Harvard seeks to move past antisemitism controversy

Harvard University has a difficult job ahead as it works to rebuild trust in its community and try to move on from the fallout of its president’s testimony before Congress. 

Unlike the head of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Harvard chief Claudine Gay was able to keep her position after international backlash when two the leaders, as well as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), refused to say that a call for Jewish genocide would constitute harassment.  

Those invested in the campus culture say Harvard needs to begin an open process of remedying its policies to earn their trust back. 

Roni Brunn, a leading member of the Harvard Jewish Alumni Association, said the university needs to be “transparent” in its next steps. 

She lamented the vague statements and promises from Harvard that students who have crossed the line into antisemitism are facing repercussions.  

“The other thing about it is that Harvard, they’re saying that they did take some disciplinary action to students, but it’s held in private,” Brunn said. “There’s nothing announced, so people are not deterred by whatever administrative disciplinary action is taken. So we would like it to be clear that if you do this, this is what’s going to happen, because it’s very vague right now.” 

Chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) announced quickly after the hearing that her panel would be investigating the learning environments and disciplinary policies of Harvard, MIT and UPenn, potentially among other schools. Foxx said the schools could face subpoenas and further calls for testimony as part of the probe.

The Department of Education has also opened inquiries into Harvard and UPenn over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia. 

Brunn also pointed to the committee on antisemitism that Gay assembled weeks ago, saying no one knows what’s going on in their meetings and the only insight they have had is when Rabbi David Wolpe quit.  

In his parting statement, Wolpe said that “the ideology that grips far too many of [Harvard’s] students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil.” 

Unlike Gay, UPenn’s Liz Magill was unable to survive the controversy and was ousted by her school’s board, even after she released a statement walking back her testimony to Congress.

“In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil — plain and simple.” 

MIT’s president, meanwhile, quickly received the support of her school’s board despite so far releasing no statement going back or apologizing for her congressional testimony.

Gay told The Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper, that she was “sorry” for her House testimony.  

“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” she said. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”  

Harvard’s next moves are important as one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, with other schools looking to it for guidance, said Jacqueline Pfeffer Merril, director of the Campus Free Expression Project for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The defensive position the presidents were in during the hearing “erodes the confidence and trust of the public in our entire system of higher education,” Merril said.  

“And so I think as an entire sector one of the questions is how is it that we rebuild trust in higher education as institutions of learning, of expertise, of genuinely open debate?” she added.  

The first step in that process, Merril said, is revisiting free speech and expression policies on campus to provide “robust protection for free speech” and apply the standards in a neutral manner.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech organization, conducts surveys on the culture of free expression on college campuses, and Harvard ranked last on the list, though the university disputes the methods of the organization.  

“Second, as part of the educational mission, there should be a concerted effort to prepare students to tolerate views with which they deeply disagree and to engage in civil and productive discourse,” Merril said.  

Free speech advocates have come to the defense of the university presidents after their testimonies, saying the leaders were correct that the First Amendment allows those types of comments on campus depending on the context.

“The bottom line is that harassment is a pattern of targeted behavior. For example, it’s hard to see how the single utterance Rep. Elise Stefanik asked about during the hearing — no matter how offensive — would qualify given this pervasiveness requirement,” FIRE said.

“And as frustrating as it is to hear the college presidents’ appeals to ‘context’ in yesterday’s hearing, particularly when it doesn’t seem to matter to them when other speech is at issue, the truth is that context does matter,” FIRE added.

Harvard has been in the spotlight since the start of the Israel-Hamas war when 30 student-led groups released a statement saying it was Israel’s fault Hamas attacked on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,500 civilians.  

Since then, protests with calls to “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea” and other divisive slogans have been held on the Cambridge, Mass., campus.  

“Considering this conflict is going to go on for several more months, and I assume there will be other additional protests at Harvard, we are going to be keeping Harvard under a microscope,” said Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington. 

This time around, Halber said he thinks Gay was “genuinely remorseful” for her words and had a “moment to learn.” 

But if “she fails to meet the test again, she needs to go,” Halber said.  

“There is no doubt in my mind,” Halber added. “It’s not just, by the way, against the Jewish community but against any community.”