UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
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Case No. 1:24-cv-10092-RGS
SECOND AMENDED
COMPLAINT
Jury Trial Demanded
ALEXANDER KESTENBAUM and
STUDENTS AGAINST ANTISEMITISM,
INC.,
Plaintiffs, :
v. :
PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF
HARVARD COLLEGE,
Defendant. :
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Plaintiffs Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum (“Kestenbaum”) and Students Against
Antisemitism, Inc. (“SAA”), for their complaint against defendant President and Fellows of
Harvard College (“Harvard”), allege as follows:
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
1. Harvard, America’s leading university, has become a bastion of rampant anti-
Jewish hatred and harassment. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and
slaughtered, tortured, raped, burned, and mutilated 1,200 people—including infants, children,
and the elderly—antisemitism at Harvard has been particularly severe and pervasive. Mobs of
pro-Hamas students and faculty have marched by the hundreds through Harvard’s campus,
shouting vile antisemitic slogans and calling for death to Jews and Israel. Those mobs have
occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student lounges, plazas, and study halls, often for days
or weeks at a time, promoting violence against Jews and harassing and assaulting them on
campus. Jewish students have been attacked on social media, and Harvard faculty members have
promulgated antisemitism in their courses and dismissed and intimidated students who object.
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2. Most recently, in April and May 2024—just after arguing to this Court that
plaintiffs’ challenges to Harvard’s antisemitic hostile educational environment were “premature”
and “contingent on establishing the deficiency of Harvard’s ongoing response to antisemitism”—
Harvard permitted hundreds of Harvard students, faculty members, and others to occupy Harvard
Yard for weeks, erecting an encampment to further their antisemitic agenda, replete with calls for
global intifada and other antisemitic slogans, chants, and banners, disrupting Jewish and other
students living in Harvard Yard dormitories and harassing, threatening, and intimidating Jewish
students walking through the Yard.
3. What is most striking about all of this is Harvard’s abject failure and refusal to lift
a finger to stop and deter this outrageous antisemitic conduct and effectively penalize the
students and faculty who perpetrate it. Shockingly, instead, Harvard rewarded their conduct by
capitulating to the unlawful occupiers of Harvard Yard, eschewing meaningful disciplinary
consequences—and any consequence at all for the vast majority of those involved—from the
three-week takeover of Harvard Yard, and promising the occupiers meetings with Harvard’s
governing investment body concerning their demands that Harvard “divest” from Israel.
4. The “deficiency of Harvard’s ongoing response to antisemitism” and its deliberate
indifference to its antisemitic hostile environment could not be clearer. Harvard’s refusal to do
anything to effectively confront, let alone solve, its antisemitism problem, which, by February
2024, its then president had acknowledged was “very serious,” and its egregious double
standards when it comes to protecting its Jewish students, are reflected in its May 17, 2024
public statement, entitled “Follow-up on the Ending of the Encampment in Harvard Yard.” In
that statement, which Harvard requested the board of the Harvard Jewish Alumni Association
(“HJAA”) circulate to its 3,000 members, Harvard refers to the “concerning behavior” of the
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occupiers of Harvard Yard and the “significant disruption to Harvard’s educational activities and
operations” the occupation caused and describes the woefully inadequate disciplinary measures
Harvard was supposedly taking, as well as the divestment meeting promises Harvard’s president
made to the occupiers. As the HJAA board put it in response to Harvard’s May 17 statement:
“[T]he fact of the matter is that scores of students, faculty and administrators appear to be getting
a free pass/slap on the wrist for behavior that would result in immediate administrative action
including expulsion were any other minority or ethnic group targeted. What we see is leniency,
supported by legalese, that would not have been afforded transgressors against any other
university community.” Moreover, not once in its May 17 statement does Harvard even so much
as mention antisemitism or Jews or Jewish concerns—an omission that would have been
unthinkable had the target been any other group. As the HJAA board in its response further said,
what Harvard did with respect to the occupation of Harvard Yard was a “continuation of massive
moral failure on the part of the University.” It was also a continuation of Harvard’s massive
legal failure.
5. Harvard’s antisemitism cancer—as a past Harvard president termed it—manifests
itself in a double standard invidious to Jews. Harvard selectively enforces its policies to avoid
protecting Jewish students from harassment, hires professors who support anti-Jewish violence
and spread antisemitic propaganda, and ignores Jewish students’ pleas for protection. Those
professors teach and advocate through a binary oppressor-oppressed lens, through which Jews,
one of history’s most persecuted peoples, are typically designated “oppressor,” and therefore
unworthy of support or sympathy. Harvard permits students and faculty to advocate, without
consequence, the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish country in the
world. Meanwhile, Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be
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disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored
behavior.
6. Harvard’s double standard starts at the top. Whereas almost twenty years ago, a
Harvard president was run out of his position for merely suggesting a disfavored hypothesis
concerning the underrepresentation of women in the sciences—a hypothesis he said he wanted
proven wrong—Harvard’s president, in early December 2023, testified before Congress that calls
for the genocide of the Jewish people do not necessarily violate Harvard’s policies, and then
received the unanimous backing of Harvard’s governing body. Following that testimony on
December 5, 2023, the only rabbi on Harvard’s recently appointed Antisemitism Advisory Group
resigned because, as he said, “both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony
reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped.” Only after the
disclosure of plagiarism allegations and a month of intense public scrutiny did Harvard’s
president finally resign.
7. That antisemitism is severe and pervasive at Harvard, and that Harvard has
responded with at best deliberate indifference, have been unequivocally confirmed by
investigatory reports issued in May 2024 by the HJAA and by the House of Representatives
Committee on Education and the Workforce.
8. The HJAA report, “The Soil Beneath the Encampments: How Israel and Jews
Became the Focus of Hate at Harvard,” was based on interviews with fifty Jewish Harvard
community members.1 As set forth in the report, students described having been: kicked out of
class for being Israeli; turned away from campus events for being recognized as a Jew; targeted
by a teaching fellow saying Jews are contributing to the current “Holocaust”; compelled to hide
1 A copy of the HJAA report is attached hereto as Exhibit A.
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their true beliefs in class for fear of retaliation by peers or professors grading them; subjected to
having their mezuzahs torn down from their dormitory doors; attacked for wearing religious
items or compelled to stop wearing them; and subjected to such calls as “Zionists should be
slain. Many stated that they were “scared to be a Jew here right now.” HJAA reported that the
protesters are “repeating what they are taught in classrooms and at department-sponsored
events,” where Israel is described as “the last remaining colonial settler power embodying the
world’s worst evils: racism, apartheid, and genocide.” HJAA described the “unchecked
antisemitism” on Harvard’s Sidechat social media platform, such as “Gas the Jews,” and
reported that Harvard “has repeatedly ignored Jewish students’ complaints despite clear
violations of Harvard’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies.” Forty-one of the forty-
two students HJAA interviewed “discussed feeling alienated and excluded, if not outright
harassed,” and the few faculty members willing to be interviewed by HJAA reported that they
were, as HJAA described it, “even more afraid of speaking with us on the record; they said it
could get them fired or undermine a promotion.”
9. The House Committee report, based on interviews and Harvard’s responses to the
Committee’s subpoena, “highlight[ed] major flaws in Harvard University’s response to
antisemitic events on its campus” and concluded that “[t]he consequences of Harvard’s leaders’
continued failure to implement a strong response to antisemitism and violations of the
University’s rules are evident in the chaos that has erupted at the University in recent weeks.”2
Among other things, as the Committee further reported, Harvard’s own Antisemitism Advisory
Group—which it appointed ostensibly to “develop a robust strategy for confronting antisemitism
on campus”—had “found antisemitic harassment to be a significant problem at Harvard” and
2 A copy of the Committee’s report is attached hereto as Exhibit B.
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“presented Harvard’s leadership with significant recommendations on goals and steps to address
antisemitism” that “could have had a real impact in combating antisemitism at the University and
restoring a safer environment for Jewish students,” but that “Harvard’s leaders failed to
implement these recommendations.”
10. Kestenbaum, SAA’s members, and many others have explicitly and repeatedly
warned Harvard that its severe and pervasive hostile environment endangers Jewish students. In
fact, Harvard has been aware of its antisemitism problem for years, but its response has been, to
say the least, clearly unreasonable and totally unacceptable in not just tolerating, but enabling
antisemitism. Harvard has abjectly failed to enforce its policies and discipline those responsible
for turning Harvard’s campus into a severely hostile environment for its Jewish students,
including Kestenbaum and other SAA members. Its faculty members have gone so far as to
cancel classes so students can attend antisemitic rallies and harass and intimidate Jews without
consequence. When, in clear violation of Harvard policies, a mob of students took over a
campus building to further their antisemitic agenda, Harvard’s response was not to remove and
discipline them, but to supply them with burritos and candy.
11. Harvard’s longtime practice of refusing to enforce its own policies against
antisemitism ensured that the October 7 terrorist attack would enormously intensify the anti-
Jewish abuse on campus. Numerous students and faculty members at Harvard have openly
endorsed Hamas’s October 7 massacre, issuing public statements blaming Jews for their own
murders, or otherwise excusing or supporting Hamas’s actions, notwithstanding Hamas’s history
since its founding in 1987 of perpetrating numerous suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks,
Hamas’s explicit vows to kill and destroy Jews and Israel, the U.S. State Department’s
designation of Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization, and Hamas’s repeated public
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proclamations of its determination to repeat the October 7 atrocities until its genocidal aims are
achieved. In supporting Hamas and condemning Israel, Harvard students and faculty harass,
discriminate against, and assault Jewish students—including on October 18, when a mob of
protesters attacked a Jewish student, and the next day, when a mob trapped a group of Jewish
students in a study room—but they are never heard to condemn, let alone rally against, Hamas,
which has committed unspeakable atrocities in Israel, most recently on October 7; Syria and
Yemen, which have killed hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians; Pakistan, which is expelling
almost two million Afghan Muslims; China, which has imprisoned its Muslims in reeducation
camps; countries like Somalia and Nigeria, where Christians are regularly murdered; or Darfur,
where large numbers of civilians have been and are being kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and
murdered.
12. Harvard’s purported excuse for refusing to take disciplinary measures and sitting
idly by as the Jew-bashing on campus escalates—that antisemitic harassment is protected by free
expression principles—confirms its antisemitic double standard. Considering that Harvard
aggressively enforces policies to address bias against other minorities and regularly disciplines
students and faculty members who harass other groups or espouse viewpoints Harvard deems
inappropriate, its refusal to discipline students attacking, harassing, or intimidating Jews is
glaring. Based on its record, it is inconceivable that Harvard would allow any group other than
Jews to be targeted for similar abuse or that it would permit, without response or consequence,
students and professors to call for the annihilation of any country other than Israel.
13. Harvard’s deliberate indifference to its hostile environment has worsened since
this action was initiated. As Kestenbaum recently recounted at a congressional hearing, Harvard
has taken no disciplinary measures against students who have posted on social media such
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antisemitic canards as “too many damn Jews run this country,” or against the faculty and student
groups that published a cartoon depicting a man marked with a Star of David and a dollar symbol
strangling an Arab man and a Black man, or against the Harvard students and faculty who
perpetrate near-daily acts of antisemitic harassment against Jews on campus. Just this month,
Interim President Garber dropped the involuntary leave sanctions against students who, in
flagrant violation of Harvard’s policies, had organized and participated in the Harvard Yard
occupation.
14. Subjected to intense anti-Jewish vitriol, including from their own professors and
Harvard administrators, Kestenbaum and other Jewish students, including SAA members, have
been deprived of the ability and opportunity to fully participate in Harvard’s educational and
other programs and have been placed at severe emotional and physical risk. Making matters
even worse for Jewish students, over the past ten years, Harvard College has instituted
admissions policies that have severely reduced—from approximately 25% in 2013 to between
5.4% and 9.8% in 2023 for the most recent freshman class—the percentage of Jewish students,
an enormous decline that evinces an intentional effort, much like Harvard’s quotas one hundred
years ago, to exclude Jews. The severe and pervasive hostile environment for Jews on campus
leaves Harvard’s remaining Jewish population even more isolated and unsafe against their
abusers.
15. Harvard’s deliberate indifference to, and indeed enabling of, antisemitism on its
campus constitutes an egregious violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Harvard
has allowed endemic antisemitism to exclude Jewish students from the full and equal
participation in, and to deprive them of the full and equal benefits of, their educational
experience at Harvard, and has discriminated against them, by, among other things, failing to
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protect them in the way Harvard protects other groups—all based on race, ethnicity, and/or
national origin. Harvard must now be compelled to implement institutional and concrete
remedial measures, such as: (i) disciplinary measures, including termination, against deans,
administrators, professors, and other employees responsible for antisemitic discrimination and
abuse, whether because they engage in it or permit it; (ii) disciplinary measures, including
suspension or expulsion, against students who engage in such conduct; (iii) declining and
returning donations, whether from foreign countries or elsewhere, implicitly or explicitly
conditioned on the hiring or promotion of professors who espouse antisemitism or the inclusion
of antisemitic coursework or curricula; (iv) adding required antisemitism training for Harvard
community members; (v) appointing a neutral expert monitor to oversee compliance with this
Court’s order; and (vi) payment of appropriate damages for lost or diminished educational
opportunities.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
16. This Court has subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343 over
claims arising under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”) (42 U.S.C. § 2000d et
seq.). This Court has supplemental jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ related state law claims under 28
U.S.C. § 1367(a) because those claims arise out of the same case or controversy as plaintiffs’
federal claim.
17. This Court has personal jurisdiction over Harvard because it is based and operates
in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
18. Venue in the District of Massachusetts is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1391 because
it is the judicial district in which a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to
plaintiffs’ claims occurred and where Harvard is located.
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PARTIES
19. Plaintiff Students Against Antisemitism, Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation and
501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity organized under the laws of the State of Delaware, formed for the
purpose of defending human and civil rights, including the right of individuals to equal
protection and to be free from antisemitism in higher education, through litigation and other
means.
20. SAA is comprised of voluntary members, including students at higher education
institutions, who support SAA’s mission and who have been personally aggrieved or otherwise
impacted by antisemitism and discrimination in higher education. SAA’s members, who have
voting rights in the organization, include current, former, and prospective Jewish Harvard
students who are experiencing (or have experienced, in the case of former students) a severe and
pervasive hostile educational environment at Harvard that causes them to lose the benefits of
Harvard’s educational and extracurricular opportunities.
21. Plaintiff Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum is a Jewish student at Harvard
University, enrolled in the Masters in Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School
(“Harvard Divinity”). He is also a member of SAA.
22. SAA Member #1 is a Jewish student at Harvard University, enrolled in Harvard
Law School (“Harvard Law”).
23. SAA Member #2 is a Jewish student at Harvard University, enrolled in Harvard
Law.
24. SAA Member #3 is a Jewish student at Harvard University, enrolled in Harvard
Law.
25. SAA Member #4 is a Jewish Ph.D. student at Harvard University, taking courses
at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (“Harvard Public Health”).
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26. SAA Member #5 is a Jewish student at Harvard University, enrolled in Harvard
Law.
27. Defendant President and Fellows of Harvard College, the legal name of Harvard
University, is a private educational institution based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
28. Despite its endowment of nearly $50.7 billion—the largest among American
universities—Harvard accepts substantial direct financial assistance from the federal government
through, among other things, grants and loans, including in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, at least
$642 million and $676 million, respectively, and will receive substantial direct federal financial
assistance in fiscal year 2024, as well as substantial indirect federal financial assistance through,
among other things, tuition paid with federal financial aid. As a recipient of federal financial
assistance, Harvard is subject to Title VI.
FACTS
A. Title VI Protects Jewish Students Against Antisemitism
29. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in
any program or activity that receives federal funding or other federal financial assistance, and
protects all students, including Jewish students, in such programs or activities.
30. Since at least September 2004, it has been the policy of the Office of Civil Rights
(“OCR”) of the U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”), the agency responsible for enforcing
Title VI, to investigate claims related to antisemitism. In an October 26, 2010 letter to federally
funded schools, OCR confirmed that such schools are “responsible for addressing harassment
incidents about which [they] know[] or reasonably should have known,” and must address “anti-
Semitic harassment,” stating that such harassment violates Title VI when it creates a “hostile
environment” based on “actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic identity as Jews,” in which
“the conduct is sufficiently severe, pervasive, or persistent so as to interfere with or limit a
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student’s ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or opportunities offered
by a school,” or when the “harassment is encouraged, tolerated, not adequately addressed, or
ignored by school employees.”
31. The Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations have confirmed the urgent need
to combat antisemitism in educational institutions. Under President Barack Obama’s
administration, in June 2010, the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and
Combat Antisemitism, which is tasked with developing and implementing policies and projects
to support efforts to combat antisemitism, adopted a working definition of antisemitism
developed by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia and adopted
contemporary examples of antisemitism, which include ways that antisemitism manifests itself
“with regard to the State of Israel”:
 “Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to
characterize Israel or Israelis”;
 “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”;
 “Blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions”;
 “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded
of any other democratic nation”; and
 “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the
right to exist.”
32. In December 2019, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13899 on
“Combating Anti-Semitism,” directing the executive branch to enforce Title VI against
discrimination “rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination
prohibited by Title VI,” and in doing so, to consider the definition of antisemitism promulgated
by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (“IHRA”), an intergovernmental
organization comprised of thirty-five countries.
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33. Under the IHRA definition, the following are “contemporary examples of
antisemitism”:
 “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a
radical ideology or an extremist view of religion”;
 “Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations
about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective—such as, especially but not
exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the
media, economy, government, or other societal institutions”;
 “Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing
committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-
Jews”;
 “Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the
genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its
supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust)”;
 “Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating
the Holocaust”;
 “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities
of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations”;
 “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that
the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”;
 “Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or
demanded of any other democratic nation”;
 “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims
of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis”;
 “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and
 “Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”
34. On January 4, 2023, DOE, citing the “rise in reports of anti-Semitic incidents,”
released a fact sheet, “Protecting Students from Discrimination Based on Shared Ancestry or
Ethnic Characteristics,” which reiterated that Title VI protects “students who experience
discrimination, including harassment, based on their . . . (i) shared ancestry or ethnic
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characteristics; or (ii) citizenship or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct
religious identity.”
35. In May 2023, President Joseph Biden released the U.S. National Strategy to
Counter Antisemitism, described as the “most ambitious and comprehensive U.S. government-
led effort to fight antisemitism in American history,” and DOE launched its Antisemitism
Awareness Campaign.
36. On November 7, 2023, OCR released a letter “remind[ing] colleges, universities,
and schools that receive federal financial assistance of their legal responsibility under Title
VI . . . to provide all students a school environment free from discrimination based on race,
color, or national origin, including shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” The letter stated:
“It is your legal obligation under Title VI to address prohibited discrimination against students
and others on your campus—including those who are perceived to be Jewish [or Israeli] . . . in
the ways described in this letter.”
37. On May 7, 2024, OCR released another letter promulgating Title VI guidance,
making clear, among other things, that the “fact that harassment may involve conduct that
includes speech in a public setting or speech that is also motivated by political or religious
beliefs . . . does not relieve a school of its obligation to respond under Title VI . . . if the
harassment creates a hostile environment in school for a student or students,” “harassing conduct
that otherwise appears to be based on views about a country’s policies or practices [that] is
targeted at or infused with discriminatory comments about persons from or associated with a
particular country” may implicate Title VI, and that “[h]arassing conduct need not always be
targeted at a particular person in order to create a hostile environment for a student or group of
students,” but “may be directed at anyone.” The letter also provided examples of the kinds of
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conduct with respect to which a college’s failure to take effective preventative action could give
rise to a Title VI violation—namely, the very kind of harassment and intimidation that has been
regularly occurring at Harvard.
