Harvard anti-Semitism and Islamophobia task forces find widespread fear, bigotry

Jewish and Muslim students at Harvard University faced bigotry and abuse as the Massachusetts campus was affected by protests last year, according to two reports released on Tuesday that found many felt shunned by peers and professors for expressing political beliefs, Reuters has reported.

Harvard and other universities face extraordinary pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration over allegations of anti-Semitism and leftist bias. The reports, jointly amounting to more than 500 pages, were the result of two task forces Harvard set up a year before Trump took office, one on combating anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias, the other on combating anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.

Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a letter accompanying the reports that they included “searing personal accounts” drawn from about 50 listening sessions with around 500 students and employees. He wrote that Harvard would do more to teach its students how to have “productive and civil dialogue” with people from different backgrounds and would promote “viewpoint diversity.”

The task forces recommended that Harvard review its admissions, appointments, curriculum and orientation and training programmes, as well as change its disciplinary processes. They also encouraged more classroom teaching about “Israel/Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”.

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Garber wrote that Harvard will begin a research project on anti-Semitism and support “a comprehensive historical analysis” of Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians at the university. He said that the school would also make its disciplinary processes more effective and efficient.

The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard work to reduce the influence of faculty, staff and students deemed activists, as part of a crackdown on what it says is anti-Semitism that erupted on college campuses in 2023 after the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement — Hamas — cross-border incursion and subsequent Israeli war against the Palestinians in Gaza. It also urged Harvard to audit departments to ensure “viewpoint diversity” and take other steps.

Washington has frozen $2.2 billion in grants, most of it for medical and scientific research, following Harvard’s denunciation of its demands as an unconstitutional attempt to control the school, and Harvard sued.

Both Harvard task forces conducted an online joint survey last year, gathering 2,295 responses from students, faculty and staff. The surveys found that 47 per cent of Muslim respondents and 15 per cent of Jewish respondents did not feel physically safe on campus compared with six per cent for Christians and non-believers, while 92 per cent of Muslims and 61 per cent of Jews felt that there were academic or professional repercussions for expressing their political beliefs.

According to the task force on anti-Semitism, in late 2023 the campus became to many “what appeared to be a space for the unfettered expression of pro-Palestinian solidarity and rage at Israel – a rage that many Jewish and especially Israeli students felt was directed against them as well.”

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Many Jewish or Israeli students reported being bullied or ostracised for their actual or assumed support for Israel or Zionism, or found themselves accused of supporting genocide. A smaller group of anti-Zionist Jewish students who joined some of the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests said that they felt shunned by Jewish campus groups.

The task force on anti-Muslim bias said that Arab-American students reported being called “terrorist, baby-killer, towelhead and anti-Semite” after they wore a keffiyeh to show solidarity with Palestinians.

Asked about the two reports, Trump spokesman Harrison Fields said: “Universities’ violation of federal law, due to their blatant reluctance to protect Jewish students and defend civil rights, is unbecoming of institutions seeking billions in taxpayer funds.” Fields did not comment on the findings by Harvard’s anti-Muslim bias task force.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said that the Muslim advocacy group stood by its designation of Harvard as hostile to Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians.

“If the university actually acts on its task force’s report to improve academic freedom and free expression, and address the rampant anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that have been downplayed or outright ignored in public discourse, this may indicate that it is time to change that designation,” said Saylor.

Vlad Khaykin, an executive vice president with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights organisation, sharply criticised how long it took Harvard “to even begin an honest reckoning” of anti-Semitism on campus, adding that it “is not merely negligent, it is a disgrace of historic proportions.”

He added his belief that this is “symptomatic of a broader trend we are seeing across academia. Harvard is both a symptom and a progenitor of the problem, providing the imprimatur of academic legitimacy to naked anti-Semitism.”

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