Harvard Medical School has cancelled a planned lecture and panel discussion featuring patients from Gaza, following complaints that the session would present only one side of the conflict, amid growing concerns about academic freedom after the university’s adoption of a highly controversial definition of anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism with anti-Jewish racism.
According to the Harvard Crimson, the medical school’s Dean, George Q Daley, cancelled the 21 January events just hours before they were scheduled, citing objections that students would hear from Gazans receiving care in Boston without also hearing from Israeli perspectives. The session was to include a lecture on wartime healthcare by Tufts Professor Barry S. Levy, followed by discussions with Gaza patients and their families.
Read: Goal of IHRA anti-Semitism definition is to target human rights groups, says proponent
HMS and HSDM Student Council President Anna RP Mulhern said she was “deeply disheartened” by the cancellation. “Respect for all patients and their stories is a fundamental tenet of the medical profession. This principle was not upheld yesterday,” she stated.
The cancellation came shortly after Harvard agreed to adopt the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as part of settling a discrimination lawsuit brought by Jewish students who claimed harassment during pro-Palestine protests. IHRA is favoured by Israel and advocates of the apartheid state as it grants special privileges to the political ideology of Zionism and apartheid state. No other political ideology or state is granted protection from criticism in the same way.
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HMS Professor David S Jones, who helped develop the course curriculum, reported receiving 50 emails from students questioning the cancellation. He noted that Arabic-speaking medical students who had served as interpreters for Gazan patients in Boston had requested the session.
Critics argue the decision reflects a broader assault on academic freedom and free speech rights. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, discussing Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition, warned it represents “an outright systemic assault on the Free Speech rights of American citizens on the academic freedom that is supposed to prevail in our institutions of higher learning.”
Greenwald highlighted how the IHRA definition prohibits various forms of criticism of Israel that would be perfectly acceptable if directed at other nations. He noted that under these new rules, Harvard students remain free to describe any country, including the US, as fundamentally racist – except Israel. “You can say that the United States and its existence is a racist endeavour, that you’re allowed to say… nobody tries to censor that,” Greenwald explained.
Pick any country in the entire world at Harvard and you are totally free to call the existence of that country a racist endeavour except one country where you fall into the crime of hate speech and that is the state of Israel.
The combination of event cancellations and adoption of the IHRA definition has raised concerns about the chilling effect on academic discourse. Critics argue that medical education, which relies on hearing directly from patients about their experiences, could be particularly impacted if geopolitical considerations begin to override educational ones.
“This is nothing more than an outright systemic assault on the Free Speech rights of American citizens on the academic freedom that is supposed to prevail in our institutions of Higher Learning,” Greenwald concluded, arguing that such restrictions serve “not to protect our own country, our own culture, our own government, the security of our own people but to protect this foreign country.”