38. As the historical birthplace of the Jewish people, the land of Israel is at the core of
Jewish identity, ancestral tradition, religion, and culture. Jewish civilization has been centered
for thousands of years on its homeland in Israel, where Jews have had a continuous presence
since ancient times. The movement for the reestablishment, development, and protection of the
Jewish nation in the land of Israel, known as Zionism, arises from Jews’ ethnic and historic roots
in that land and their right to self-determination. Zionism is a crucial component of
Kestenbaum’s and SAA members’ Jewish identities, and many are descendants of survivors of
the Nazis, with family and friends in Israel.
39. Anti-Zionism is not merely a political movement—although many try to disguise
it as such—but is a direct attack against Israel as a Jewish collectivity. Nearly half of the Jews in
the world live in Israel. Anti-Zionism is discriminatory and antisemitic when expressed in terms
of, for example: applying double standards not applicable to other countries or peoples in
assessing Israel’s legitimacy and conduct; denying that Jewish civilization is indigenous to the
land of Israel; denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination or the right of the State of
Israel to exist; denying that Israel has the right to self-defense against terrorism, invasion, or the
murder, rape, and kidnapping of its citizens; accusing Israel of being inherently racist or
comparable to the Nazis; or invoking classic antisemitic canards against Israel and its people.
“When people criticize Zionists,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained, “they mean Jews.
You’re talking antisemitism.”
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40. The widespread anti-Jewish hate that has gripped Harvard and other universities
since October 7, 2023 confirms that in nearly all instances, anti-Zionism is rarely anything more
than thinly veiled antisemitism. Harvard’s Jewish students have been threatened with antisemitic
slurs and chants such as “Intifada Revolution,” “from the River to the Sea,” and “globalize the
Intifada,” and have been maligned as “murderers,” “colonizers,” “racists,” “white supremacists,”
“killers and rapists of children,” “genocidal,” and “Zionists.”
41. Antisemitism is a core tenet of Hamas—an extreme Islamist terrorist group
explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants, the creation of an
Islamic state in Israel’s place, and the annihilation of all Jews around the world. Hamas’s 1988
charter states: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews and kill
them.” In October 1997, the U.S. State Department designated Hamas, which has controlled
Gaza since 2007, a foreign terrorist organization.
42. In keeping with its charter and goals, since its inception, Hamas has carried out
numerous indiscriminate terror attacks on Israeli civilians through methods such as bombings,
rocket barrages, shootings, and stabbings, including during two Intifadas. In fact, the Intifadas
were carried out through a campaign of suicide bombs, many of which included nails dipped in
rat poison. During the Second Intifada, from approximately September 2000 through February
2005, Hamas claimed responsibility for over fifty suicide bombings, including the August 9,
2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria, which murdered seven children; the December 1, 2001
double-suicide bombing in the crowded Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem, murdering
eleven; and the March 27, 2002 suicide bombing at a Passover Seder at the Park Hotel in
Netanya, murdering thirty. Over the next twenty years, Hamas murdered scores more through
similar suicide bombings, public bus attacks, booby traps, shootings, and other acts of terror.
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43. Hamas leaders are clear about their agenda: kill all Jews. In December 2008, for
example, Hamas spokesperson Fawzi Barhoum called for suicide attacks and warned that
“Hamas will continue the resistance until the last drop of blood.” A month later, in January
2009, Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar promised that Hamas would “lay the foundation for a
tomorrow without Zionists.” Ten years on, Hamas’s message and purpose were still the same; in
2019, a senior Hamas terrorist, Fathi Hamad, encouraged Palestinians across the globe to kill
Jews, stating, “[s]even million Palestinians outside, enough warming up, you have Jews with you
in every place. You should attack every Jew possible in all the world and kill them.”
44. In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel (discussed in
more detail below), which, as President Biden observed, contributed to an “alarming” rise in
antisemitism at schools and on college campuses, OCR announced that it was expediting its
processing of discrimination complaints involving antisemitism. At least seven bills have been
introduced in both houses of Congress condemning support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other
terrorist organizations at American universities which has created a hostile educational
environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff. On October 18, 2023, the U.S. Senate passed
a resolution condemning “antisemitic student activities,” and on November 2, 2023, the U.S.
House passed a resolution condemning support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist
organizations at American universities.
B. Harvard Fails to Enforce Its Own Policies to Protect Jewish Students
45. Harvard has issued at least five applicable sets of policies ostensibly to protect
students from discrimination, harassment, and intimidation: (i) the Harvard University Non-
Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policy; (ii) the University-Wide Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities; (iii) the Protest Rules; (iv) Harvard’s Student Organization Policies; and (v)
Harvard’s various student handbooks, which often adopt and expand on University-wide
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policies. Harvard, however, refuses to apply these policies in a nondiscriminatory manner to
protect Jewish students and prevent antisemitism on campus, and selectively enforces its own
rules, deeming Jewish victims unworthy of the protections it readily affords non-Jewish ones.
Harvard’s clearly unreasonable response to antisemitic discrimination and harassment reflects an
egregious double standard, as it is at odds with Harvard’s aggressive enforcement of its policies
concerning alleged misconduct not involving antisemitism. This discriminatory double standard
has created, contributed to, aggravated, and exacerbated Harvard’s hostile educational
environment and the antisemitic abuse and harassment that Kestenbaum, SAA’s student
members, and other Jewish students have been forced to endure at Harvard.
Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying Policy
46. On September 1, 2023, Harvard adopted a University-wide Non-Discrimination
Policy and an Anti-Bullying Policy (together, the “Non-Discrimination Policy”), which applies
to alleged discrimination, harassment, and bullying “by any member of the Harvard community,”
both on- and off-campus (including on social media), that “may have the effect of creating a
hostile or abusive work or learning environment for a member of the University community.”
47. The Non-Discrimination Policy prohibits “discriminatory disparate treatment”
and “discriminatory harassment” on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, or
creed, among other protected classes. “Discriminatory disparate treatment” is defined as
“singling out or targeting an individual for less favorable treatment because of their protected
characteristic,” which “unreasonably interfere[s] with or limit[s] the student’s ability to
participate in or benefit from the institution’s programs and activities.” Harvard defines
“discriminatory harassment” as “unwelcome and offensive conduct that is based on an individual
or group’s protected status” that interferes with “a student’s academic performance or ability to
participate in or benefit from academic/campus programs and activities.” The Non-
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Discrimination Policy similarly defines “bullying” as “harmful interpersonal aggression by
words or actions that humiliate, degrade, demean, intimidate, or threaten,” which is “sufficiently
severe or pervasive, and objectively offensive, that it creates a[n] . . . educational[] or living
environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive and denies
the individual an equal opportunity to participate in the benefits of the workplace or the
institution’s programs and activities.”
48. The Non-Discrimination Policy also sets forth governing principles and promises,
including that all those at Harvard “with responsibility for implementing [the policy] will
discharge their obligations with fairness, rigor, and impartiality” as well as timeliness and
transparency, and sets forth procedures, including specified timeframes for reviewing,
investigating, and acting upon complaints of violations. Harvard promises to “respond promptly
to reports of bullying” and “take appropriate action to prevent and respond to behavior” that
violates these policies. Examples of possible sanctions for violations include suspension,
probation, expulsion, termination, or a recommendation that a faculty member’s tenure be
terminated.
49. Harvard’s constituent schools also promulgate student handbooks, which set forth
misconduct policies and procedures. For instance, the Harvard College and Harvard Divinity
handbooks provide that the school retains broad rights to protect the Harvard community “as it
deems necessary in extraordinary circumstances to protect the health and safety of the Harvard
community,” including “conditions posing broad threats to community health and safety or
significantly disrupting campus life or learning.” The handbooks also adopt versions of
Harvard’s Non-Discrimination Policy. Harvard Divinity’s handbook “prohibit[s],” and declares
“unlawful and contrary to Harvard University[] policy,” acts that “discriminate on the basis of
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race, color, . . . religion, creed, . . . [or] national or ethnic origin.” The Harvard College
handbook states that protected-class discrimination “is contrary to the principles and policies of
Harvard University,” and that harassment based on these protected classes is “unacceptable.”
Harvard Law’s handbook provides notice of the Harvard Non-Discrimination Policy and
confirms that all “students, faculty, staff,” and others at Harvard Law are bound by it and that
“[s]tudents [and] faculty . . . agree to respect the rights, dignity, and differences of others . . . and
accept personal responsibility in these efforts.”
50. While these clear and unambiguous statements purport to signal Harvard’s
commitment to prohibiting discrimination and harassment, Harvard has treated Jews as unworthy
of the respect and protection it affords other groups.
Statement on Rights and Responsibilities
51. Harvard’s University-Wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities (“Statement
on Rights and Responsibilities”) guarantees “freedom from personal force and violence, and
freedom of movement,” and provides, among other things, that interference with such freedoms
and with any Harvard member’s “performance of their normal duties and activities,” or any
“[t]heft or willful destruction of property” is a “serious violation” of “personal rights.” The
Statement on Rights and Responsibilities also notes that administrators have the responsibility to
“give full and fair hearing to reasoned expressions of grievances; and to respond promptly and in
good faith to such expressions and to widely expressed needs for change.” The Statement on
Rights and Responsibilities provides that intense personal harassment and unauthorized
occupation of buildings violate Harvard policy:
It is implicit in the language of the Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities that intense personal harassment of such a character
as to amount to grave disrespect for the dignity of others be regarded
as an unacceptable violation of the personal rights on which the
University is based.
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It is implicit in the University-wide Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities that any unauthorized occupation of a University
building, or any part of it, that interferes with the ability of members
of the University to perform their normal activities constitutes
unacceptable conduct in violation of the Statement and is subject to
appropriate discipline.
52. On January 19, 2024, Harvard released additional guidance on the Statement on
Rights and Responsibilities, including that “unless a particular School makes an explicit
exception, demonstrations and protests are ordinarily not permitted in classrooms and other
spaces of instruction; libraries or other spaces designated for study, quiet reflection, and small
group discussion; dormitories, residence halls, or dining halls where students live and take their
meals; offices where the work of the University is carried out; or other places in which
demonstrations and protests would interfere with the normal activities of the University.” The
guidance also makes clear that “blocking ingress or egress to campus buildings, classrooms,
administrative offices, or other spaces is forbidden, as is blocking or otherwise interfering with
the free flow of vehicular, bicycle, or pedestrian traffic,” and “conduct such as assaulting,
threatening, or intimidating another person or damaging, defacing, or removing a properly posted
sign is not permitted.” And “community members may not protest a speech or event in a manner
that interferes with the right of the speaker(s) to be heard or of the audience to hear them.”
Protest Rules
53. Several constituent schools have adopted protest policies in addition to the
Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Free
Speech Guidelines, the Harvard Public Health Guidelines for Open Debate and Protest, the
Harvard Law Protest and Dissent Guidelines, and the Harvard Divinity Statement of Community
Values (“Protest Rules”).
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54. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Free Speech Guidelines, “intended to
supplement and clarify” the Statement on Rights and Responsibilities and to “inform students of
the acceptable limits of protest,” define prohibited “disruption” of a campus event as “any
repeated or continuous action which effectively prevents members of the audience from
adequately hearing or seeing the event” and provide that “[i]n cases of obstruction [of others’
‘freedom of movement’]. . . the offenders should be punished.” The Free Speech Guidelines
provide, among other things, that “act[s] or threat[s] of physical violence” are “regarded as a
complete lack of respect for the deepest values that unite the [Harvard] community” and
“[r]acial” and “intense personal harassment,” as well as “[b]ehavior evidently intended to
dishonor such characteristics as race [or] ethnic group,” are “contrary to the pursuit of inquiry
and education” and constitute “grave disrespect for the dignity of others” which will be
“punished.”
55. Harvard’s constituent schools have adopted similar policies. The Public Health
Guidelines for Open Debate and Protest provide, among other things, that expression is not
protected when it violates the Non-Discrimination Policy and that “[a]ny violation[]” by
students, faculty, or other speakers constitutes “grounds for appropriate disciplinary action.”
56. The Harvard Law handbook warns, among other prohibitions, that students who
“s[i]t in or obstruct[] access to administrative offices, faculty offices, and other school facilities
as a form of protest”—conduct previously sanctioned by a “reprimand”—may now face
“significant disciplinary sanction.”
57. The Harvard Law handbook also incorporates the Harvard Law Protest and
Dissent Guidelines, which provide, among other things, that student “dissenter[s]” are warned
that it is not “acceptable” to impede access to a speaking event, that “[u]sing or threatening force
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or violence, such as defacing a sign or assaulting a speaker or a member of the audience, is never
permitted,” and that “interference with freedom of movement or with freedom from personal
force or violence is a serious violation of personal rights.” These policies also provide that “any
form of protest that disrupts the conduct of a[] class would violate the University-Wide
Statement of Rights and Responsibilities’ prohibition against interference with ‘the performance
of the normal duties and activities’ of [Harvard],” that “[w]hen a meeting is closed, dissent by
non-attendees is limited to activity outside the meeting that does not impede access to the
meeting or substantially interfere with the communication inside,” and “[c]hanting or making
other sustained or repeated noise in a manner which substantially interferes with the speaker’s
communication is not permitted.”
58. The Harvard Divinity Statement of Community Values provides, among other
things, that Harvard Divinity is committed to ensuring “that all may participate freely within a
climate of openness, trust, and sensitivity” and that students are held accountable “for the impact
of [their] actions on our community, our environment, and the world.”
Student Organization Policies
59. Harvard also has policies regulating student organizations, codified in Harvard’s
Student Organization Resource Guide and Harvard’s handbooks (collectively, the “Student
Organization Policies”), which confirm the Non-Discrimination Policy applies to Harvard-
recognized student organizations—those that have registered with, and are supported by and
receive benefits from, Harvard in exchange for agreeing to follow Harvard’s policies—and
provide that “Harvard [] does not tolerate any behavior that constitutes harassment on the basis
of . . . any [] characteristic protected under applicable federal or state law” and that student
organizations “may not discriminate based on race, color, national or ethnic origin, [or] religion.”
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60. The Student Organization Policies also provide that unrecognized student
organizations are not permitted “to conduct any activity at Harvard even though their activities
involve Harvard” students, except under “special circumstances,” that Harvard will not provide
“access, support, or benefits” to unrecognized student organizations, and that students may not
use the “Harvard” name or marks in organizations’ activities without permission from a dean or
the provost.
61. Harvard nevertheless regularly permits unrecognized student groups such as
Harvard Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (“Harvard BDS”) and Harvard Afro to conduct, while
using Harvard’s name, disruptive antisemitic protests inside Harvard buildings and on Harvard
grounds without consequence. These unrecognized groups have, in recent months, extensively
engaged in discrimination against, and harassment of, Jewish and Israeli students and continue to
violate numerous Harvard policies by holding unauthorized events in which they recruit
hundreds of students to interrupt classes with calls for “globaliz[ing] the Intifada” and violence
against Jews and Israelis, among other disruptive and harassing conduct. Harvard takes no
action to prevent these organizations from regularly harassing Jewish and Israeli students in
violation of Harvard’s policies.
C. Harvard’s Recent History of Antisemitism and Civil Rights Violations
62. Antisemitism at Harvard is hardly a new phenomenon. In the 1920s, it was
official Harvard policy, implemented by President Abbott Lawrence Lowell and complete with
quotas on admissions to “diminish the Jews” and restore Harvard as a “Gentile” college. Over
the last decade in particular, Harvard’s tolerance for, and enabling of, antisemitism has caused a
surge in antisemitic hate and harassment culminating in the current intolerable anti-Jewish
environment at Harvard following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack. Rather than discipline the
perpetrators of antisemitism on campus, Harvard has enabled antisemitic abuse and harassment
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to intensify, forsaking its Jewish students to a hostile environment that deprives them of the
educational experiences other students enjoy.
63. This hostile environment is reflected in a 2022 study conducted by the AMCHA
Initiative, a non-profit organization which investigates and documents antisemitism in higher
education—finding that Harvard was the most antisemitic college in the United States—and in a
Harvard student’s March 2023 senior thesis, “The Death of Discourse: Antisemitism at Harvard
College,” for which she interviewed Jewish Harvard students, large percentages of whom (as
much as eighty percent or more) reported experiencing antisemitism and anti-Zionism on campus
or knowing someone who had. The thesis provided numerous accounts reflecting the
widespread, virulent antisemitism Jewish students experience on campus, including how
Harvard’s hostile environment has effectively made certain courses off-limits to Jewish students
because of the bias and harassment they face and the “degree of censorship [they] must take on
in order to protect themselves socially and academically.”
Harvard’s Renewed Embrace of Antisemitism Has Fostered a Hostile
Environment for Jewish Students
64. Over the past ten years, Harvard Jewish students have endured numerous
antisemitic incidents, of which the following are examples.
65. On October 15, 2015, Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (“Harvard
PSC”)—a Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) affiliate and Harvard-recognized student
group—hosted a “die-in” in front of Harvard Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, to protest an
event featuring an Israeli soldier—according to Harvard Hillel Executive Director Jonah C.
Steinberg, the “first time in my five years at Harvard that I have seen an effort to interfere with
the event of another organization.” Although Harvard’s Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities proscribes such interference with campus activities, Harvard not only failed to
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discipline Harvard PSC, but its administrators and faculty members, including Dean Stephen
Lassonde and Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations Director S. Allen
Counter, attended and supported the violations. On November 5, 2015, three weeks after the die-
in, a swastika was discovered on a Harvard Law classroom desk.
66. SJP—which has a recognized chapter at Harvard Divinity in addition to its
affiliate, Harvard PSC—is one of the most vitriolic antisemitic networks on college campuses.
SJP was founded by the chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (“AMP”), the leadership of
which overlaps with the leadership of organizations that have been shut down by federal
authorities, whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury Department, or that were found liable
in civil actions for providing material support to Hamas. SJP receives funding and training from
AMP as well as from universities. SJP and its affiliates sponsor antisemitic events, host
antisemitic speakers, and are leading organizers of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (“BDS”)
campaigns against Israeli businesses. They use confrontational tactics to target Jewish students,
including disrupting Jewish events, constructing mock “apartheid walls,” and disseminating anti-
Jewish propaganda laced with falsehoods and blood libels. A recent study by the Network
Contagion Research Institute, an information verification think tank, found the presence of SJP
on campuses “significantly correlated with antisemitic activity.” Several leading universities,
but not Harvard, have banned SJP and other such hate organizations from their campuses
because of their harassment of Jewish students and support for Hamas.
67. Harvard PSC, SJP, and similar groups have harassed Jews on campus for years
without consequence, exemplifying Harvard’s deliberate indifference to its severe antisemitism
problem. For example, on April 14, 2016, Harvard Law held an event featuring a speech by
Tzipi Livni, a leading Israeli politician. At the event, Husam El-Quolaq, a student SJP leader,
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accosted Livni, asking her, echoing anti-Jewish stereotypes promoted by, among others, the
Nazis: “How is it that you are so smelly? It’s regarding your odor—about the odor of Tzipi
Livni, very smelly.” Harvard did not discipline this student, but, instead, the then-dean of
Harvard Law—while recognizing that “[m]any perceive [the incident] as anti-Semitic”—
responded “that speech is and should be free,” notwithstanding that the conduct plainly violated
policies including Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities. Not only did Harvard not
punish El-Quolaq, but it rewarded him. Harvard Law hired El-Quolaq—who has changed his
name to Sam Koolaq—as a Clinical Instructor in 2020, promoted him to Director of the
Entertainment Law Clinic in spring 2023, and to Lecturer on Law this spring 2024 semester.
Harvard knew of Koolaq’s past antisemitic conduct at Harvard when it hired and promoted him.
