment with some elements of the liberal left at Harvard, saying they have “ceased to mean standing for equality, upholding human rights for all, or fighting against all forms of racism.”

So, race and identity politics both seemed to be coagulating at the same time when this morass of anti-Semitism began at Harvard.

In summary, the report is over 300 pages long; it documents verbal, physical, and written attacks against Jewish students, faculty, and staff over the course of decades, culminating in the campus atmosphere post October 7.

Harvard’s new president, Alan Garber, had this to say:

The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful. I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on our campus.

Recall that last year, I criticized Harvard’s task force because it also included rooting out so-called Islamophobia. Lo and behold, Harvard’s second report documents anti-Muslim bias.

The difference in degrees of seriousness between the two reports is illustrated by Fox News: “Both reports recommended more teaching regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along with fostering free expression and tolerance on campus. However, the task force on anti-Muslim bias focused more on efforts to promote representation, while the task force on antisemitism focused more on efforts to recognize and discipline antisemitic incidents among students and faculty.”

In other words, there is no moral equivalence between the two. Jewish students have been the subject of more serious antagonism.

Garber has every reason to be deeply dismayed by the task force’s findings, as Harvard is in the thick of a legal battle against the federal government. The Trump administration froze federal aid to the tune of billions of dollars because of the anti-Semitism accusations. Now Harvard’s own findings prove the government right.

Harvard says it will take steps to create better teaching on the conflict in the Middle East and discipline those who do not follow its new rules of conduct. All I can say is: I’ll believe it when I see it.