Updated: November 10, 2023, 1:49 a.m
Harvard will work with its newly formed Anti-Semitism Advisory Group to implement anti-Semitism education and training for member organizations, university President Claudine Gay announced in an email Thursday afternoon.
“I reaffirm our commitment to protecting all members of our community from harassment and marginalization and our commitment to confront anti-Semitism head-on and with the resolve it requires,” Gay wrote.
“Anti-Semitism has no place at Harvard,” Gay added. “We are committed to doing the hard work to combat this scourge.”
Gay announced the creation of the advisory group to combat anti-Semitism late last month during a speech she gave at Harvard Hillel’s Shabbat dinner for the relatives of college freshmen and juniors at Family Weekend.
The new efforts to combat anti-Semitism announced by Gay followed enormous backlash against the university over its initial statement on Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7. Critics condemned the statement because it did not explicitly condemn Hamas and did not respond to a controversial joint letter from Harvard student groups in support of Palestine that called Israel “fully responsible” for the violence.
Gay also faced intense pressure from powerful Harvard alumni — including several major donors and former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers — to more forcefully condemn anti-Semitism on campus.
In her email, Gay specifically condemned the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” – a pro-Palestinian slogan that prominent alumni have called “eliminationist” and anti-Semitic.
“Our community must understand that expressions like ‘from the river to the sea’ have specific historical meanings that, for many people, mean the extermination of Jews from Israel and evoke both pain and existential fear in our Jewish community,” Gay wrote. “I condemn this sentence and all similarly hurtful sentences.”
Thursday’s message said the anti-Semitism advisory group will be responsible for “examining how anti-Semitism manifests itself in our community and developing a plan that addresses its complex history” and providing training for students, faculty and to develop employees.
“Through this program, we will provide education about the roots of certain rhetoric heard on our campus in recent weeks and its impact on Jewish members of our community to help all of us better recognize and recognize anti-Semitism in everyday life “to interrupt his harmful influence,” Gay wrote.
Gay, standing next to Harvard Chabad President Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, looks at a Shabbat table installation in the courtyard symbolizing the hundreds of hostages held by Hamas. By Frank S. Zhou
Gay pointed to anonymous hotlines for reporting bias and the Harvard University Police Department’s continued presence in monitoring “threats against members of our community.”
Gay also confirmed that the FBI and HUPD are investigating a video taken during the Oct. 18 pro-Palestinian “Die-In” demonstration at Harvard Business School that shows several protesters confronting a man and leading him away , after filming the protesters’ faces. Protesters chanted “shame” after the man, who other media outlets later identified as an Israeli student.
In addition to the advisory group’s broader efforts, some of Harvard’s individual schools will also take their own steps to combat anti-Semitism, Gay wrote.
Gay also acknowledged that “some have concerns about the impact this important work on anti-Semitism will have on Harvard’s vital commitment to free expression.”
Brandeis University on Tuesday revoked the school’s recognition of a pro-Palestinian student organization, prompting some Harvard affiliates, including Harvard Chabad President Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, to call on Gay to no longer recognize the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
“Fighting anti-Semitism and promoting free expression are contradictory goals,” Gay wrote. “We are strongest when we commit to open research and freedom of expression as core values of our academic community.”
Gay’s decision to highlight the phrase “from the river to the sea” – often chanted by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and other pro-Palestinian student groups – was met with almost immediate backlash from some Harvard affiliates.
Kirsten Weld, an assistant professor of history at Harvard, criticized Gay’s decision to denounce a particular set of student activists.
“I cannot recall a previous instance in my 11 years on this campus in which a controversial phrase/idea has been so formally condemned or given a single ‘specific historical significance,'” Weld wrote in a post on X
In a statement to The Crimson on Thursday evening, a spokesman for Harvard Jews for Liberation, a pro-Palestinian student advocacy group, disputed Gay’s characterization of the slogan.
“As anti-Zionist Jews at Harvard, we understand the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ as a call for freedom from oppression for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and within the Green Line,” a spokesperson for the group wrote. “We find the unique criticism of this phrase to be an unhelpful distraction from both the ongoing violence in Gaza and real anti-Semitism.”
Mo Torres – an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who received his Ph.D. from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2023 – has a screenshot of an email stating that “Harvard is on the wrong side of this issue.”
A spokesman for the university did not initially comment on this criticism.
Gay wrote at the end of her email that Harvard was “founded to promote human dignity through education.”
“We inherited faith in reason to overcome ignorance, in truth, to overcome hate,” she added. “Anti-Semitism is destructive to our mission.”
—Staff writer Miles J. Herszenhorn can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @mherszenhorn or on threads @mileshersz.
– Staff writer Claire Yuan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @claireyuan33.