68. Groups like Harvard PSC are notoriously active during “Israeli Apartheid Week,”
an annual worldwide program organized by virulent anti-Israel activists, which promotes BDS
and targets Jewish students for harassment. During the April 2017 Israeli Apartheid Week, a
Harvard dormitory was covered with mock detention notices targeting Jewish students for their
alleged mistreatment of “Palestinians in Israel-Palestine.” The mock notices were orchestrated
by Harvard PSC, and co-signed by Harvard Concilio Latino, Harvard Islamic Society, and
Harvard Black Students Association. Jewish students reacted with shock and fear, but Harvard
took no meaningful steps to discipline the groups responsible.
69. In October 2017, Harvard’s student-led Phillips Brooks House Association
granted Nihad Awad its “Call of Service” Lecture and Award, designated for a “significant
leader in public service” invited to speak at Harvard to inspire a “deeper engagement with
critical social issues on campus and in the wider community”—notwithstanding that Awad had
long been an open supporter of Hamas. Awad most recently said that he was “happy to see” the
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people of Gaza “break the siege . . . on October 7,” a statement the White House “condemn[ed]”
as “shocking” and “antisemitic.”
70. On May 10, 2018, a swastika was discovered on a bulletin board at Harvard
Public Health. A few months later, on December 2, 2018, a man intentionally toppled the
menorah at Harvard Chabad, a center of Jewish life and faith. Harvard has not disclosed what, if
anything, it has done to find and discipline the perpetrators of these antisemitic incidents.
71. In March 2019, the Harvard Undergraduate Council met to vote on whether to
award university funding to Harvard PSC for its upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week. During the
meeting, Jewish students, in the words of Harvard Hillel’s president, were met “with angry
interjections and unfounded accusations, as well as references to age-old tropes of prejudice and
bigotry,” leaving her “shocked and disappointed by the way in which students were prevented
from expressing their very real concerns.” The council voted to award the funding to Harvard
PSC through the Open Harvard College grant, even though such grants are designed to fund
student initiatives on “mental health, race, culture, [] faith relations, . . . harassment prevention,
social spaces, and financial accessibility.” Harvard did not take disciplinary action against
Harvard PSC, the council, or anyone who spewed antisemitism during the meeting, and it did not
prevent the use of Harvard funds to support the antisemitic Israeli Apartheid Week.
72. On April 2, 2019, during Israeli Apartheid Week, Harvard PSC hosted several
speakers, including Boston College Professor Yamila Hussein, who declared that Zionism is a
“white supremacist, European, patriarchal, heterosexist, you name it, movement . . . when you
read Zionism, it is white supremacy,” and Marc Lamont Hill, a former CNN commentator whom
CNN fired for calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea”—a genocidal call for the
destruction of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants—and who is well known for his antisemitic
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views. Harvard allowed these influential speakers and audience members, on campus and at
Harvard’s expense, to spew unchecked antisemitic vitriol. A member of the audience even
demanded discussion of the antisemitic trope that European Jews are not “real Jews” but Turkic
Khazars, a nomadic European tribe, and that the Holocaust is a “myth.” Harvard took no
disciplinary or remedial actions and did not condemn the event’s antisemitism.
73. In August 2020, Harvard PSC posted a graphic on Instagram calling Zionism, the
belief in the right of Jews to self-determination in Israel, a “racist, sectarian, exclusionary,
Jewish-supremacist political ideology,” adopting the “Jewish supremacy” phrase coined by
former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke.
74. In May 2021, in response to a Jewish Israeli student’s post in a WhatsApp group,
a Harvard Law student, Shayaan A. Essa, messaged, “We shed your blood with stones.” A
group of Jewish Israeli students reported the incident to then-Dean Jessica Soban, Deputy Dean
I. Glenn Cohen, and Assistant Dean-appointee Catherine Peshkin. In a meeting with the deans,
the students explained how this violent threat left them “heartbroken and humiliated” and “no
longer feel[ing] comfortable,” and asked the deans to denounce Essa’s call for violence. The
deans refused to do so, instead downplaying the message and telling the students to ignore or
respond directly to such harassment. Essa graduated without consequence. Two of the Jewish
Israeli students, who are still enrolled at Harvard Law, report that they feel unsafe and have
trouble focusing as a result of Harvard’s clearly unreasonable response to antisemitism,
including Essa’s conduct, and the increased anti-Jewish hostility on campus following Hamas’s
October 7 terrorist attack. One such student told his young children not to speak Hebrew outside
their home, out of fear they will be targeted by antisemitic Harvard community members.
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75. Also in May 2021, Harvard Hillel’s building was vandalized twice. Two masked
individuals tied a Palestinian flag emblazoned with an anti-police slogan to Hillel’s door, after
which Hillel’s windows were shattered. While Harvard purports to have investigated these
incidents, nothing came of it—no one was arrested or disciplined.
76. In October 2021, the Harvard Law Program on Law & Society in the Muslim
World and numerous Harvard student groups co-sponsored a pro-BDS event, “Law and Violence
in Palestine,” at which a speaker was Mohammed El-Kurd, who notoriously espouses antisemitic
views, has repeatedly and publicly announced his fantasy of murdering Jews and how “we must
normalize massacres as the status quo,” and claims that Israelis and Zionist Jews—whom he
calls part of a “death cult”—“harvest organs of” dead Palestinians to “feed their warriors,” a vile
antisemitic blood libel.
77. In December 2021, SAA Member #4, a Ph.D. student at Harvard, observed to
Professor Bram Wispelwey that his winter semester course, The Settler Colonial Determinants of
Health, in Harvard Public Health’s Department of Global Health and Population, contained
disturbing antisemitic topics and materials, including required readings propagating antisemitic
claims and Hamas propaganda, by denying Jewish ethnic identity (which one reading calls an
“invented transnational ethnic identity”), calling Jewish history a “mythology,” denying Jewish
indigeneity to Israel, and downplaying antisemitism and the Holocaust. Wispelwey dismissed
these concerns in an emailed response as “demonstrably false.” SAA Member #4 emailed
Department Chair Marcia Castro to raise their concerns. Castro, like Wispelwey, was dismissive
of the student’s concerns, but proposed a three-on-one meeting that would include Wispelwey
and Professor Jackie Bhabha, who Castro said was leading the development of a new program on
Palestine at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights (“FXB Center”). SAA
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Member #4 made a formal complaint in Harvard’s bias reporting system and sent their concerns
to Dean for Education Erin Driver-Linn and Chief Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (“DIB”)
Officer Amarildo Barbosa. The student met with Barbosa later that month and reported this and
several other incidents of antisemitism on campus.
78. Harvard took no steps to prevent Professor Wispelwey from promulgating
antisemitism in his course or to otherwise discipline him, but recently promoted his course from
a truncated winter-term course to a full-length spring-semester course, which, according to
Harvard Public Health’s website, entailed Harvard approving the course content. Following
Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, SAA Member #4 followed up with administrators, providing
resources to explain the bias in Wispelwey’s course—as Chief DIB Officer Barbosa admitted
that his office lacked sufficient expertise in understanding antisemitism.
79. SAA Member #4 also raised concerns about Harvard’s continued partnership with
Birzeit University in the West Bank, which openly discriminates against Jews and promotes
Hamas and its terrorism. Among other things, Birzeit’s buildings and events are named after
convicted terrorists; military parades on campus feature students wearing mock explosive vests
while waving Hamas flags; in May 2022, Hamas won the majority of Birzeit student government
seats; and, two weeks before the October 7 massacre, eight students were arrested with weapons
and plans to carry out a terrorist attack. Rather than end its affiliation with this antisemitic,
terrorism-supporting university, Harvard touts its Birzeit partnership. In fact, since October 7,
Harvard’s FXB Center co-sponsored a webinar with Birzeit on December 11, Harvard’s Center
for Middle Eastern Studies and the Birzeit University Museum have organized at least fourteen
“teach-in” sessions to put “Gaza in context”—which include discussions on “Israel’s onslaught
against Palestinians”—and the FXB Center recently opened applications for its Summer 2024
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Palestine Social Medicine course at Birzeit. The Center has maintained its partnership even
though Birzeit University’s “student population voted overwhelmingly for a Hamas-affiliated
bloc in its student government elections” in May 2023, leading to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
“prais[ing] the victory and sp[eaking] to participants at its celebrations over the phone, claiming
the victory shows Hamas is ‘unbreakable’ in the West Bank.” In early 2024, the Harvard Dean
for Communications and Strategic Initiatives acknowledged Birzeit’s close connection with
Hamas, but said it has not affected Harvard’s partnership with the university: “Student
government elections at Birzeit typically involve candidates affiliated with each of the major
political parties in the region, including Hamas. . . . These student government elections are not
germane to and have not affected the FXB Center’s work with the scholars and students at
Birzeit’s Institute of Community and Public Health.”
80. Harvard Out of Palestine (“HOOP”), another student group, led a relentless
campaign against retired Israeli Major General Amos Yadlin, a senior fellow at Harvard
Kennedy School of Government (“Harvard Kennedy”). For example, on February 1, 2022,
HOOP organized a disruptive rally outside Yadlin’s first study group of the semester. As HOOP
posted on its Instagram page, the harassment “continue[d] despite [the study group’s] efforts to
change rooms every week.” HOOP also shared a video that showed its members standing in two
parallel rows just outside the open door of Yadlin’s classroom, holding large banners and flags,
so that anyone entering or exiting would be forced to walk through the gauntlet. The video also
depicts protesters chanting and disrupting Yadlin’s discussion with students in the classroom.
81. On April 7, 2022, HOOP marched through campus, including in and out of
buildings, banging on drums and using a megaphone to shout further accusations at Yadlin,
charging him with personal responsibility for alleged “genocide.” Throughout the semester,
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Harvard did nothing to prevent HOOP from severely and pervasively harassing Yadlin and his
students, notwithstanding, among other policies, Harvard’s Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities proscribing such conduct as “unacceptable” violations of Harvard policy.
82. The April 2022 Israeli Apartheid Week included a display in Harvard Yard,
which read: “ZIONISM IS RACISM SETTLER COLONIALISM WHITE SUPREMACY
APARTHEID.” Harvard did nothing in response to these inflammatory antisemitic tropes.
Similarly, when a swastika was once again found shortly after Israeli Apartheid Week—this time
in the undergraduate residence Currier House—Harvard failed to publicly condemn it outside of
a statement to the Currier House community or take any other steps.
83. That same year, Harvard PSC members placed stickers on Sabra hummus (a
brand co-owned by an Israeli company, and which is a common target for BDS) throughout
Harvard’s dining halls, which accused Israel of being an apartheid state and murdering
Palestinians. Rather than discipline the perpetrators, Harvard pulled Sabra products from the
dining halls. Later, when questioned at the December 5, 2023 hearing before the U.S. House
Committee on Education and the Workforce (“House Committee”), titled “Holding Campus
Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism” (“House Antisemitism Hearing”), then-
Harvard President Claudine Gay refused to say whether the stickers violated Harvard’s policies
or to explain Sabra’s disappearance from the dining halls.
84. In August 2022, Harvard PSC members disrupted Harvard’s convocation—a
ceremony for incoming students that is supposed to “provide[] an understanding of the values,
history, and traditions” at Harvard and help new students “develop a sense of belonging and class
unity [through] inspirational messages from a current student leader and University officials”—
by chanting and displaying a banner that read: “Veritas? Here’s the Real Truth: Harvard
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Supports Israeli Apartheid.” Harvard later shared on social media images from the convocation
that prominently displayed the banner.
85. In October 2022, Harvard PSC and other student groups brought El-Kurd back to
speak on campus. Kestenbaum, who was present for the event, wrote in a February 2023 article
published on the Jewish cultural and news website Aish about his shock and dismay that “El-
Kurd’s casual comparisons between the State of Israel and Nazi Germany,” and his insistence
that “Jews have begun ‘internalizing the ways of the Nazis,’” did not preclude his appearance on
campus.
86. In spring 2023, Harvard PSC carried out its annual boycott campaign against
Israel Trek—a ten-day trip to Israel sponsored by Harvard Hillel designed for non-Jewish
students to learn more about Israeli history and culture and speak with high-ranking Israeli and
Palestinian officials—during which participants and prospective participants are harassed and
intimidated, with no response by Harvard.
87. Harvard PSC organized another protest at the September 4, 2023 convocation, at
which one of its members—who on October 7 would justify that day’s massacre by saying the
“oppressed have the right to resist”—interrupted Dean Rakesh Khurana mid-speech, shouting:
“Here’s the real truth: Harvard supports, upholds, and invests in Israeli apartheid, and the
oppression of Palestinians.” Harvard did not discipline that or any other protester; instead, the
student who interrupted Dean Khurana was later selected as a Rhodes Scholar, after receiving
Harvard’s endorsement.
88. At the 2023 convocation, which Kestenbaum attended, protesters encircled the
seated freshman class and screamed “boycott Israel,” “stop supporting genocide,” and “boycott
Israel Trek,” among other things. Harvard did not make any attempt to stop the protesters, who
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interrupted multiple speakers in addition to Dean Khurana. Kestenbaum’s friend, a Jewish
freshman who wears a kippah, got up and left the convocation, telling Kestenbaum he was
extremely uncomfortable with his introduction to Harvard.
89. On September 21, 2023, Harvard Divinity invited former Palestine Liberation
Organization spokeswoman Diana Buttu to speak in Harvard Divinity’s main building at a
screening of Israelism, a film that argues American Jews raise their children with pro-Israel
indoctrination. Buttu claimed that Jews are trained to mistreat Palestinians, a behavior she said
they learned facing Nazi extermination at Auschwitz. Antisemitic tropes displayed during that
screening drew applause rather than denunciation. Kestenbaum, who attended the screening
along with Harvard Divinity Interim Dean David Holland and nearly all of Harvard Divinity’s
Religion and Public Life (“RPL”) Department faculty, experienced severe anxiety and
discomfort as a result of that Harvard-sponsored antisemitic event. Buttu holds a faculty position
at Harvard.
90. The increasing antisemitism over the last decade has coincided with a dramatic
decrease in Harvard’s Jewish student population—from, in 2013, approximately twenty-five
percent of the undergraduate student body, to, in 2023, less than ten percent—a drop of nearly
sixty percent in a single decade that could only evince a deliberate effort by Harvard to minimize
its Jewish student population.
Harvard Refuses to Discipline a Professor Who Intentionally Discriminated
Against Jewish Students
91. In March 2023, as confirmed by an independent investigation Harvard itself
commissioned, Harvard Kennedy Professor Marshall Ganz—who has long railed against what he
calls the “Israeli regime,” “Jewish supremacy in Israel,” and Israeli “apartheid”—intentionally
discriminated against three Jewish Israeli students enrolled in his Organizing: People, Power,
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Change course, the goal of which was for “students [to] learn to work as leadership teams to
reach out to constituents to design an organizing campaign.”
92. For their organizing campaign class project, the three students examined ways “to
harness and unite a majority of diverse and moderate Israelis to strengthen Israel’s liberal and
Jewish democracy.” Professor Ganz first pressured the students to change their project
description so that it did not refer to Israel as a “liberal Jewish democracy,” then told them to
remove the word “Jewish” because, when used in connection with “Israel,” it “creates an unsafe
space” akin to describing the United States as led by “white supremacy,” and ultimately
prohibited them from using the phrase “liberal Jewish democracy” because, he said, the phrase is
“highly controversial,” “disrupt[s] the learning environment,” and is “deeply offensive” to
certain students. Ganz threatened the students with academic consequences when they defended
themselves and their project. In retaliation for the students’ refusal to capitulate to his
intimidation, Ganz made the topic for the last day of class “Palestinian solidarity”—even though
no student’s project involved Palestine—and Ganz refused to let the Jewish students speak that
day, rebuffing them for having “caused enough problems already.”
93. In response to a letter from the Brandeis Center asserting that Harvard violated
Title VI based on Professor Ganz’s conduct, Harvard initiated an investigation led by the law
firm Kurker Paget. Kurker Paget issued its findings in June 2023, concluding that Ganz violated
Harvard’s Statement on Rights and Responsibility and finding that he: subjected the students to
anti-Israel and antisemitic bias and discrimination on the basis of their identities as Jewish
Israelis; silenced the students’ speech; treated them differently and denigrated them on the basis
of their Israeli national origin and Jewish ethnicity and ancestry; prioritized others’ concerns
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over theirs; and interfered with their ability to participate in and benefit from an educational
program.
94. On June 15, 2023, Harvard Kennedy Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf accepted
Kurker Paget’s “findings of fact and conclusions regarding [Professor Ganz’s] violations of
School policies,” and acknowledged that Harvard “need[s] to ensure that the School fulfills the[]
commitments [in the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities] and that the violations of policies
that occurred this spring are addressed fully and do not recur.” Dean Elmendorf stated that he
was “convening a small group of faculty members at the School to advise” him, and he
“expect[ed] that this process of consultation will take only a few weeks, and then I will decide
how to proceed.” But after more than four months of Harvard’s silence and failure to discipline
Ganz, the Brandeis Center sent another letter on October 30, 2023, demanding immediate action.
Kestenbaum and other Jewish students saw Harvard’s failure to act—even after its own
investigator confirmed Ganz’s Title VI violations—as more evidence of Harvard’s hostility
towards Jewish students.
D. Harvard’s Deliberate Indifference to Antisemitism Has Continued Despite Intense
Anti-Jewish Harassment Following Hamas’s Massacre
95. As a result of Harvard’s actions and inactions alleged herein, including permitting
antisemitic events, speakers, screenings, flyers, and messages, and repeatedly failing and
refusing to enforce its own policies or take disciplinary measures against students and professors
who violate those policies, Harvard has made it clear that it will permit, tolerate, and condone
antisemitic activity. Such deliberate indifference and discriminatory application of Harvard’s
policies cultivated an environment in which antisemitic activity, and the risk to Jewish students,
drastically increased following Hamas’s October 7 massacre, and continues to this day.
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i. October 7, 2023: Hamas Terrorists Commit Horrific Atrocities Against
Innocent Civilians in Israel
96. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprovoked surprise attack on Israel,
engaging in depraved acts of murder, torture, rape, violence, and kidnapping against Israeli
citizens. Thousands of armed terrorists invaded southern Israel, while others launched thousands
of rockets toward Israeli civilians. Once inside Israel, the terrorists, acting as well-armed death
squads, dispersed into Israeli towns shooting, raping, torturing, burning, and mutilating unarmed
civilians, including infants, children, and the elderly, taking hundreds of hostages and engaging
in mass murder and rape at a music festival near Gaza’s border with Israel. The Israel Defense
Forces (“IDF”) eventually repelled the terrorists and regained control over the affected area. By
that time, Hamas had killed 1,200 people and abducted over 200 more. October 7 was the single
deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Since then, senior Hamas officials have hailed the
slaughter and vowed that October 7 was “just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a
fourth,” promising another “October 7, October 10, October one-millionth.” When the Hamas
leader who used this language was asked whether he meant to call for the complete annihilation
of Israel, he replied, “Yes, of course.”
97. On October 18, President Biden described the October 7 slaughter as follows:
Scores of innocents—from infants to elderly grandparents, Israelis
and Americans—taken hostage. Children slaughtered. Babies
slaughtered. Entire families massacred. Rape, beheadings, bodies
burned alive. Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst
ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure unadulterated evil upon the world.
There is no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period. The brutality we
saw would have cut deep anywhere in the world, but it cuts deeper
here in Israel. October 7th, which was . . . a sacred Jewish holiday,
became the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
It has brought to the surface painful memories and scars left by a
millennia of antisemitism and the genocide of the Jewish people.
