- The Trump administration revoked $2.2 billion in Harvard's federal grants over alleged antisemitism, and President Alan Garber issued an apology along with two reports investigating religious and racial bias on campus.
- Both reports revealed widespread fear among students across the political spectrum about expressing political and religious opinions.
- To reclaim funding, Harvard must implement various reforms by August, including governance changes, "merit-based" policies, annual bias audits and elimination of DEI offices.
Harvard University’s president apologized after releasing reports showing incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.
Harvard’s president Alan Garber’s apology comes after the Trump administration revoked $2.2 billion in federal grants over alleged antisemitism. Harvard sued the administration over the decision.
The new reports could complicate Garber’s attempts to the get the funding reinstated.
One report laid out antisemitic and anti-Israeli bias on campus among students, staff and the administration, while the other investigated anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.
Addressing the Harvard community, Garber wrote, “The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful. I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community.”
The reports include interviews and polls which show the current political atmosphere on campus.
Nearly all Muslim respondents (92%), over half of Jewish respondents (61%) and roughly half of everyone else said there is an academic or professional penalty at Harvard for expressing political views, and it appears as though students are afraid of voicing their opinions regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
One staff member spoke particularly of his concern for conservative students. “I would never feel comfortable voicing my opinion on the current war in Gaza. (Harvard students) are militantly passionate about certain approved views and they will make anyone who disagrees with the party line regret it,” he said.
In his address, Garber seems to view Harvard‘s current political climate as a reflection of “a charged period in our recent history.”
With these recent findings, Garber explained the university’s new goal “to ensure that we continue to find ways to strengthen the fabric of our community as we meet unprecedented challenges.”
What was included in the anti-Israeli bias report?
The 311-page document contains responses from 2,300 students, faculty and staff, with representation from 477 Jewish students.
Looking at the data as a whole, Harvard students and faculty saw the administration’s response to students’ complaints of antisemitism as “opaque and unacceptably slow.”
The report showed a widespread belief that anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expression was tolerated on Harvard‘s campus at higher rates than similar hostility to other minority groups. Further, numerous respondents expressed their belief that the school’s Office of Belonging did not adequately address antisemitism.
One graduate student said, “I’m American. I always felt comfortable here. As an undergrad, I felt like I fit in. The change in the social dynamics (after October 7) was instantaneous and alarming.”
An undergraduate student similarly said, “There’s a tendency to replace the word Jewish with Zionist. ‘All Zionists should burn in hell’ — it’s very frightening, there’s an incongruency between how different sides would define the term Zionist. People are proudly referring to themselves as anti-Zionist but there’s a strong overlap and it feels like this is an excuse to use a different term to make the point that they are anti-Jewish."
Another graduate student said, “If I was killed by a terrorist in America, as an American, my classmates would at least superficially mourn. If I was killed by a terrorist in Israel, as a Jew, my classmates would say I had it coming.”
What was included in the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, anti-Palestine bias report?
In a 222-page document, surveying 2,295 students and faculty, respondents reported on similar harassment on campus.
Several days after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, a “doxxing truck” with the words “Harvard‘s Leading Antisemites” drove around campus with the names and phone numbers of students who allegedly signed a letter blaming Israel for the attack.
Multiple respondents talked about the truck, including one faculty member who said, “One student had their face put on a doxxing truck and their phone number and other details doxxed online. They received calls with death and rape threats. This was not an isolated incident. This was the level of violence people of Arab, Muslim, and Black descent were experiencing.”
Another student described what they perceived as race-based harassment on social media when other Harvard students shared “Islamophobic content on their Instagram stories, saying things like Arabs should go back to their camels, or Arabs rape their sisters.”
“And then I’m supposed to come to class and sit next to those students as if it was nothing,” the student said. “A lot of us reported those stories. You can’t expect us to read those and come to class and act normal.” The student did not add whether the administration acted on the social media posts.
One staff member said she didn’t “feel safe” expressing her views, “especially considering that President Gay was forced out not because she was antisemitic, but because she was a Black woman.”
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned from her position in January 2024, after facing scrutiny over both plagiarism accusations and how she and her administration handled antisemitism on campus, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Garber proposes plan to move forward
In order to reclaim revoked funding, the Trump administration has asked Harvard to reform governance and leadership by August, implement “merit-based” hiring and admission policies, “cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin,” commission annual audits looking into antisemitism and other biases, shut all DEI offices, adopt policy that forbids students from supporting groups endorsing illegal activity or violence, implement a mask ban, and more.
In his address, Garber said university deans “are reviewing recommendations concerning admissions, appointments, curriculum and orientation and training programs, including those organized by recognized student groups, as they move toward implementation.”
He added, “My goal now is to ensure that we continue to find ways to strengthen the fabric of our community as we meet unprecedented challenges.”
“May our successors, whether they are Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian or of any combination of backgrounds and perspectives, find Harvard to be a place where they can be themselves, express their views freely and encounter sympathy and understanding — a place where all are cheered on as they pursue their dreams," he wrote.