Harvard Antisemitism Investigation Reveals Pervasive Mistreatment of Jewish Students

Harvard’s internal investigation into antisemitism reveals Jewish and Israeli students experienced pervasive mistreatment following Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,200 Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.

The 311-page report contains findings from the Presidential Task Force on Combatting Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias (task force), which Harvard President Alan Garber convened in January 2024 to investigate campus antisemitism.

“The situation of Israeli students at Harvard has been dire,” the task force concludes, drawing on its survey of 477 Jewish and Israeli students and the thousands of faculty, student and staff experiences it collected over 50 “listening sessions.”

The report continues:

The task force released the report last week — exactly ten days after the Department of Health and Human Services asked Harvard to turn over a draft of the investigation.

The college had previously claimed it would be ready by Fall 2024.

Harvard could receive up to $8.9 billion in federal contracts and grants — your tax dollars — in the next few years. It’s fighting hard in court to prevent the federal government from taking that money away.

The task force’s findings, described below, prove Harvard does not deserve any federal money, let alone billions of dollars.

The college’s decision to equate antisemitism and “Anti-Arab” sentiment, enumerated under “False Moral Equivalency,” suggests Harvard is not only resistant to change, but categorically unwilling to address the link between antisemitism and pro-Hamas ideology.

Of the almost five hundred respondents, the task force’s survey of Jewish and Israeli students found:

• One in four (26%) felt “physically unsafe” at Harvard.
• Half (49%) felt Harvard did not “[support] their wellbeing.”
• More than two-thirds (67%) felt uncomfortable expressing their opinions, and most (73%) felt uncomfortable “expressing their political opinions specifically.”
• Nearly 60% claimed they had “experienced some form of discrimination, stereotyping or negative bias on campus due to [their] views on current events.”
• Three in four (75%) believed there were “academic and professional penalties” for expressing their opinions.

At listening sessions, Jewish students described being shunned by anti-Israel groups, barred from campus clubs unless they denounced “Zionism,” harassed for holding campus events and silenced by pro-Hamas faculty.

Messages from their classmates and teachers made many afraid to reveal they were Jewish at all.

The weight of this hatred cannot be understated. One graduate student told investigators:

Students broadly cited Harvard’s failure to communicate and enforce campus rules, create a streamlined reporting process and respond to students’ concerns. The DEI programs ostensibly dedicated to addressing these kinds of marginalization did not aid Jewish and Israeli students.

One undergrad student told an administrator a protest chant calling for the elimination of Israel (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) made them uncomfortable. The administrator reportedly claimed the phrase “could have multiple meetings.”

“If I were part of the LGBTQ community and complained about offensive language, no would tell me I was wrong to be upset because the language could be interpreted in multiple ways,” the student told the task force.

“Why am I being told that my fear is unjustified when offensive language is used around me?”

Harvard released its report on antisemitism alongside a 222-page report on campus Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment. Critics say the dual release creates an illusion that anti-Arab sentiment occurs as frequently and virulently at Harvard as antisemitism.

David Wolpe, who taught at Harvard’s School of Divinity in 2023 as a visiting professor, eviscerated this comparison in an article for the Free Press.

Wolpe’s helpfully notes what he calls “a striking asymmetry of action.”

Harvard cannot address antisemitism on campus without denouncing the pro-Hamas ideologies exacerbating it. To borrow Volpe, As long as administrators keep dancing around this connection, reforms will be as effective as “spraying perfume on a sewer,”

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