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98. Shockingly, many students and faculty members at Harvard celebrate, justify, and
excuse Hamas’s mass rape, murder, and kidnapping. Many have resorted to harassment and
even violence against Jewish students in support of Hamas’s attack and in condemnation of
Israel’s defensive response. Harvard faculty members publicly support these students and
oppose even the smallest measures to combat Harvard’s antisemitism. These faculty members
and students falsely accuse the “Israeli regime” of: committing “genocide” and “ethnic
cleansing” (even though the Arab population of Gaza has more than quadrupled since 1967);
creating an “open-air prison” in Gaza (even though Israel completely removed itself in 2005
from Gaza, which also shares a border with Egypt); and “apartheid” (even though all citizens in
Israel enjoy equal rights). Further evidencing the antisemitic nature of their activities, these
students and the faculty members who support them do not condemn, let alone rally against, such
countries as Syria and Yemen, which have killed hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians, and
Pakistan, which is now expelling almost two million Afghan Muslims, or China, which has
imprisoned its Muslims in reeducation camps, or Somalia and Nigeria, where Christians are
regularly murdered.
ii. Harvard Fails to Respond to the October 7 Atrocities, While Student Groups and
Faculty Members Praise Hamas
99. In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Harvard failed to
make a public statement about the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Instead,
Harvard allowed the massacre to fuel anti-Jewish discrimination and harassment, as students and
faculty members were permitted to justify and celebrate the slaughter.
100. Since October 7, student organizations including Harvard PSC, Harvard Afro,
Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine (“Harvard GS4P”), Harvard Divinity’s Jews for
Liberation, and Harvard BDS, among others, have led near-daily antisemitic protests,
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disruptions, and harassment campaigns, regularly calling for violence against Jews at campus
events and on social media, employing genocidal chants to advocate “globaliz[ing] the Intifada,”
and eradicating Israel and its Jewish inhabitants “from the river to the sea.”
101. On October 8, 2023, the day after Hamas’s attack, a coalition of more than thirty
Harvard student groups calling themselves the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups, which
includes Harvard PSC, Harvard GS4P, Harvard Divinity SJP, and Harvard Afro, among others,
signed a statement, organized by Harvard PSC and publicized on its Instagram, blaming Israel
for Hamas’s massacre: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime
entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. . . . The apartheid regime is the only one to
blame.”
102. Rather than suspend the student groups—a sanction provided for in many policies
these groups violated and continue to violate—Harvard remained silent. Harvard’s abject failure
to address the student organizations’ antisemitic statement quickly drew public criticism,
including from former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who posted the following on X on
October 9:
In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as
disillusioned and alienated as I am today. The silence from
Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely
reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has
allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror
against the Jewish state of Israel.
103. On October 9, Harvard finally broke its silence on Hamas’s attack, issuing a
public statement containing platitudes but avoiding any condemnation of Hamas or of the
antisemitic statement signed by the Harvard student organizations, any expression of solidarity
with Jewish students, or any acknowledgment of the antisemitism on campus. Compare
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Harvard’s statement to that made by the president of the University of Florida following
October 7:
I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and
there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard. Sadly, too
many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their
moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of
a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home,
the first reaction of some is to “provide context” and try to blame
the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother. In
other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists.
This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening. It’s dehumanizing. It
is beneath people called to educate our next generation of
Americans.
104. Later on October 9, SAA Member #2 emailed President Gay and Harvard Law
Dean John F. Manning (now Interim Harvard Provost), imploring them to condemn Hamas and
release a “comprehensive statement calling out what is happening in Israel,” explaining that she
and other students “don’t just want your support and understanding. . . . Our friends and families
are getting murdered, raped, and kidnapped. We request that you condemn the murder and
abominable crimes perpetuated by Hamas.” SAA Member #2 offered to meet with Harvard’s
leaders to explain her concerns in person but received no response. President Gay waited a week
before replying by suggesting that SAA Member #2 could go to Harvard’s Counseling and
Mental Health Service (“CAMHS”). Dean Manning did not respond. SAA Member #5 also
emailed Dean Manning on October 9, telling him that “[a]s a Jewish student who wears a kippah
on campus, I feel unsupported by an administration that fails to call out evil acts of violence
against Jewish people.” Dean Manning did not respond.
105. As Professor Summers stated in his October 10 response to Harvard’s October 9
statement, “[t]he delayed @Harvard leadership statement fails to meet the needs of the moment,”
and Harvard should have given “reassurance” to “frightened students” that it “stands squarely
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against Hamas terror . . . when 35 groups of their fellow students appear to be blaming all the
violence on Israel.”
106. On October 10, President Gay issued another statement called “Our Choices,” in
which she finally “condemn[ed] the terrorist atrocities perpetuated by Hamas,” but failed to
condemn the students’ reprehensible October 8 statement, noting only that they did not speak for
Harvard or its leadership but affirming that they “have the right to speak for themselves.” Under
intense criticism, President Gay later attempted to defend her failure to denounce the students:
“Had I known that the statement issued by the students would have been wrongly attributed to
the University, I would have spoken sooner about it.” But President Gay missed the point—the
problem is not that some thought that Harvard itself sent the student statement, but that Harvard
failed to condemn it or take any other actions to prevent the statement from further contributing
to the hostile antisemitic environment on campus.
107. On October 10 and 11, a billboard truck drove around Harvard displaying the
identities of students affiliated with the groups that signed the October 8 statement. On
October 24, Harvard College Dean of Students Thomas Dunne emailed these students to inform
them of the steps Harvard was taking to protect them from being publicly identified, including
the formation of a task force—to protect the students who had publicly issued a shocking, widely
condemned pro-Hamas antisemitic statement—the first step that Harvard took in response to the
campus environment following October 7. Dean Dunne referred to the public identification of
these students as a “repugnant assault on our community,” a harsher condemnation than Harvard
issued against Hamas’s massacre. Harvard then removed student groups, like Harvard PSC,
from Harvard’s online student organization directory to protect their members from being further
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identified and rebuked for their antisemitic statement. Harvard PSC is still a Harvard-recognized
organization.
108. On October 11, the leadership of Harvard Divinity’s RPL Department sent a
statement to Harvard Divinity’s student body on the “Current Spate of Violence in
Palestine/Israel,” signed by its associate dean, Associate Director of the Religion, Conflict, and
Peace Initiative Hillary Rantisi, and Professor Atalia Omer, among others, and itself rife with
antisemitic historical distortion. Below the statement were a list of events and announcements,
including the winners of the Harvard Divinity RPL’s Summer Photography Competition. One
honorable mention was a student submission of a photograph of graffiti near Bethlehem,
depicting a Jewish individual with a stereotypical elongated nose and wearing a shirt with a Star
of David greedily hoarding water from three faucets simultaneously, while an individual wearing
Palestinian garb stands nearby. Under the photograph, the student’s description read, in part:
“Through my experience with RCPI [the Harvard Divinity Religion, Conflict, and Peace
Initiative], I became further attuned to the ways in which Zionism, as a form of religious
nationalism, impacts Palestinians living under occupation in myriad ways, such as water
sovereignty. Here, not only is the water a literal representation, but it also doubles as an allusion
to the ways that religion is weaponized through Zionism, and violently denies Palestinians daily
of their livelihood and humanity by taking their natural resources.” Kestenbaum was highly
disturbed that his own school’s leaders were directly promoting antisemitism.
109. SAA Member #2, whose mother was in Israel on October 7 and whose cousins
serve in the IDF, returned to classes on October 11. She was distraught during her first class,
unable to pay attention following the initial response at Harvard to the massacre. Her second
class was equally difficult, as news broke that Hamas was flying drones into central Israel while
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she was unable to reach anyone in her family. After class, she was accosted by a student who—
rather than expressing sympathy—told her Israel should respond leniently to Hamas’s attack.
SAA Member #2 left school later that week.
110. On October 13, a group of members of Congress who are Harvard alumni wrote a
letter to President Gay to express their “outrage and profound disappointment over the statement
made by” the Harvard student groups that “blame[d] Israel for the Hamas terrorist attacks
brutally carried out against Israeli civilians.” The letter demanded, among other things, that
President Gay “immediately condemn” the “abhorrent” and “heinous” statement justifying
Hamas’s barbaric behavior; “investigate the origins” of the “unified hate and ignorance” among
students who “have such a deep hatred for Israel that they have chosen to ignore reality,
celebrate ruthless terrorists, and blame innocent civilians”; and publicly clarify that Harvard
“strongly opposes this dangerous antisemitism.”
iii. Harvard Permits Increasingly Aggressive Student-Led Disruptions
Targeting Jews on Campus
111. Harvard’s repeated failure to appropriately condemn or take significant steps to
ameliorate antisemitism on campus has emboldened students to engage in increasingly
aggressive antisemitic protests, intensifying the hostile environment Jewish students are forced to
endure.
112. On October 14, 2023, Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P organized an “emergency
rally” at Harvard’s flagship Widener Library to denounce Israel. Hundreds of students gathered
on Widener’s steps to block the entire length of the building while holding signs accusing Israel
of “apartheid” and “genocide,” and engaging in nonstop anti-Zionist chants. Although the
organizers advertised the rally as “open to all,” protesters forced a photojournalist to flee after
they surrounded and pushed him.
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113. On October 16, students chalked antisemitic writings at the entrance to Harvard
Law, using phrases such as “from the river to the sea” and “divest from Israeli apartheid.”
Notwithstanding requests to administrators, no action was taken. Soon thereafter, “free
Palestine” was painted outside Harvard Chabad. It remained for months.
114. On October 18, Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P organized a “die-in” and protest
(“Die-In”) at Harvard Business School (“Harvard Business”), heavily promoted on social media
as a “demand [to] end [an] ongoing genocide,” with organizers repeating Hamas falsehoods that
Israel bombed al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza. After seeing this announcement in a WhatsApp group
chat called “Protests around Harvard,” Kestenbaum replied to the chat, asking whether the
groups would still host the event even though the report blaming Israel for the hospital bombing
had been proven false. Students responded by calling Kestenbaum “despicable” and accused
him of spreading “Israeli propaganda.” Hundreds of Die-In protesters marched from outside
President Gay’s office to Harvard Business, where they lay on the ground playing dead while
raising “from the river to the sea” signs and chanting “free, free Palestine” and other slogans.
115. The Die-In protesters also harassed and physically assaulted Jewish students. A
video that went viral on social media shows a group of students swarming a Jewish Israeli
Harvard Business student, holding their keffiyehs open to surround and physically restrain him
while screaming, “shame!” over and over. The student was struck in the neck and forced out of
the area. Ibrahim Bharmal, a Harvard Law Review editor and a Civil Procedure teaching fellow,
and Elom Tettey-Tamaklo, a Harvard Divinity student and residential proctor, were among the
assailants and are under FBI scrutiny for their assault. Harvard has imposed no discipline on
Bharmal and has failed to sanction Tettey-Tamaklo other than relieving him of his proctor
responsibilities.
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116. On October 19, Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P recruited hundreds of protesters
to march through campus, invading the Science Center, Harvard Law’s Caspersen Student
Center and Wasserstein Hall buildings, the Harvard Kennedy courtyard, and Harvard Square,
using noisemakers, drumsticks, buckets, and megaphones to chant “from the river to the sea,”
accuse Israel of “genocide,” and demand that Harvard “divest[] from Israeli apartheid that is
funding genocide in Gaza.” The mob disrupted multiple classes, leading Jewish students to flee
for their safety, with some removing identifying garb to avoid attack. Harvard failed to take
steps to prevent the disruptions.
117. During this upheaval, SAA Member #1, SAA Member #2, SAA Member #3, and
SAA Member #5 were in a study room on the first floor of Harvard Law’s main building,
attending a small discussion session with a former assistant to the president during the Trump
administration, Jason Greenblatt. At the session, the students heard drumming outside the study
room and found a mob at the entrance to Harvard Law with a giant banner reading “Stop the
Genocide in Gaza.” SAA Member #2 watched as Harvard University Police Department
(“HUPD”) officers observed, but took no action against, the hundreds of protesters, including
non-Harvard-issued identification (“HUID”) cardholders, who were bypassing card scanners and
infiltrating the building. The group stormed Harvard Law’s main building, marched down the
length of the building’s primary first-floor hallway, and blocked the hallway outside the study
room where the SAA members and Greenblatt were hiding. Fearing a violent attack, students in
the study room removed indicia of their Jewishness, such as kippot, or hid under desks.
118. Harvard’s policies provide that students’ HUID cards, which grant access to
Harvard facilities, are “for University purposes only . . . [and] are not transferable; a student may
not allow any other person to use their HUID card for any purpose,” that “[c]ommunity members
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are responsible for their identification card and for the consequences of its misuse,” and that the
HUPD can request any individual’s HUID card “[w]henever it is necessary to ascertain whether
a person is a member of the University community or an authorized visitor.”
119. Jewish students, including SAA Member #1, SAA Member #2, and SAA Member
#5, immediately went to the Dean of Students and Community Engagement, Equity, and
Belonging (“CEEB”) offices, only to find the offices locked with staffers already safely inside.
One staffer ultimately came to the door to tell the Jewish students to wait in another room until
the administrators were ready to meet. Eventually, Harvard Law’s Dean of Students Stephen L.
Ball and Assistant Dean for CEEB Monica Monroe met with the students very briefly and,
without giving the students any opportunity to speak, stated that they were “sorry” and that they
would look into the incursion. SAA Member #2 was shocked that Harvard had effectively
surrendered its campus to the mob. SAA Member #1 had to miss his class later that day and,
concerned for his safety, stopped regularly attending his classes. Kestenbaum encountered the
roving mob as he was leaving his class at Harvard Kennedy. The mob, having moved on from
Harvard Law, now blocked the exit to the Harvard Kennedy building and shouted, at anyone
trying to leave, “from the river to the sea” and other chants calling for the destruction of Israel
and genocide of Jews. Kestenbaum was shaken by this experience, which has made him fear for
his safety on campus.
120. SAA Member #2 emailed Assistant Director of Student Life Jeffrey Sierra after
the mob stormed Harvard Law to describe what happened. In two previous meetings with Sierra,
she had asked him what could be done to stop the rampant antisemitism on campus and
explained its impact on her. In both of these meetings, and in response to her email regarding the
October 19 incursion, Sierra directed SAA Member #2 to CAMHS for mental health services
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and, on several occasions, said he was “not in a position to do more.” When SAA Member #2
asked whom she could contact instead, Sierra said he would speak with more senior
administrators, but SAA Member #2 never heard from anyone else about her concerns.
121. After Harvard’s failure to respond to their October 19 anti-Jewish harassment and
incursion, Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P organized a similar disruption on October 20, which
they called a “global strike for Palestine,” complete with a classroom walkout and protest.
122. On October 27, during Family Weekend—when students’ families visit campus—
Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P held another die-in and protest starting outside Harvard Law’s
library, advertising the protest as “[o]pen to non-HUID Holders.” Protesters lay on the ground at
the library’s entrance with “Boycott Divest Sanction” and “Harvard must recognize Genocide”
signs, while chanting “from the river to the sea” and “hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to
go.” In advance of the protest, SAA Member #1 had emailed several Harvard Law
administrators, including Dean Ball, Dean Manning, and Dean Monroe, attaching the student
groups’ flyers advertising the protest and requesting that the administrators prevent non-HUID
holders from attending, and stating: “Please protect us.” None of them responded. SAA
Member #2 left campus immediately after her last class of the day, taking a ride-share service
home because she did not feel safe walking through the protest to access her usual train.
123. These mass disturbances violated several Harvard policies, but Harvard has taken
no action to prevent them—even when students, citing specific policy language and providing
photographic evidence, warned administrators, including President Gay, Provost (and now-
Interim President) Garber, Dean Manning, Dean Ball, Dean Soban, and Dean Monroe, of
impending antisemitic disturbances.
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124. On October 27, President Gay attended a Harvard Hillel Shabbat dinner where
she finally acknowledged that there had been a “surge in anti-Jewish incidents and rhetoric
across the nation—and on our own campus,” that she had “heard story after story of Jewish
students feeling increasingly uneasy or even threatened on campus,” and that “antisemitism has a
very long and shameful history at Harvard,” which “has done too little to confront its continuing
presence.” Although President Gay promised that this indifference would continue “[n]o
longer,” Harvard has done nothing nearly sufficient to rectify its hostile environment.
125. Three days later, on October 30, Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P, in violation of
Harvard’s clear policies, began a takeover of Harvard Law’s main common lounge in Caspersen
Student Center—which would last throughout the semester—during which students orchestrated
incessant antisemitic agitation and anti-Israel protests and accosted Jewish students. Harvard
ignored the pleas and concerns of Jewish students, including SAA Member #1 and SAA Member
#2, who are visibly Jewish based on their religious clothing and who have been regularly stopped
and targeted in the lounge. Students like SAA Member #2 and SAA Member #5 have stopped
using Caspersen lounge as a study space to avoid being harassed because they are Jewish.
126. On October 31, SAA Member #3 was stunned to see Bharmal among the
Caspersen lounge protesters, after he had assaulted a Jewish student at the October 18 Die-In,
and to hear that he was unrepentant about doing so. SAA Member #3 ran to a bathroom and
cried, shaken at Bharmal’s lack of remorse, and Harvard’s permitting Bharmal to not only
remain on campus, but to continue to participate in activities that violate Harvard’s policies. She
tried to compose herself and attend her Civil Procedure class but was unable to stay more than a
few minutes.
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127. The takeover of Caspersen lounge drew no Harvard intervention, for at least two
weeks. Only on November 15—when Jewish students asked Dean Ball, Dean Soban, Dean
Monroe, and Title IX Program Officer Sasha Tulgan if they could also demonstrate in that same
space—did Dean Ball send a Harvard Law-wide email advising that shared spaces like
Caspersen lounge are only for “personal or small group study and conversation.” On
November 15, the protesters ignored three separate in-person requests by administrators—
prompted by repeated complaints from Jewish students that the protesters were harassing them—
to stop the protest.
128. On November 16, the next day, protesters held an unauthorized event in
Caspersen lounge during class time, called a “vigil for martyrs,” with a printed program outlining
demands and advertised in advance on social media. SAA Member #1, two days earlier, had
emailed Dean Ball and other Harvard Law administrators warning them about this planned
disruption, noting that Harvard GS4P organizers again intended to bring outsiders to the school
and stating that he “and other Jewish students feel unsafe and [these unauthorized events] are
directly interfering with our ability to attend [class] and focus on our coursework.” Dean Ball
attended the “vigil,” but did nothing to disperse the crowd or discipline the instigators. SAA
Member #1, SAA Member #2, and others participated in a counter-protest that day, but their
“bring them home” chants—referring to hostages held by Hamas—were drowned out by anti-
Jewish protesters, who yelled, among other things, “glory to the martyrs.” After Harvard again
failed to stop these antisemitic threats, SAA Member #1 emailed Title IX Program Officer
Tulgan, telling her that “campus felt so unsafe today” and that “I used to hope that the
administration will do better but today I lost all hope.”
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129. The protesters’ prohibited takeover of Caspersen lounge continued through the
end of the semester, and the perpetrators have faced no discipline. Organizers said they would
continue using Caspersen in violation of school policy. The lounge has continued to be the site
for protests and events that violate Harvard’s policies.
130. On November 3, 2023, the HJAA—formed in the wake of Harvard’s clearly
unreasonable response to October 7—sent Harvard a letter, signed by over 1,800 alumni,
demanding immediate action to stop the incessant antisemitism and stating that they never
imagined that they would “have to argue the point that terrorism against civilians demands
immediate and unequivocal condemnation,” or argue “for recognition of our own humanity.”
131. On or around November 5, flyers that SAA Member #5 had hung at Harvard Law,
advertising an event hosted by the student group Alliance for Israel, were ripped down. The
group’s members, including SAA Member #5, emailed Harvard Law Campus Safety
Coordinator Collin Keyes and HUPD Lieutenant Wilmon Chipman to request video footage of
the locations where the flyers had been posted. Chipman stated that he would pass this request to
“command staff”; however, the students heard nothing for several weeks despite repeated follow
ups, until December 15, when Keyes informed SAA Member #5 that Harvard could not find the
posters in the footage. SAA Member #5 followed up twice with more details to help Harvard
properly search for the posters, but Harvard has still failed to locate the relevant footage.
132. Starting on November 8 and continuing through the next week, Kestenbaum put
up posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas on a bulletin board in Harvard Divinity’s
common area, all of which were ripped down. Kestenbaum reported this vandalism to Harvard
Divinity leadership, including the chaplain, the assistant and associate deans for DIB, and the
director of student life, advising that he was discouraged from further using this dedicated public
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space. Harvard did nothing to address this blatant violation of its policies, instead telling
Kestenbaum that the administration would explore the issue during the next semester—which
proved to be nothing more than an empty platitude, given that the poster vandalism continued
into the spring 2024 semester, and Harvard took no affirmative steps to investigate the issue on
its own.
133. Also on November 8, SAA Member #1 emailed several administrators, including
Dean Ball and Dean Soban, notifying them of a Harvard PSC and Harvard GS4P “day of
mourning” walkout event planned for November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht. He noted
that the last time there was an organized walkout, hundreds of people, including outsiders,
stormed through the Harvard Law building. He asked whether there was a “safe and secure
location on the Harvard Law Campus for Jewish students to go through in case any
demonstrators break in.” None of the administrators responded to SAA Member #1 concerning
any safety measures, and the event was ultimately postponed by the student groups.
134. On November 9, President Gay finally addressed the assault on the Jewish
Harvard Business student that had occurred at the October 18 Die-In, revealing that Harvard
would not open an investigation but would instead permit those responsible to remain on
campus, pending the completion of “law enforcement’s inquiry,” when the University would
“address the incident through its student disciplinary procedures to determine if University
policies or codes of conduct have been violated and, if so, take appropriate action.” On May 9,
2024, Tettey-Tamaklo and Bharmal were charged with criminal assault and battery and
violations of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act—which prohibits attempts to “intimidate or
otherwise interfere with . . . any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or
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privilege secured to him by the constitution.” There has been no word from Harvard about any
disciplinary measures.
135. After mounting pressure from students, alumni, and the school’s newly formed
Antisemitism Advisory Group, President Gay issued a statement on November 9 outlining what
she called “concrete steps” for “combating antisemitism” at Harvard, but offering only vague and
unspecified plans to: examine antisemitism and address its complex history, educate community
members on antisemitism, make students aware of how to report bias, ensure physical and
psychological safety, have community sessions with the diversity office, and look for external
partnerships that would assist with efforts. Harvard failed to implement any of these actions, and
the Antisemitism Advisory Group was dismantled in January 2024.
136. Also on November 9, Harvard PSC, noting that the “future of pro-Palestinian
activism at Harvard is safe,” posted a video of students disrupting a faculty dinner, shouting
through a megaphone to “raise awareness” of what they called “genocide.” On November 13,
protesters chanted “globalize the Intifada”—that is mass murder and terrorism against all Jews—
across the Harvard undergraduate campus. SAA Member #1 reported these violent chants to
Dean Manning, Dean Monroe, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, and others, who did nothing
other than thank SAA Member #1 for informing them.
137. As Professor Summers stated in a November 15 Washington Post Op-ed titled
“The Cancer of Antisemitism is Spreading. Colleges Must Take the Right Stand”: Harvard was
in “a moment of moral and mortal peril”; “Harvard . . . h[as] not been swift” in its response to
antisemitism, a “cancer—a lethal adversary best addressed as rapidly, thoughtfully and
aggressively as possible”; Harvard’s “[d]ouble standards” are “unacceptable,” and no honest
observer could say that its “responses to antisemitism have paralleled in vigor or volume the
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responses to racism or other forms of prejudice”; and “singling out Israel with calls for its
annihilation is Jew hatred.”
138. The utter inadequacy and clear unreasonableness of Harvard’s response to
antisemitism on campus was further exemplified on November 16 and 17 when, for twenty-four
hours, students took over University Hall, demanding that “Harvard administrators release a call
for a ceasefire in Gaza,” announce that “antisemitism [is] not the same as anti-Zionism,” and
“investigate Islamophobia and suppression of pro-Palestine speech on campus.” Rather than
eject or otherwise penalize those students, nine hours into the takeover, Dean Khurana and
Adams House Faculty Dean Salmaan Keshavjee brought the occupying students burritos and
candy. After twelve hours, Dean Khurana gave them the chance to leave without disciplinary
action; when the students refused, he allowed them to remain overnight. When questioned at the
House Antisemitism Hearing why the deans provided food to unlawful protesters and promised
them no consequences, President Gay evaded the question, stating, “where conduct violates our
policies . . . we have processes underway.”
139. On November 27, Harvard Afro and Harvard BDS held a rally in Harvard’s
Science Center plaza, where students chanted “long live the Intifada,” “globalize the Intifada,”
“from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “we have them outnumbered,” among
other antisemitic slogans.
140. The next day, on November 28, President Gay declined an invitation to attend a
December 4 campus screening of a video of forty-three minutes of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities,
because she was to be out of town, and declined a Harvard alumnus’s offer to provide her private
transportation to enable her to attend.
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141. On November 29, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro again organized
self-proclaimed “disruptive” mass walkouts from classes across campus, targeting major lecture
halls to disrupt the largest number of students and took over the Science Center’s classrooms and
lobby, among other locations. During their takeover of the Science Center lobby—conduct
prohibited by Harvard’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities—protesters surrounded and
intimidated Jewish students, using megaphones to shout genocidal antisemitic chants, including
“globalize the Intifada,” “long live the Intifada,” “from the river to the sea,” and, in Arabic,
“water to water, Palestine will be Arab.”
142. The disruption, like many before it, was led by a student recognized by Jewish
students as among the primary instigators of antisemitic abuse on campus, whose presence
causes considerable fear and alarm among the Jewish students who live in the same dormitory,
Adams House, which he has turned into a base of operations for anti-Jewish activism. Adams
House Faculty Dean Keshavjee—who supplied burritos and candy to the University Hall
occupiers—did nothing to ameliorate the situation.
143. On December 3, 2023, Harvard BDS posted an Instagram story publicizing a
speaking event featuring convicted terrorists and attempted murderers Marah Bakir and Shorouq
Dwaiat—the former was sentenced to eight years in prison for her October 2015 attempted
murder of a police officer in Jerusalem, and the latter to sixteen years in prison for her
premeditated stabbing of a Jewish man in the head and attempt to stab another in Jerusalem on
October 7, 2015. Both terrorists were among those Israel released in late November 2023 in
exchange for innocent Israeli civilians captured on October 7 and held as hostages by Hamas.
Kestenbaum emailed the December Instagram post to President Gay, Interim Dean Holland, and
the Antisemitism Advisory Group, stating that it “sends a clear, dangerous message to Jews on
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campus,” and asking Harvard to suspend Harvard BDS leaders, “disavow anti-Jewish rhetoric,
and protect Jewish students.” Harvard did not respond.
144. On December 6, rather than prevent protesters from disrupting Harvard Divinity’s
Seasons of Light celebration that evening—a “beloved annual multireligious service” and
Harvard Divinity’s only annual event that includes a celebration of the Jewish faith—Harvard
canceled it. That same day, Harvard GS4P students took over Harvard Divinity’s “Holiday
Tea,” interrupting the Harvard administrators, faculty, staff, and students who had gathered there
by unfurling a large banner alleging “genocide in Gaza,” yelling about a “Zionist genocidal
campaign,” shrieking “there can be no peace without justice,” “free, free Palestine,” and
“shame!” The Harvard administrators did nothing to stop the students. Kestenbaum, who was
present, emailed the Antisemitism Advisory Group to report this blatant violation of Harvard
policy—which occurred after President Gay publicly declared that Harvard would discipline this
type of violation—but has not received a response.
145. Rather than act to protect Jewish students, Harvard has thus required that they
limit or conceal their activities. For example, as Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi revealed,
Harvard requires that he remove the Chabad Hanukkah menorah from the campus at night so that
it would not be vandalized. Rather than ensuring the safety and success of the Seasons of Light
celebration and making it unequivocally clear that vandalizing the menorah was unacceptable
and would be met with harsh punishment, Harvard addresses antisemitism by canceling events
that include celebrations of Jewish culture and warning celebrants to hide Jewish symbols.
146. At the same time Jewish students were being cautioned by Harvard to abandon or
conceal their identity, students celebrating the October 7 massacre and advocating death to
Israelis and Jews were free to do so on campus and over social media, not deterred or punished
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by Harvard in any way. On December 10, 2023, during final exam week, Harvard PSC, Harvard
BDS, and Harvard Afro oversaw a disruptive, aggressive, flag- and banner-waving takeover of
Harvard’s Widener Library, and then marched to Massachusetts Hall, where students chanted
“from the river to the sea.” Kestenbaum had intended to study at Widener but abandoned his
plan, as he was concerned that his religious clothing would make him a target for abuse or
violence. Harvard took no action to stop the Widener protest or discipline the students or
organizations that participated in it
147. On December 31, 2023, a student promoted in the Harvard Divinity student group
chat a virtual event called “Purplewashing: Resisting Colonial Feminism Teach-In,” which was
to include as a speaker a Palestinian activist named Yaffa who, on October 7, defended on social
media the massacre as a “Palestinian protest” against “our oppressors.” Kestenbaum responded
to the student in the Harvard Divinity chat that Yaffa “called the largest massacre of Jews since
the Holocaust a valid form of protest” and that he did not think “anyone would feel comfortable
promoting an event if the keynote address was given by a person who cheered on the murder of
any other minority group.” The student responded, “I’m comfortable promoting this event.”
That day, Kestenbaum reported this exchange and event to the Antisemitism Advisory Group
and President Gay, telling them it was “deeply concerning” and reminding them, “when I told
you I don’t feel safe at Harvard, it’s precisely because of antisemitic students like this.” Harvard
has not responded.
148. After, as a result of plagiarism accusations, President Gay resigned on January 2,
2024, antisemitic messages were plastered all over Harvard’s community group on the social
media app Sidechat, which requires a Harvard email address to join. Among the messages that
students, including Kestenbaum, saw are: “LET EM COOK” next to a Palestinian flag emoji; “I
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proudly accept the label of terrorist”; “stfu pedo lover! all of you Zionists are the same. Killers
and rapists of children!”; “Blondie pro-doxing, pro-genocide sophomore really thinks she is the
shit for going on israeli media a couple days ago. She looks just as dumb as her nose is
crooked”; “Forgot the moment where yall made it clear that the ‘nova massacre’ [the music
festival where Hamas murdered, tortured and raped young people on October 7] that our zionist
classmates were using as propaganda was carried out by the IDF.”; and “I . . . support Hamas as
representatives of Palestinian frustration and Oct 7 as a moment of decolonization.” One student
wrote a post to her classmates that said: “I’m begging you all to recognize the ‘Jewish people are
controlling everything’ (and are the reason Gay resigned) narrative as an antisemitic conspiracy
theory. It is a common white supremacist argument against Jewish people.” In response,
another student said, “It’s not a theory if it’s mostly true.” Kestenbaum reported these
antisemitic messages to Harvard leadership via email on January 4, 2024, including Interim
President Garber, Harvard’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (“OEDIB”),
Harvard Divinity’s DIB Office, and the Antisemitism Advisory Group, warning that “[f]or every
minute that Harvard does not forcefully condemn the horrific antisemitism present within the
student body, the more dangerous it gets for us on campus.”
149. On January 16, Harvard, in concert with Sidechat, limited access to Harvard’s
Sidechat community to only undergraduate students. Rather than addressing the rampant
antisemitism on the platform, the only thing this move accomplished is to block Kestenbaum and
other SAA graduate students’ ability to report these vile posts. Harvard knows that the offending
posters are undergraduate students subject to Harvard’s policies, including the Non-
Discrimination Policy, which extends to misconduct on social media. Harvard has refused to
disable access to Sidechat on its WiFi network or to identify and discipline offending students,
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even though its Policy on Access to Electronic Information permits Harvard to “access user
electronic information in connection with investigation of misconduct by students, faculty, staff,
and other members of the University community.”
150. The antisemitism on Sidechat persists. For example, on April 13, 2024, Harvard
students glorified Iran’s attack on Israel, claiming “Iran has the right to defend itself,” and
“Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqis, Syrians[,] it’s not gonna be just Iranian guns. The intifada is rising
habibti.” On April 26, a student wrote, “What I mean: Globalize the intifada, overthrow settler
colonial states worldwide and free the oppressed people internationally.” On May 11, a student
posted, “[Interim President] Garber is a Jew who decided to be an Israeli sellout instead of use
[sic] his position for good like so many other Jews, so who can be surprised?”
151. Reflecting its deliberate indifference to the severe and pervasive hostile
environment for Jewish students on campus, Harvard had actual knowledge of each of the above
recent incidents of student-led antisemitic harassment, including through personal observation by
administrators, student complaints and reports, and news articles, yet unreasonably failed to
adequately and appropriately investigate and address a single one.
iv. Harvard’s Acceptance of Antisemitic Discrimination and Harassment by Its Faculty
and in Its Classrooms Adds to the Hostile Educational Environment
152. Harvard’s faculty and teaching fellows have joined, encouraged, and supported
severe and pervasive harassment and marginalization of Jews at Harvard. For example, rather
than condemn the scores of disruptive student-led events alleged above, several professors have
canceled class to encourage students to participate. Harvard is fully aware of, yet has taken no
action to prevent, these professors’ and teaching fellows’ discrimination against Jewish students,
even though such conduct plainly violates Harvard’s policies.
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153. On October 10, 2023, a Harvard Law Civil Procedure teaching fellow, Ibrahim
Bharmal—the same Harvard Law Review editor who assaulted a Jewish student at the October
18 Die-In—emailed his students, comprising nearly one-third of the 561 first-year law students,
calling for them to bring their “whole identities and ideologies” to class, and inviting them to that
evening’s Harvard PSC “vigil for all civilian lives lost and in solidarity with Palestine,” with no
mention of the slaughter and rape of Israelis three days earlier. One of Bharmal’s law students,
SAA Member #1, immediately emailed the course professor, James Greiner, copying Dean
Manning, Dean Ball, and the CEEB Office, asking Professor Greiner to respond to Bharmal’s
email, explaining that it was “deeply inappropriate” given Jewish students’ pain and fear
following October 7, and that Bharmal made him and other students feel even more afraid of
antisemitism at Harvard, given Bharmal’s official position at Harvard Law. Three weeks later,
after Bharmal was recorded assaulting a Jewish student on October 18, Professor Greiner
afforded Bharmal what is considered the honor of hosting a review session for his students,
which SAA Member #1 and other Jewish classmates did not attend because they were afraid of
him. SAA Member #1 asked administrators at the Dean of Students Office if Jewish students
would have to be killed before Harvard deemed it appropriate to finally act to protect them.
SAA Member #1 filed a formal complaint with the Dean of Students on October 12, met with
Director Sierra about his complaint, and repeatedly followed up, imploring them to act to stop
the constant antisemitic protests and other hostile activities at Harvard Law, but contrary to its
ostensible procedures, Harvard has not provided him with updates or taken any other action. At
the time of this filing, Bharmal has faced no discipline by Harvard for his assault—he is still a
Harvard Law student, still on the Harvard Law Review, and remained employed by Harvard as a
teaching fellow—despite his being criminally charged.
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154. SAA Member #1 and other Jewish students have also been targeted by his Torts
professor, Jon Hanson, who: on October 7, promoted a podcast inviting listeners to “learn more
about Israeli apartheid + occupation,” and defended the Hamas attack by claiming “people on the
underside of power who resist state violence and occupation will always be called terrorists”; on
October 17, said, “I’m honestly stunned by how openly bigoted both Israeli and American
Zionists have been since October 7th”; on November 2, maligned Israeli Jews as “colonizers”
who “blow[] up” babies; on December 9, asserted there was a “depopulation campaign” in Gaza;
and on December 10, derided the December 5 House Antisemitism Hearing as a “master class in
bad-faith culture war bullshit.”
155. On October 19—after taking a break because of the disruptive mob charging
through the halls—Professor Hanson required the class to participate in a blind vote about
whether to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict during Torts class, which he declared a tie, and
granted himself sole discretion whether to facilitate such discussion at a later time. During a
Zoom meeting, Professor Hanson shared his anti-Israel/Jewish views and told SAA Member #1
that he would not rule out discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict during class. At another meeting
less than two weeks later, Hanson discouraged SAA Member #1 from escalating his complaint
against Bharmal and advised that he supported the students who had recently taken over
Caspersen lounge. Professor Hanson also planned his final exam for the fall 2023 semester to
require students to write about Israel and Gaza but changed it at the last minute—after the
Registrar’s Office intervened.
156. On October 17, the Executive Committee of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern
Studies endorsed a statement published by the board of the Middle East Studies Association
which demonized Israel. The statement listed the atrocities caused by Hamas’s October 7 attack
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on Israel—namely, Hamas’s murder of over 1,000 Israelis, the injuring of over 3,600 Israelis,
and the kidnapping of (at that time) 150 Israelis—but argued that Israel still has no right to
respond in self-defense. As former Harvard President Summers explained in a January 30, 2024
statement, it is not academic freedom to use one’s official Harvard capacity to endorse a
discriminatory and prejudiced position.
157. On October 20, Professor Clio Takas emailed her students stating, “[a]s many of
you know, [Harvard PSC] and [Harvard GS4P] are organizing a class walk-out and general
strike . . . . I have decided to cancel section today in solidarity.” Similarly, Harvard Public
Health Professor Nancy Krieger accommodated students who wanted to participate in the
October 20 global strike by permitting the vast majority of students to leave class to protest.
Krieger then excused the remaining seven (which included several Jewish students) and asked
them to return along with the protesting students at noon. As it turned out, Krieger and the
protesting students returned to the classroom some forty minutes earlier than the professor had
said class would resume and, in the absence of the Jewish students, Krieger resumed her lecture.
158. On November 13, over 120 Harvard professors posted a public letter to President
Gay, titled “Harvard Faculty Response to ‘Combating Antisemitism’” framing Harvard’s
Antisemitism Advisory Group appointed by President Gay as an assault on academic freedom.
The signatories include Professor Diana L. Eck who, as alleged further below, had previously
demanded an Indian professor’s courses be canceled because of his “call[] for violence against”
mosques; Professor Walter Johnson, the most recent faculty advisor for Harvard PSC, who
regularly participates in disruptive student groups’ activities; and Harvard Divinity Professors
Rantisi and Omer, who had previously signed the October 11 RPL statement defending Hamas’s
terrorist attack. Reflecting Harvard’s antisemitic environment, the faculty letter:
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 Stated the professors were “profoundly dismayed” by President Gay’s November 9
“Combating Antisemitism” message;
 Demanded Harvard resist calls to suspend and/or decertify Harvard PSC, even
though it has regularly engaged in activities that violate numerous Harvard policies
and is a key instigator of campus antisemitism;
 Defended students’ use of the antisemitic phrase “from the river to the sea,” as
“complicated” and worthy of protection; and
 Omitted any mention of the deliberate targeting of Jewish civilians for murder,
rape, torture, and kidnapping or the intense discrimination, harassment, and
violence Jewish students face on campus.
159. SAA Member #4 emailed one signatory, Professor Jesse Bump, who had tweeted
in spring 2021 (during another Israel-Hamas conflict) that Zionists could not work in public
health, asking Bump whether he understood the implications of what he had signed and how it
would impact the Jewish and Israeli students required to take his courses. Rather than respond,
Bump reported SAA Member #4 to Dean Driver-Linn and Department Chair Castro. Driver-
Linn accused SAA Member #4 of failing to uphold Harvard’s values by “extrapolating views and
assuming intent” concerning the statement Professor Bump signed.
160. On November 14, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies hosted a
conversation, “The Ongoing Nakba,” in the Science Center, which included Columbia University
Professor Rashid Khalidi who, on October 9, had blamed Jews for Hamas’s attack and was a
Palestine Liberation Organization spokesperson in the 1970s and 1980s, when that group
regularly committed terrorist acts, such as the Lod Airport massacre in which twenty-six people
were killed, including seventeen Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico.
161. On December 5, the same day President Gay testified before Congress, Harvard
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (“Harvard FSJP”) released a statement falsely
characterizing the October 18 Die-In and related events as “peaceful,” minimizing the assault on
a Jewish student as not even a “scuffle.” Despite video evidence to the contrary, the faculty
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members defended Tettey-Tamaklo and other Die-In assaulters’ actions as “de-escalation
tactics,” even though, as the video shows, such actions clearly violated Harvard’s policies to
protect “freedom from personal force and violence, and freedom of movement.” Harvard FSJP
even went so far as to assert that Harvard should not have cooperated with the FBI’s
investigation of the assault, and demanded that Harvard “establish an investigative committee on
anti-Palestinian racism,” even while many of these same faculty members, in their November 13
statement, had criticized President Gay’s announcement of the Antisemitism Advisory Group.
v. President Gay’s December 5 House Antisemitism Hearing Testimony Confirms
Harvard’s Deliberate Indifference to Its Hostile Anti-Jewish Environment
162. On December 5, 2023, President Gay, along with the presidents of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (“MIT”) and University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”), testified at the House
Antisemitism Hearing. President Gay did not consult the Antisemitism Advisory Group when
preparing for her testimony.
163. At the hearing, President Gay’s repeated refusal to acknowledge that calling for
the genocide of the Jewish people on campus is against Harvard policy shocked people across
the nation. Representative Elise Stefanik asked President Gay: “[D]oes calling for the genocide
of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” President Gay responded, “it
depends on the context.” Representative Stefanik asked several more times whether calling for
genocide of the Jewish people violates Harvard’s policies, yet each time President Gay refused to
give a definitive answer, offering falsely that “antisemitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct
that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, . . . we do take
action.”
164. President Gay also testified that she understood the meaning of the phrases
“globalize the Intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” calling them “hateful speech [that is]
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personally abhorrent” to her, but not necessarily to Harvard. Representative Stefanik asked
President Gay about the multiple protests and rallies on Harvard’s campus where students were
permitted to engage in such chants as “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution” and
“globalize the Intifada,” without any repercussions. President Gay admitted hearing “that
thoughtless, reckless and hateful language on our campus,” and admitted “it is at odds with the
values of Harvard,” but refused to say such “hateful” incitements to violence were contrary to
Harvard’s policies. Similarly, when asked if Harvard would want an “avowed Neo-Nazi” or
someone who “has called for the elimination of the state of Israel” as part of the Harvard
community, President Gay repeated that such a person is “not consistent with Harvard values”
and admitted that such conduct is “antisemitism,” but added, “we allow a wide berth for free
expression.” Yet as alleged further below, Harvard only allows a wide berth for antisemitism,
but not other forms of hateful “expression.”
165. Representative James Comer asked President Gay about Harvard’s acceptance of
funding from “sources that support Hamas or have links to terrorist organizations, like Qatar,
Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority.” President Gay testified that “Harvard has policies that
govern the acceptance of gifts and contracts beginning with respecting federal law . . . then we
go further and only accept gifts that align with our mission.”
166. Apparently, it is consistent with Harvard’s mission to accept gifts from Qatar,
where, to name only a few outrages, same-sex activity is criminalized, and the government
permits and utilizes indentured servants and exploits migrant workers, thousands of whom died
building the infrastructure for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
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167. Watching the testimony, Kestenbaum was appalled that Harvard’s president
refused to say under oath that calling for the genocide of his people violated Harvard policy, and
considered leaving Harvard because he felt he was in physical danger.
vi. The House Education Committee Announces a Full Investigation into Harvard’s
Antisemitism, and Public Backlash Against President Gay’s Testimony Intensifies
168. President Gay’s December 5 testimony at the House Antisemitism Hearing caused
enormous public backlash. That night, Harvard Hillel President Jacob M. Miller and Campus
Rabbi Getzel Davis wrote that “President Gay’s failure to properly condemn this speech calls
into question her ability to protect Jewish students on Harvard’s campus,” and that she “fail[ed]
to reassure us that the University is seriously concerned about the antisemitic rhetoric pervasive
on campus.”
169. President Gay’s testimony also betrayed the purposeful impotence of the
Antisemitism Advisory Group, which was later revealed through contemporaneous meeting
notes and the House Committee’s investigative report released in May 2024 based on Harvard’s
internal documents and an interview with member Dara Horn—materials Harvard had not made
public. Ex. B. By the time of Gay’s testimony, the Antisemitism Advisory Group and Harvard
leadership understood the sheer scope of the antisemitic environment at Harvard. For example, at
its first meeting on October 23, 2023, then-Provost Garber noted that the “shunning of Israeli
students” was a “pervasive problem” in Harvard College and possibly other schools even before
October 7. In November, the Antisemitism Advisory Group met and discussed antisemitic
incidents—including that a student wearing a yarmulke was “spat upon,” but “had not received
answers from Harvard reporting channels or from” HUPD; that a professor told an Israeli student
she was making people “uncomfortable” because of she was from Israel (the student filed two
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complaints with Harvard); and that a Jewish student was “chased” and “screamed at by a
Resident Tutor.”
170. The Antisemitism Advisory Group found that for each incident, Harvard had
taken no action. The group was also included on many emails reporting antisemitic
discrimination and harassment. But members of the Antisemitism Advisory Group were not
empowered to do anything about it. Over the course of its short tenure, the group identified
numerous concerns, including the “dramatic decline in Jewish enrollment” at Harvard, Harvard’s
failure to share “information on disciplinary outcomes publicly,” the “importance of condemning
antisemitic rhetoric,” the need to investigate the potential influence of funders of terrorism on
Harvard, the “need to address masked protest,” and more generally, Harvard’s inadequate
response to antisemitic incidents. Harvard refused the group’s request to share information
publicly on disciplinary actions taken in response to antisemitic incidents, citing privacy
concerns, despite the group explaining to the president and provost that there were ways—such
as those Harvard uses to report Title IX violation—to offset privacy concerns while still
informing the community that serious action was being taken.
171. On November 5, concerned with Harvard’s lack of “concrete actions,” more than
half of the Antisemitism Advisory Group’s members wrote to then-President Gay and then-
Provost Garber, calling out Harvard’s “deeply unsatisfactory” response to “widespread
harassment of our Jewish students across schools,” requesting immediate and longer-term
remedial measures, and warning that if not acted on, the members would resign from the group.
A day later, President Gay joined the group’s meeting with Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow
Penny Pritzker and Provost Garber, pleading with the members to refrain from “resigning en
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masse.” The next day, she released a statement on antisemitism, not to support Harvard’s Jews,
but to attempt to quell the mounting disquiet and stave off embarrassment.
172. One of Gay’s promises in her November 9 statement—that the Antisemitism
Advisory Group would work with Harvard’s constituent school deans—was never fulfilled in
any meaningful way. In fact, at the one meeting that took place with school deans, at which the
deans outlined their schools’ approaches to antisemitic incidents, Horn found “extremely
disturbing” that several of the deans “didn’t really seem disturbed” by the antisemitic events they
described. Members of the group were not given any opportunity at this meeting to respond
substantively to the deans’ presentations, and a promised second meeting with the deans was
never scheduled.
173. President Gay’s testimony at the House Antisemitism Hearing made clear to
members of the Antisemitism Advisory Group that they would never be taken seriously by
Harvard’s leadership. On December 7, two days after the hearing, the group met, noting how
“troubl[ing]” it was that President Gay had not them for advice before her testimony. They also
found the testimony itself to be “extremely disappoint[ing],” as Horn put it, as President Gay did
not acknowledge the “pervasive” and “systemic” scope of the antisemitism problem and merely
presented it “as though this were about . . . this difficult line with rallies and free speech, and that
sort of there were maybe some individual incidents where things had crossed a line.” That day,
Rabbi David Wolpe, rabbinic fellow for the Anti-Defamation League and visiting scholar at
Harvard Divinity, resigned from the group, stating:
Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been
endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members
of the committee, the short explanation is that both events on
campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea
that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped.
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However, the system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips
far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works
only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and
therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil. Ignoring Jewish suffering
is evil. Belittling or denying the Jewish experience, including
unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe.
Denying Israel [] self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded
unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.
Rabbi Wolpe elaborated on CNN: “I resigned because I came to the conclusion that I was not
going to be able to make the kind of changes that I thought Harvard needed” through the
Antisemitism Advisory Group, which he described as having “accountability without authority.”
On December 20, Rabbi Wolpe stated that Jewish students are the target of a “deliberate
attempt” at intimidation, and that Harvard has “no sense of urgency, no sense of anger, no sense
of disgust” regarding the “crisis” of “so many incidents of antisemitism” on campus. During a
December 22 podcast, he stated that he could not keep giving “legitimacy to an enterprise” that
was “fruitless,” as the committee was not going to “make a change,” while Harvard’s
antisemitism “crisis” was “getting worse, not better.”
174. Rabbi Wolpe was not the only member of the Antisemitism Advisory Group to
express grave concerns about its inability to effect meaningful change. Horn said:
[T]he reality is that the things on my list of asks are very large things
that will not make them popular and will make half the faculty and
students enraged. It will require firing a lot of people. Right now
they have open Hamas apologists on the faculty. . . . Harvard is
actively teaching the antisemitism it claims it wants to fight. There
are entire Harvard courses and programs and events that are
premised on antisemitic lies. . . . They would have to get rid of that.
And get rid of a lot of other things . . . . [E]veryone will hate them
and call them evil racist colonizers if they actually do what would
be required for real change. So I don’t think they will do it.
175. As would be revealed in the House Committee’s May 2024 report, on December
18, 2023, Horn and the other remaining members of the group presented Harvard’s president and
provost with detailed findings and recommendations that Harvard did not make public. Its
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recommendations included renewed commitments towards holding student groups accountable
for flouting university rules and protecting shared learning environments; rectification of
“selective or unequal” enforcement of university policy; a “zero tolerance” policy for disruptions
of learning environments; a review of OEDIB’s inadequacy in addressing antisemitism; a review
of the “academic rigor” of programs with antisemitic content; and otherwise countering
antisemitic rhetoric on campus. Harvard failed to act on these recommendations. Also included
was a recommendation to “[i]nvestigate the flow and impact of external ‘dark money’ (from
Iran, Qatar, or individuals, or entities associated with terrorist groups as identified by the State
Department) to Harvard” thus “ensur[ing] free and rigorous inquiry and independence of the
university from outside control by donors, regardless of their identities, or disruption of activities
and mission of the university by outside actors.” Provost Garber told the group that he would
have Harvard’s Office of General Counsel investigate this particular issue, but the results of any
such investigation, if any occurred, were not communicated to the group. Only in response to
the House Committee’s questioning regarding Harvard’s foreign funding did Harvard’s counsel
answer generically that “no issues were identified.”
176. In a February 15, 2024 piece in The Atlantic, Horn publicly clarified what
changes Harvard needs to make to address antisemitism, which tracked what the Antisemitism
Advisory Group had told Harvard privately months before, including:
[E]nforcing existing codes of conduct regarding harassment;
protecting classroom buildings, libraries, and dining halls as zones
free from advocacy campaigns (similar to rules for polling places);
tracking and rejecting funding from entities supporting federal
designated terror groups (a topic raised in recent congressional
testimony regarding numerous American universities); gut-
renovating diversity bureaucracies to address their obvious failure
to tackle anti-Semitism; investigating and exposing the academic
limitations of courses and programs premised on anti-Semitic lies;
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and expanding opportunities for students to understand Israeli and
Jewish history and to engage with ideas and with one another.
177. On December 8, 2023, seventy-four members of Congress wrote to the boards of
Harvard, MIT, and Penn, demanding that they remove their presidents from office over their
failures to act against antisemitism. The letter noted that “[a]ntisemitism has been allowed to
fester on campuses for years, and in the wake of the October 7th attack, the world is witnessing
the consequences.” It also cited President Gay’s testimony as “show[ing] a complete absence of
moral clarity and illuminat[ing] the problematic double standards and dehumanization of the
Jewish communit[y] that [President Gay] enabled.” The letter also recognized that Jewish and
Israeli students do not feel safe at Harvard: “It is hard to imagine any Jewish or Israeli student,
faculty, or staff feeling safe when [President Gay] could not say that calls for the genocide of
Jews would have clear consequences on [Harvard’s] campus.”
178. On December 12, Harvard’s governing body issued a “unanimous” statement
“reaffirm[ing] [its] support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University”
because of its “confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and
to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”
179. Despite its unwavering confidence in President Gay, Harvard’s governing body
admitted that her “initial statement should have been an immediate, direct, and unequivocal
condemnation” of Hamas. And it promised that it is “united in [its] strong belief that calls for
violence against our students and disruptions of the classroom experience will not be tolerated.”
Yet calls for violence against Harvard’s Jewish and Israeli students are amplified across campus
regularly, and those responsible often disrupt classes and other educational programming without
repercussion.
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180. Despite having Harvard’s governing body’s full support regarding her clearly
deficient response to antisemitism on campus, President Gay ultimately resigned on January 2,
2024, once allegations that she plagiarized academic papers surfaced. Harvard’s email
announcing President Gay’s resignation condemned attacks against President Gay “in the
strongest possible terms,” even though it has not used similar language to condemn the
antisemitism plaguing campus. Provost Garber succeeded Gay as Interim President.
181. On January 9, the House Committee sent a letter to Harvard that required Harvard
to produce materials relating to antisemitism in its community. In issuing its demand letter, the
House Committee cited its “grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Harvard’s response to
the antisemitism on its campus,” something that “has been pervasive at Harvard since well
before the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack.” The House Committee flagged two of the
“numerous statements that further called into question the university’s willingness to seriously
address antisemitism”:
When asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate
Harvard’s code of conduct, Dr. Gay replied that “it depends on the
context.” When questioned if she could look a Jewish student’s
family in the eyes and “tell them their son or daughter would be safe
and feel safe and welcome on your campus,” Dr. Gay repeatedly
refused to answer the question directly.
182. Yet Harvard failed to produce any substantive documents, instead providing
several redacted documents the House Committee described as “useless,” and thousands of pages
of publicly available documents. After Harvard did not meet the first deadline, on February 7,
the House Committee sent a second letter to Harvard giving Harvard until February 14 to
produce the requested documents or face a subpoena.
183. On January 10, the House Committee on Ways and Means (“Ways and Means
Committee”) also sent Harvard a letter explaining that Harvard’s “actions, inconsistencies, and
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lack of a substantive response raise several questions, including whether [it is] fulfilling [its]
educational purposes as required to receive 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and whether [it is]
adequately protecting Jewish students from harassment and acts of violence in compliance with
antidiscrimination laws.” It pointed not only to former President Gay’s testimony at the House
Antisemitism Hearing, but to the many signs of Harvard’s antisemitic environment. For
example, it discussed Harvard’s double standard:
It is also perplexing given how your institutions have had no
problem condemning other behavior in the past. For example, the
University of Pennsylvania had no problem issuing a warning
threatening action against students for violating its
antidiscrimination policy by failing to use their classmates’
preferred pronouns. Students at Harvard University were told that
similar conduct could violate its harassment policies as well. In
addition, Harvard disinvited a feminist philosopher last year for
comments critical of transgender ideology, and former President
Gay’s institution fired a political science instructor for inviting
renowned social scientist Charles Murray to speak at their class. . . .
The Ways and Means Committee continued:
You have found your voices before on numerous other topics, but
not on this one. If antisemitic speech crosses the line into
unprotected conduct, it must be punished severely. If disgusting
antisemitic speech remains in the protected category, it should be
condemned, not coddled. Your words and actions matter.
Condemning barbaric terrorism against Israel and disgusting
antisemitism should not be difficult. Protecting Jewish students on
campus as you protect other students, should not be a challenge.
This is not that hard.
184. The Ways and Means Committee requested certain information including, but not
limited to, how Harvard “evaluates the difference between free speech and harassment, threats,
and incitement”; whether Harvard’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion departments serve Jewish
students on campus”; and what, if anything, Harvard is doing “to address the poor ratings [it has]
received from [the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression] on protecting free speech
on campus.”
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185. On February 16, the House Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx issued a
statement announcing that Harvard’s failure to comply with the committee’s document requests
forced the House Committee to subpoena Interim President Garber, the Senior Fellow of
Harvard’s governing body, and the chief executive officer of Harvard’s endowment. This marks
the first time the House Committee has ever subpoenaed a university. Chairwoman Foxx noted
that while Harvard was stonewalling Congress, its “Jewish students continue[d] to endure the
firestorm of antisemitism that has engulfed its campus” and reminded Harvard that if it “is truly
committed to combating antisemitism, it has had every opportunity to demonstrate its
commitment with actions, not words”—a fact Kestenbaum and SAA members have spent
months trying to impress upon the university, to no avail.
186. On March 21, the Ways and Means Committee sent another letter to Harvard
concerning its failure to protect Jewish students and the “hostile environment for Jews on
Harvard’s campus stemming from antisemitic rhetoric and discrimination” that “has gone
unaddressed for years.” It noted that, as many Americans knew, especially Jewish Americans,
“these eruptions [] reveal[ed] a culture of antisemitism that developed and grew beneath the
surface for decades.” Among other requests, it asked Harvard to “explain the choice, including
key stakeholders who were consulted and the decision-making process, to appoint Derek J.
Penslar as co-chair of Harvard’s antisemitism task force.”
187. On May 16, the House Committee on Education in the Workforce released an
“Investigative Update” detailing “major flaws” in Harvard’s response to antisemitism, including
that Harvard received, but did not act on, its Antisemitism Advisory Group’s December 2023
recommendations and findings, which identified areas of serious concerns about Harvard’s
antisemitism problem.
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vii. Harvard Allows Antisemitic Harassment to Continue Throughout the Spring 2024
Semester
188. Despite congressional hearings, federal investigations, and the initiation of this
lawsuit, the near-daily acts of antisemitic abuse and harassment at Harvard have continued
unimpeded.
189. On January 5, 2024, for example, Harvard Afro posted its “Statement on Claudine
Gay’s Resignation,” in which it said, “Zionist forces have grown fearful of the strength of our
movement.” The student group further praised its successful intimidation campaign, claiming
that it and other student groups’ current campaign has made an “anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian
campus achievable. And it will be through that collective pressure against the tenets of white
supremacy that we actualize lasting change.” Other groups like Harvard PSC and Jews 4
Palestine (“J4P”) echoed Harvard Afro’s statement, and called former President Gay “a
necessary casualty in a Zionist attack.”
190. In January 2024, the newly formed Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in
Palestine (“FSJP”), a “collective of Harvard[] faculty and staff committed to supporting the
cause of Palestinian liberation,” including Harvard Divinity Associate Dean for RPL Diane L.
Moore, Professor Wispelwey, Harvard FXB Center Visiting Scholar Sawsan Abdulrahim, and
Professor Omer, accused the “Israeli occupation” of “colonial, racial violence” and “genocide.”
FSJP endorsed the BDS movement, encouraging Harvard to boycott the world’s sole Jewish
state:
We call on the university to withdraw investments from the State of
Israel and all companies that sustain Israeli apartheid, settler
colonialism, and systematic human rights abuses against
Palestinians. As educational workers, we are focused on boycotts
of Israeli academic institutions that support apartheid and colonial
occupation.
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191. On January 19, Interim President Garber announced the creation of the
Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism (“Antisemitism Task Force”) and the
Presidential Task Force on Combating Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Bias. President Garber cited
a “need to understand why and how” the “[i]ncidents of bias and hate against Jews and against
Muslims, Palestinians, and other people of Arab descent have risen across the country.” He
assigned two co-chairs to lead each task force: Professors Derek J. Penslar and Raffaella Sadun
for the Antisemitism Task Force, and Professors Wafaie W. Fawzi and Asim Ijaz Khwaja for the
Islamophobia task force. Garber decommissioned President Gay’s Antisemitism Advisory
Group, which was shuttered without making any public recommendations for addressing
Harvard’s antisemitism epidemic.
192. Much like its predecessor, the new Antisemitism Task Force’s mandate did not
include implementing any measures to combat antisemitism. This iteration was to be led by
Professor Penslar, whose appointment triggered an immediate public outcry, as he had publicly
minimized antisemitism at Harvard and engaged in antisemitic canards regarding Israel. Nearly
two years ago, well before October 7 and Penslar’s appointment as co-chair, Penslar’s teachings
were analyzed in determining what Harvard teaches its students to “excuse mainstream
Palestinian Arab terrorism”—including referring to Hamas attacks as Palestinian “resistance”
efforts instead of acts of terror. In September 2022, Penslar gave a lecture arguing that “polite
antisemitism”—antisemitism that does not involve Jews being “attacked physically”—must be
generally acceptable. In his 2023 book, Zionism: An Emotional State, Penslar stated that “veins
of hatred run through Jewish civilization.” In August 2023, Penslar signed a letter claiming that
“Jewish supremacism has been growing for years” in Israel and that Israel’s “long standing
occupation . . . has yielded a regime of apartheid.” Penslar also led the December 2023 faculty
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letter in support of then-President Gay after her congressional testimony. At a December 4, 2023
event at Harvard, Penslar advocated for using the term “settler colonialism” to define Zionism.
193. On January 30, former Harvard President Summers published a statement on X
outlining the reasons Penslar was unfit to lead the Antisemitism Task Force. Summers explained
how he had “lost confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and
Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a place where Jews and Israelis can flourish.” And in
its March 21 letter, the Ways and Means Committee requested information concerning how
Harvard selected Penslar, citing how this appointment “only increased[] concerns” about
Harvard’s approach to protecting Jewish students: “Appointing someone who has previously
called Israel a ‘regime of apartheid’ and called on Congress to restrict aid to Israel is an odd way
to combat antisemitism on campus.” Despite clear evidence that Penslar is unsuitable to lead the
Antisemitism Task Force, Penslar remains co-chair.
194. On February 25, just five weeks after her appointment as co-chair, Professor
Sadun resigned from the Antisemitism Task Force. Sadun’s resignation came after weeks of
frustration with the Antisemitism Task Force—that its mandate did not include the swift
implementation of measures to combat antisemitism. According to The Harvard Crimson,
Professor Sadun had “sought a commitment from the University that they would act on the task
force’s recommendations, in advance of any being issued, instead of treating them as optional
advice,” but Harvard refused to make such a commitment. Harvard’s creation of these advisory
groups and task forces only reinforces that it pays, at most, lip service to dealing with its
antisemitism problem and has no intention of taking any meaningful action to ameliorate the
ongoing antisemitic hostile environment its Jewish students face.
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195. On January 21, Kestenbaum returned to campus to find that antisemitic vandalism
and graffiti had been plastered across several posters hanging in Harvard Yard dedicated to the
Jewish hostages taken by Hamas. At least two posters were of ten-month-old baby, Kfir Bibas,
who was kidnapped by Hamas; on that poster, someone had written, “HEAD STILL ON.”
Written on several other posters were messages that “ISRAEL DID 9/11” and “GOOGLE THE
DANCING ISRAELIS,” with a URL for a website called “911 TRUTH NOW,” which is a
forum dedicated to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks. Others were defaced by comparisons of victims to pedophile Jeffrey
Epstein. Dozens of students, including Kestenbaum, immediately sent emails reporting the
vandalism to Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory
Group, OEDIB, and Harvard Divinity DIB, along with pictures and videos.
196. When Kestenbaum next passed through Harvard Yard over fourteen hours later,
not only were the graffitied posters still there but even more antisemitic graffiti had been
scribbled across the same posters. Kestenbaum immediately sent another video of the vandalism
to the same group of Harvard administrators. Rather than embrace the start of a new semester,
Kestenbaum spent his first day missing class to attend to these horrific posters.
197. On January 24, Kestenbaum saw in a Harvard dining hall an announcement for an
upcoming panel hosted by Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
with Leila Farsakh as one of the panelists. Kestenbaum reported the panel and its guest to
Interim President Garber, DIB, the Diversity Office, the DIB Leadership Council, Harvard
Divinity DIB Care Team, Harvard Divinity DIB, and Harvard Divinity Associate Dean for
Enrollment and Student Services Timothy Whelsky. He reminded them that in response to
October 7, Farsakh made a public statement celebrating the Hamas murderers:
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The courage of those who broke through the barbed wire, sailed by
boat to return to their ancestral homes, or flew with their hang-
gliders over the wall of the largest open-air prison has shown that
Palestinians will continue to defy the gravity of settler colonialism
to be free, whatever the cost.
Kestenbaum did not receive a response, and on January 31, Farsakh came to campus as Harvard
planned.
198. On January 25, Harvard GS4P hosted an event with Rabab Abdulhadi, a founding
member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the keynote
speaker at two of the annual National SJP conferences. On October 7, she wrote:
“#PalestineUnderAttack are merely defending themselves. Are you saying that #Palestinians
should be exceptionalized from the right to defend themselves against colonial & racist violence?
Check your facts! #FreePalestine #IsraeliCrimes.” Three days before the event, Kestenbaum
warned Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory
Group, OEDIB, Harvard Divinity DIB, and the Diversity Office and provided sources explaining
Abdulhadi’s history of antisemitism. Again, not one of these recipients responded to
Kestenbaum, nor did they prevent the student group from hosting Abdulhadi.
199. On January 25, Kestenbaum was horrified to open his Harvard email account to
see an email from Gustavo Espada, a Financial and Systems Coordinator at Harvard, with the
subject line “invitation to debate Israeli role in 9/11.” Espada’s email implicitly took
responsibility for the vandalism on hostage posters in Harvard Yard, which Kestenbaum had
posted about on X on January 21, 22, and 23. In his email, Espada interpreted Kestenbaum’s
tweets about the vandalism as if they were directed at Espada:
Your tweet on X [regarding the vandalized posters] is getting a lot
of attention! That’s fantastic. As such, I invite you to debate me
today at the Cambridge Street overpass 12-1, don’t miss it! If you
don’t show up I will use a puppet or potted plant to represent you!
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[smiley face emoji] We can always schedule a more formal one in
large venue on campus. . . .
PS stop saying I hate Jews unless that is something you want. I hate
Israel and Zionism with a passion and you know full well they are
two different things. The Crimson is already too far gone and will
probably be defunded by lawsuits in due course. Perhaps you and
your allies want to start acting in better faith, starting with a public
correction of the false claims you have made about the posters, and
an apology to the community for inflaming passions at this difficult
time with false statements?
200. Throughout that day, Espada replied to Kestenbaum’s posts on X about the
vandalism from his verified account, “9/11 Guy.” One such reply encouraged others to come to
campus: “Claudine was being pressured to fly the Israeli flag outside of [University] Hall and
refused, after which plagiarism allegations coincidentally emerged. We have witnesses lined up
for depositions, what about you? . . . Those wishing to examine evidence of the plagiarism and
the false exoneration are invited to the science center from 12-1 today!” Another read: “you
didn’t show up for our debate!” with a frowny face emoji.
201. Even a cursory review of Espada’s social media history demonstrates his anti-
Jewish obsession, that he poses a serious risk to Jews, and that he should not be permitted on
Harvard’s campus or to interact with students. For instance, on January 20, he posted from his
“9/11 Guy” X account:
Why, because I think Israel should be wiped off the map for what
it’s done around the world? I think what I am is an “anti-Semite”
because I have no problem with Jews per se, just the ones who think
there’s a different set of rules for them.
On January 21, he wrote: “What if any part of 10/7 is real?” On January 25, in a TikTok post
titled “ENDGAME!”, Espada issued the following threat against Jews: “there’s enough of you
out there who see what an opportunity we have to bring down the Zionist mafia once and for
all. . . . [I]f we have to break some eggs or snowflakes to make this omlette [sic] so be it. We
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didn’t start this $hit but we’re going to end it.” On January 26, Espada posted on TikTok a video
on Harvard’s campus standing among Harvard students while brandishing a plastic machete, and
then a video of Harvard police approaching him as he was harassing two community members
with signs reading “free the hostages.”
202. Later that day, several Jewish students at Harvard alerted Kestenbaum that Espada
had posted a threatening video on his TikTok account where Espada showed off his machete, and
said:
[I]t sends the messages that we are ready to fight, win . . . anyways,
nothing, I won’t enter into more details, but everything is going
according to the plan. So stay with us cause things are happening
here.
The end of Espada’s video features a series of superimposed images of prominent Jews like
Justice Elena Kagan and Alan Dershowitz, and concludes with images of Kestenbaum’s X posts
concerning the vandalized Israeli hostage posters.
203. Kestenbaum was deeply concerned about his physical safety as a direct result of
this unhinged Harvard employee, who has direct access to Kestenbaum’s and other students’
personal information, and engaged personal security for several days. Harvard was notified of
Espada’s dangerous social media commentary and targeted harassment of Kestenbaum, but
failed to inform Kestenbaum of any steps it would take to protect him—even though Espada
continued to harass Kestenbaum on social media throughout the semester. On April 27, Espada
posted on X, “Introducing a site dedicated to @shabbosk [Kestenbaum’s X username] for fans
and foes alike to discuss this important public figure’s past, current, and future work on behalf of
Zionism, to be preserved in perpetuity,” with a link to a website called, “Thoughts on Shabbos
Kestenbaum.” On May 4, Espada posted on Twitter, “@ShabbosK, watch your back . . . I’m
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coming for much more than blood—I’m coming for Zionism, and I have a posse[.] . . . We are
burying you.”
204. Kestenbaum immediately reported this threat to Harvard Divinity Dean of the
Faculty Marla Frederick, Dean Whelsky, OEDIB, and other administrators, and told them that
“not a single person on this email thread or anyone from Harvard has confirmed his employment
status, whether he’s allowed in campus, or what Harvard will do to protect me from their own
employees threatening my life.” He followed up on his inquiry on May 7, but again received no
response. As Kestenbaum later discovered, Espada had already been terminated. Kestenbaum
was extremely distressed that no one at Harvard told him of this.
205. On January 27 and 28, Professor Hanson held a conference about corporate
influence over the legal system at Harvard Law and invited his students, including SAA
Member #1. One of the event’s speakers was Rhiannon Hamam whose social media accounts
are filled with antisemitism. On October 7 and the days following, Hamam reposted several
posts including: “what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”;
and “Glory to the resistance and the people of Palestine. . . . I could not be more proud of my
people who continue to demonstrate unthinkable bravery in their struggle for liberation”; “Tfw
you are with your homies and you realize that you are all hamas.” SAA Member #1 reported
both the upcoming conference and Hamam’s posts to Sasha Tulgan and Deans Manning, Soban,
Claypoole, and Coates the day before the event started, but received no response. After the
event, Professor Hanson posted a photo of himself smiling with Hamam, and noting how
“grateful” he felt.
206. On or about January 27, a Harvard Divinity student, one of Kestenbaum’s
classmates, posted a barrage of Instagram stories filled with antisemitism and thinly veiled
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threats against Jewish and Israeli people. One such story encouraged and justified Hamas’s use
of violence: “When all other efforts in a cause fall short, It is just righteous to the sword to
resort.” Another read: “DECOLONIZATION IS NOT A METAPHOR AND PALESTINE
WILL BE FREE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.” Several students reported these messages
to Harvard.
207. On January 30, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies invited Rashid
Khalidi—the former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesperson who blamed Jews for
Hamas’s October 7 attack—to speak at Harvard once again, this time on “Gaza: A Colonial
War?”
208. On February 1, Harvard Interim President Garber admitted that Harvard has “a
very serious [antisemitism] problem.” Former Antisemitism Advisory Group member Horn has
admitted the same, claiming that the problem is “clear from the avalanche of documentation
deposited at [her] feet.”
209. On February 2, in an Instagram post, Harvard PSC praised and
“commemorate[d]” Ahed Tamimi—who was arrested for inciting violence and terrorist
activities—and Hanan Ashrawi—a former member of the Intifada Political Committee—for their
“resistance” and “deep resiliency and fight for a Free Palestine.” After the October 7 massacre,
Ahed Tamimi had stated on Instagram: “Come on settlers, we will slaughter you. We are
waiting for you in all the cities of the West Bank. What Hitler did to you was a nothing. We
will drink your blood and eat your skulls. We are waiting for you.” Hanan Ashrawi, former
Minister of Education of the Palestinian National Authority, similarly praised October 7 on her X
account. That day, Kestenbaum reported the post to Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism
Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, and OEDIB but received no response.
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210. In early February, Professor Tarek E. Masoud, the director of the Middle East
Initiative at Harvard Kennedy’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, announced
that Dalal Saeb Iriqat was scheduled to speak at the Center’s “Middle East Dialogue” event on
March 7. The announcement was met with intense criticism, not only from inside the Harvard
community—Kestenbaum filed a report with Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task
Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, and OEDIB on February 4—but from the public as
well. While the October 7 massacre was still ongoing, Iriqat, a professor at the Arab American
University Palestine, posted several hateful messages on X: “Today is just a normal human
struggle 4 #Freedom”; “we will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for
making us take their children and elderly as hostages”; and the “Israeli public need to realize that
their own government had caused all this bloodshed and they remain the ones responsible for this
escalatin [sic] and losses of civilians lives.” Rather than prevent Iriqat from coming to its
campus and jeopardizing Harvard’s Jewish and Israeli communities, Harvard disclaimed
responsibility for the event, emphasizing that Professor Masoud “chose and invited the speakers
for the series himself.” Despite Harvard’s awareness of the event and of Iriqat’s hateful history,
Harvard allowed the event to proceed as planned.
211. On February 5, Kestenbaum notified Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism
Task Force, the Diversity Office, Harvard Divinity DIB, and the Diversity Inclusion &
Belonging Leadership Council about an upcoming rally on February 8. Harvard PSC, HOOP,
Harvard GS4P, Harvard BDS, and Harvard Afro scheduled and promoted the event in Science
Center Plaza calling for an end to “Israel’s genocide of Palestinians,” “Israel’s “occupation of
historic Palestine,” and “Harvard’s financial and intellectual investment in Israel.” Kestenbaum
explicitly told the administrators that he will have to pass the rally on his way to class and
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begged them to do something to prevent the antisemitism he would inevitably be forced to
endure. He explained that not only do these on-campus rallies impact his ability to focus in class
due to the stress of being openly discriminated against, but often make him fear for his physical
safety. But by February 7, Harvard failed to respond to Kestenbaum, let alone take any
preventive measures, so Kestenbaum notified the same administrators that he and other Jewish
students had made plans to avoid the event set for the following day.
212. On February 7, HOOP posted stickers of its logo all over Harvard Yard on
Harvard property. The group claimed responsibility for the vandalism on its Instagram, posting
photos of its logo plastered on a Harvard Hall sign, on HUID card tap boxes, on doorways, and
other locations. Kestenbaum reported this to Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task
Force, the Diversity Office, Harvard Divinity DIB, and the DIB Leadership Council that day.
213. On February 7, Harvard GS4P sent its first newsletter of the spring semester, in
which it called Israel an apartheid regime, and advertised the February 8 rally in Science Center
Plaza and a February 11 rally demanding that Elizabeth Warren stop accepting money from “the
Zionist lobby.”
214. Despite his many reports and requests for intervention, Kestenbaum did not
receive a response to any of the emails he sent during the first week of February until February 8,
when only the “OEDIB team” responded to inform Kestenbaum that OEDIB was unable to assist
him because it is “not the appropriate place at Harvard to lodge complaints.” Yet when
Kestenbaum asked on February 9 for clarification as to who that might be, no one offered a
response. Kestenbaum has still not received an answer.
215. On February 10, a Harvard Divinity student and graduate assistant at the Harvard
Religion and Spiritual Life Department (“RSL”) removed Kestenbaum from the Harvard
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Divinity “All Students” WhatsApp group chat after Kestenbaum responded to a student’s
message that promoted an event at which participants were encouraged to call congressional
representatives to demand a ceasefire from Israel.
216. Later that day, Kestenbaum reported this exclusion to Harvard Divinity Dean
Frederick, Harvard Divinity DIB, Harvard Divinity Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion, and Belonging Steph Grayson Gauchel, the Antisemitism Task Force, Interim
President Garber, and the Diversity Office. In a series of messages, Kestenbaum made it clear he
wanted to understand what the administration will do to combat antisemitism, but no one
provided him a substantive response.
217. On February 10, a video was posted of Elom Tettey-Tamaklo—the Harvard
Divinity proctor who assaulted a Jewish student during the October 18 Die-In—quoting a Nazi
theologian, sharing a poem with blood libels accusing Israelis of being “vipers [] who siphon the
lifeblood of the innocent,” and inciting violence against Israel. Kestenbaum was deeply
disturbed by this video, of which Harvard was made aware, but Harvard has taken no action.
218. On February 12, a Harvard Divinity student posted a flyer promoting an
“emergency die-in” in the Harvard Divinity ’22 WhatsApp group chat to demand Israel stop the
“ongoing genocide” in Gaza. Kestenbaum responded, asking students to call on Hamas to both
surrender and release the Jewish babies they kidnapped. In a group chat of all Kestenbaum’s
classmates, the Harvard Divinity student responded: “I believe that we’re kind-of taking a ‘don’t
engage with Shabbos’ approach now-a-days . . . . Shame on you for believing and sharing this.”
Kestenbaum emailed Associate Dean Gauchel, Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task
Force, and others, sharing screenshots of these messages to show how Harvard has “created an
atmosphere where Jewish students are bullied, intimidated, and ostracized.”
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219. As scheduled, Harvard PSC, Harvard BDS, HOOP, and other student groups held
the February 12 “emergency die-in.” Hundreds of Harvard students laid down on the Widener
Library steps displaying massive banners reading, “STOP THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA,” among
others, and chanting in Arabic, “Palestine will be Arab.” Kestenbaum submitted video evidence
of this to Dean Frederick, OEDIB, Assistant Dean Gauchel, the Antisemitism Task Force,
Interim President Garber, and the Diversity Office. He also sent in a screenshot of messages
from a fellow Jewish student asking whether anyone knew if it was safe to leave Widener
Library. To date, Kestenbaum has not received a response from Harvard.
220. Also on February 12, for the second time this academic year, Harvard hosted
Francesca Albanese. Albanese has made a number of public antisemitic statements, including
comparing Israel to the Nazis and the war in Gaza to the Holocaust, and claiming that the Jewish
people’s connection to the land of Israel is a “fake identit[y].” In February 2024, after an
interviewer played a recorded call from a Hamas terrorist during the October 7 massacre
gleefully telling his father, “Your son killed Jews!”, Albanese remarked that the October 7 attack
was not motivated by “aggression against the Jews.” She has perpetuated antisemitic tropes,
including a 2014 public statement that “America is subjugated by the Jewish lobby.” Albanese
refers to Israel as a settler-colonial enterprise and has repeatedly justified violence against
Israelis, sympathized with terror groups, and dismissed Israel’s right to self-defense. Before the
February 12, 2024 event, Kestenbaum notified several Harvard administrators of Albanese’s
antisemitic statements, but he received no response, and the event went on as planned.
221. On February 13, several student groups, including HOOP, posted to Instagram
“an early valentine’s love letter” targeting “Zionists on Harvard’s campus,” and singling out
students who have spoken up against antisemitism on campus. The post, rife with sarcasm and
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intended to inflame, suggested these students should “get a life.” This post was reported to
Harvard administrators, but Harvard has taken no action.
222. On February 14, Harvard Law Justice for Palestine hosted an event in Caspersen
Lounge for students to “write a message of love + solidarity.” In reality, messages written at the
event included “Harvard loves genocide.” Harvard Law Justice for Palestine was warned by
administrators before the event that “the lounge is not a reservable space, and events may not be
held there.” Nonetheless, on February 14, Harvard PSC posted photos of the event on Instagram,
and promised that their and similar groups’ members would continue ignoring Harvard’s policies
and warnings.
223. On or around February 14, a whiteboard in Emerson Hall was defaced with
“Liquidate the Gaza ghetto,” and a reference to the Israeli Prime Minister as “Führer
Netanyahu.” Kestenbaum reported this antisemitic graffiti to Interim President Garber, the
Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, and various diversity offices at
Harvard, among others, asking “[w]hat specifically will Harvard do[] to prevent Jewish students
from walking into classrooms and seeing horrific antisemitism as just happened this morning in
Emerson Hall,” and explaining that Jewish students “feel neither included or a sense of
belonging at Harvard in the face of such persistent and vicious.” Kestenbaum did not receive a
response.
224. Around that same time, HOOP hung posters throughout campus, in violation of
Harvard policies, stating “no Valentine’s day under brutal occupation” and accusing Harvard of
“pinkwashing,” a reference to a disingenuous strategy employed by the BDS movement to
accuse Israel of false progressiveness.
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225. On February 15, Kestenbaum emailed Harvard administrators to report more
antisemitic vandalism in Harvard Yard—yet again in the form of the defacement of hostage
posters with red paint. Again, Kestenbaum received no response.
226. On February 19, the newly created Harvard FSJP Instagram page posted an
antisemitic cartoon depicting a hand branded with a Jewish star with a dollar sign in it gripping a
rope connected to two nooses around the necks of an Arab and a Black man. The cartoon
originally appeared in a 1967 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee newsletter, in which
it appeared in a feature that promoted various antisemitic conspiracy theories, such as “the
famous European Jews, the Rothschilds, who have long controlled the wealth of many European
nations, were involved in the original conspiracy with the British to create the ‘state of Israel’
and are still among Israel’s chief supporters,” and “THE ROTHSCHILDS ALSO CONTROL
MUCH OF AFRICA’S MINERAL WEALTH.” The post was shared by Harvard PSC and
Harvard Afro.
227. Rabbi Wolpe commented on the post that day, writing: “This was posted today by
‘Harvard faculty and staff for justice in Palestine.’ The cartoon is despicably, inarguably
antisemitic. Is there no limit?” Also that day, SAA Member #4 reported the post by submitting
a bias report and uploading a list of Harvard FSJP’s members. SAA Member #4 did not receive
a response until nine days later, when Chief DIB Officer Barbosa reached out to a schedule a
meeting to obtain more information about the incident. SAA Member #4 pointed out that any
such information should already be known to Harvard and noted that Barbosa ignored SAA
Member #4’s request for updates about the many complaints they had already initiated.
Kestenbaum also reported the post.
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228. Facing backlash, on February 21, Harvard PSC and Harvard Afro reshared the
post with the antisemitic cartoon removed. However, the groups replaced the cartoon with a
picture of Kwame Ture, who often inveighed that “the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.” The
backlash was so severe that Harvard PSC’s faculty advisor, Professor Johnson, resigned from
that position—although he continues to regularly attend these groups’ events.
229. On February 19, SAA Member #4 reported unrecognized student and faculty
organizations that were “posting on social media with the word ‘Harvard’ in their name and
organizing and holding events on campus” to the Harvard Trademark Program, a program in the
Office of the Provost charged with protecting Harvard’s trademarks. Nevertheless, organizations
like HOOP have continued using the official Harvard name.
230. On February 19, a person held a poster that said, “Free America From AIPAC”
with a swastika during a rally in Harvard Square co-sponsored by Harvard Afro.
231. On February 22, Harvard Graduate Student Union-Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions and Harvard Afro hosted an online event featuring Marc Lamont Hill, who has spoken
in support of antisemites, such as Louis Farrakhan (who called Adolf Hitler “a very great man”
and Judaism a “dirty religion”), whom Hill refers to as “my brother,” and terrorists such as Ali
Jiddah (who was convicted of planting bombs in downtown Jerusalem), whom Hill hailed as a
“true revolutionary and a beautiful spirit.”
232. On February 27, Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine hosted an unsanctioned
phone banking event in the Harvard Divinity Commons, calling for Harvard to “end all academic
partnerships with Israeli universities.” Kestenbaum reported the planned event to the
Antisemitism Task Force, Interim President Garber, Harvard Divinity DIB, among others, before
it occurred, but did not receive a response until well-after the scheduled start time, once
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Kestenbaum had made arrangements to avoid the Commons. Harvard took no preventive
measures to stop the event from happening.
233. On February 27, Harvard Chabad and Harvard Law Alliance for Israel hosted an
event at Harvard Law on “reporting on the Israel-Hamas war” that was disrupted by anti-Israel
students who blocked the audience’s view of the invited speaker with signs. SAA Member #5
attended this event. Even though the event was for law students only and thus “closed” under
Harvard Law policies, at least one of the disruptors was a Harvard Divinity student. SAA
Member #1 reported the violation to various administrators and the Antisemitism Task Force and
Antisemitism Advisory Group, identifying the student disruptors by name, citing to the specific
Harvard policies violated—including Harvard Law’s Protest and Dissent Guidelines, which
prohibit “substantial[] interfere[nce] with a speaker’s ability to communicate or an audience’s
ability to see and hear the speaker,” and protests inside “closed” meetings—and noting that
Harvard’s “failure to discipline these students adequately is interfering with Jewish students’
ability to host events and be students.” SAA Member #1 merely received a response stating that
the report would be referred to the Harvard Law Administrative Board. SAA Member #1 has
received no update on the status of the report.
234. On February 29, the House Committee held a “Bipartisan roundtable with Jewish
students to discuss antisemitism at postsecondary institutions.” Jewish students from nine
universities, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University,
participated in the discussion. Chairwoman Foxx stated that “[t]hese students are dealing with
antisemitism at their respective universities on a daily basis.” Among the students “dealing with
antisemitism . . . on a daily basis” was Kestenbaum.
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235. During the roundtable, Kestenbaum shared some of his experiences with
antisemitism at Harvard, including social media posts from his peers such as “too many damn
Jews run this country,” defacement of hostage posters, rampant antisemitic conspiracy theories,
including that the Jewish people orchestrated the September 11 terrorist attacks, and targeted
threats against Jews. Kestenbaum stated that he is aware of “Jewish students at Harvard who do
not wear their kippahs publicly anymore, who have changed their major due to hostile anti-
Zionist and anti-Jewish environments, and have been spat on for their religious identity.”
236. On March 2, 2024, Harvard student groups, including Harvard PSC, Harvard
Afro, and Harvard GS4P, co-organized a rally near campus, during which thousands of rally
goers chanted “resistance is justified,” “globalize the Intifada,” and, in Arabic, “from water to
water, Palestine will be Arab.” Kestenbaum reported the event and the student groups’ role to
Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, and
various Harvard diversity offers, among others, but received no response, and Harvard has taken
no action.
237. On March 3, after Kestenbaum noted at the House Committee roundtable that he
reported antisemitic incidents to the Antisemitism Task Force on more than forty occasions
without response, the task force finally contacted Kestenbaum, not to provide updates on his
reports but to disclaim responsibility for addressing antisemitic incidents, writing: “It’s important
to note that the task force’s charge does not extend to investigating or commenting on specific
incidents on or off campus, nor does the task force possess the authority to enforce University
policies.”
238. On March 4, the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies hosted an event in the
Science Center titled “We Charge Genocide: The Potential and Limits of International Law,”
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featuring Noura Erakat. In 2020, Erakat participated in a workshop with a Hamas leader who
has since promised an “October 7, October 10, October one-millionth” until Israel’s eradication.
On February 25, 2024, Kestenbaum reported the event to Interim President Garber, the
Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group, Harvard diversity offices, and
others, but received no response.
239. On March 5, a number of student organizations hosted an event in Caspersen
Lounge, promising “radical student activism” about Palestine. SAA Member #1 reported the
event on March 4 to various administrators and the Antisemitism Task Force, and reminded them
that Harvard “has made it clear that [Caspersen Lounge] is not a space for demonstrations.”
SAA Member #1 expressed concerns about classes being disrupted by the event, but did not
receive a response, and Harvard did not prevent the event from proceeding as planned. Instead, a
large group of students and faculty members, including Harvard Law Professors Nikolas
Bowie—several SAA Members’ Constitutional Law professor—and Ryan D. Doerfler, occupied
Caspersen Lounge, with students flouting Harvard’s policies by posing for photos in front of a
sign stating: “This space is for personal or small group study and conversation only.” Attendees
also covered the walls of the lounge with sticky notes with antisemitic messages and their
demands, including a demand that a Jewish Israeli professor be fired. SAA Member #1 and SAA
Member #5 were in the Caspersen Lounge at the time, and were prevented from using the lounge
as a study space because of the protest.
240. On March 8, Harvard J4P, an unrecognized student group, shared a post
“honoring women in the history of Palestinian resistance,” including Fatima Bernawi who in
1967 was convicted for attempting to bomb a Jerusalem movie theater. The post also honored
the Palestinian women involved in the First and Second Intifadas. Kestenbaum reported this post
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to Interim President Garber, the Antisemitism Task Force, the Antisemitism Advisory Group,
and diversity offices at Harvard, among others. Three days later, Harvard Divinity’s DIB office
responded to Kestenbaum’s email, discussing the “We Charge Genocide: The Potential and
Limits of International Law” event, which was not the subject of the email, and incorrectly
suggesting the event was permissible because “it was not mandatory for any student.”
241. From March 20 to March 22, the Bell Collective for Critical Race Theory at
Harvard Law held its Censorship & Consciousness conference. The conference featured “a
conversation with the incredible” Adnan Barq. On March 18, 2024, Kestenbaum followed up on
his unanswered email to express concern about Barq’s role at the conference, noting that Barq
“was on the ‘Long Live the Intifada’ podcast to glorify violent armed resistance, discuss how
Jews study Nazis to oppress Palestinians, and are ‘fucking creepy.’” This report went
unanswered. During the conference, Ryna Workman was also a featured panelist on “repression
and resistance.” Workman, as president of the New York University School of Law Student Bar
Association, posted on its online newsletter on October 10, 2023 that “Israel bears full
responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Soon after, on October 24, Workman was caught
defacing Israeli hostage posters.
242. On March 29, Harvard PSC, Harvard GS4P, and others held an unsanctioned
event in Caspersen Lounge to celebrate the passing of a secret BDS resolution by Harvard Law’s
student government designed to urge Harvard Corporation to divest from Israel. SAA
Member #5 and others warned Harvard administrators including Deans Soban and Ball before
the planned demonstration, but they did nothing to prevent it from occurring. During the event,
one student speaker yelled that by refusing to divest from Israel—which she called a “death
machine”—Harvard is a “breeding ground for profiteers of global oppression” that needs to “step
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away from its blood lust.” SAA Member #5 was horrified as he listened to this student’s speech
and the audience cheering.
243. On March 30, Harvard PSC was allowed to install its annual “Wall of
Resistance”—more commonly referred to as an “apartheid wall”—a twelve-panel installation
full of discriminatory messaging accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide. The wall stood in
Science Center Plaza for one week as planned, but rather than taking it down after, the group
moved it to Harvard Divinity to “celebrate their recent divestment resolution win” for another
week. The freestanding panels, which stood at least eight feet high and three feet wide each,
were dedicated to “the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” One panel
featured a quote from Ghassan Kanafani, a well-known terrorist from the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (a foreign terrorist organization), who was linked to the massacre of
twenty-six civilians at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in 1972. Another panel depicted an Israeli
soldier, with the Harvard crest painted on his uniform, holding a machine gun over a man
kneeling with an infant. Many Jewish students felt even more isolated and abandoned that
Harvard allowed—and actively protected—the apartheid wall, like Kestenbaum, who explained
to Harvard administrators the “deep pain and brokenness over Harvard’s failure to act to stop this
hatred.” Harvard responded by providing 24/7 security to protect the apartheid wall—which
stands in stark contrast with Harvard forcing Harvard Chabad to hide its menorah at night
because it could not guarantee its safety.
244. On April 5, Harvard PSC, Harvard Afro, HOOP, Harvard GS4P, and other
recognized and unrecognized groups co-sponsored a student rally outside Harvard Yard to
celebrate Al Quds Day—an annual day of resistance first celebrated forty-five years ago by
Islamic revolutionaries in Iran, when Ayatollah Khomeini prayed for “the victory of the Muslims
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over the infidels.” Hundreds gathered in Science Center Plaza, chanting “from the river to the
sea, Palestine will be free,” among other familiar chants. Many gave speeches, including
students and outsiders like Cornel West—who has compared the IDF to Hamas and argued that
Israel was founded because “Jews jumped out of the burning buildings of Europe in a Jew-hating
Europe led by a gangster named Hitler [and] landed on the backs of some Arabs in 1948 when
they founded their state.” Harvard failed to do anything to stop the Harvard Yard rally, nor
discipline the groups involved. Harvard Afro co-sponsored another event later that same day, the
advertisements for which read, “ZIONISTS ARE NOT WELCOME HERE!”
245. On April 8, Harvard PSC posted an Instagram story praising Walid Daqqa, who
had been convicted in 1987 of commanding a terrorist cell that mutilated a 19-year-old Israeli
Jew, Moshe Tammam, before killing him. Harvard PSC’s post read, “glory to the revolutionary
Palestinian political prisoner and martyr,” with the caption “Rest in power.” This post was
detailed in The Harvard Crimson.
246. On April 18, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies hosted an event on
campus, “Gaza As Epicenter: An Alternative Reading,” featuring Tareq Baconi, a professor who
regularly blames Israel for October 7 and denies that Hamas is a terrorist group. In
November 2023, he hosted a teach-in on “Palestinian Resistance,” at which he argued that
calling for the destruction of Hamas is calling for a genocide, and that “Jews, Israeli Jews, [can’t]
feel safe while apartheid persists.” Just two weeks before Harvard’s event, he argued for a
“single state from the river to the sea” and called a two-state solution “unjust.” Yet Harvard
granted Baconi a platform on its campus.
247. On April 22, Harvard purportedly suspended Harvard PSC. Yet this suspension
was limited to the rest of the “Spring 2024 Term,” ending a mere few weeks later, and limited to
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the group itself instead of its leaders or individual members—many of whom belong to or have
leadership positions in the other problematic student groups. As a result, Harvard PSC’s nominal
suspension has done nothing to stem the tide of antisemitism on campus.
248. On April 25, the Harvard Divinity RSL Department sent its weekly email to
Harvard Divinity students, which included a “Reflection” written by an RSL graduate assistant.
In it, the student quoted Alice Walker, who endorses the views that Jews are “lizard people” who
funded the Holocaust, are pedophiles, and control the KKK. Concerned Jewish students notified
Harvard Divinity administrators, but no apology or retraction was ever made.
Pro-Hamas Antisemitic Demonstrators Occupy Harvard Yard
249. In April 2024, Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish student members, and other Jewish
Harvard students’ fears for their physical safety increased, when a new wave of highly organized
antisemitic protests at college campuses around the country began, involving tent encampments
students and others erected in outdoor public spaces. These encampments were hotbeds of
flagrant conduct policy violations and intimidation, harassment, and physical assault of Jewish
students, including blocking Jewish students from access to those spaces and campus buildings.
250. Harvard was aware of the risk that an encampment would be erected on its
campus, as reflected by its email announcement that Harvard Yard would remain restricted
indefinitely to only Harvard affiliates, and signs Harvard affixed on April 22, 2024, to the gates
of Harvard Yard that read:
Harvard Yard will be closed today. . . . Harvard affiliates must
produce their ID card when requested. Structures, including tents
and tables, are not permitted in the Yard without prior
permission. Blocking pedestrian pathways or access to building
entrances is prohibited. Students violating these policies are subject
to disciplinary action.
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SAA Member #1 saw these signs on April 22 as he passed through Harvard Yard on his way to
Harvard Chabad. On April 24—the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover—the purportedly
suspended Harvard PSC, HOOP, and other groups announced on Instagram an “emergency
rally” in Harvard Yard that day at 12:00 p.m. By 12:30 p.m., approximately 500 students and
faculty had gathered in front of the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard. They lined the
walkways through Harvard Yard before revealing their true intentions: to establish the Harvard
encampment. People with backpacks, tents, suitcases, and carts of food dove under the ropes
that outline the grassy areas of Harvard Yard and began setting up tents, yelling, cheering, and
utilizing noisemakers. The demonstrators, now inside the ropes designed to keep people off the
grass, designated the area the “Liberated Zone,” and began policing entry right away.
251. Near the John Harvard statute, SAA Member #1 saw HUPD officers standing by,
watching but never intervening—much like SAA Member #1’s experience at the October 19
stampede. As reported by The Harvard Crimson, HUPD officers were “instructed to keep
students safe and allow protests to proceed unless they become violent or destructive.”
However, they did nothing when a visibly Jewish teaching fellow at Harvard College was
charged by one of the occupiers, who proceeded to physically push him away from the area.
Several HUPD officers were protecting the entrance to Massachusetts Hall, where Interim
President Garber and other top administrators have offices. But Jewish community members on
the ground were left unprotected.
252. Hundreds of students and faculty were participating in the rally, and about thirty
to forty had set up tents in front of the John Harvard statue. Several posters had been hung,
including a massive banner that read, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” SAA
Member #1 was particularly concerned after seeing three people in the crowd: Bharmal and
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Tettey-Tamaklo, who had physically assaulted a Jewish Israeli student on October 18, and Sadaf
Kahn, a Harvard College senior who had recently taken to Instagram to call himself a “terrorist”
and post a picture of himself holding a knife.
253. On the first day of the encampment, students and faculty members put up twenty-
two tents in Harvard Yard. Attendees chanted, “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution,”
and “Intifada revolution, Intifada revolution.” Despite the blatant disregard of Harvard policies
prohibiting the encampment and evidence that an extended takeover was planned, Harvard
allowed demonstrators to continue entering the Yard. HOOP continued to recruit people on
social media: “Today was just the beginning. Keep showing up. Support the campers.”
254. Many members of Harvard’s faculty and staff participated in the encampment.
One of the first tents was labeled the “Faculty Tent.” Harvard FSJP published a statement,
“Solidarity with Harvard Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” offering the disruptors its “unwavering
support.” A Harvard Divinity dean wore her full regalia and clapped proudly while the occupiers
erected the encampment—which Kestenbaum reported to Harvard Divinity administrators; they
took no action. Another Harvard professor, Vijay Iyer, delivered a statement on Harvard FSJP’s
behalf to the 500-person crowd through a bullhorn, urging the “administration to refrain from
any retaliation against the students” and rejecting its “use of . . . safety to stifle protest.”
Professor Johnson, whom SAA Member #1 saw in those first few minutes, was “acting as the
police liaison on behalf of the protestors,” despite his resignation from his position as Harvard
PSC’s faculty advisor. Professor Bowie was also among the attendees.
255. At the end of the first day, Dean Dunne told the campers at nearly 10:00 p.m. that
they must abide by “quiet hours,” should notify him if non-Harvard affiliates arrive so he can
“work to address” the situation, and may not light open flames, but otherwise said nothing to
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indicate Harvard would do anything to stop the encampment. SAA Member #1 and other SAA
student members rightly feared that Harvard did not intend to enforce its own policies and would
let the encampment continue to grow.
256. On April 24, Kestenbaum notified Dean Frederick, OEDIB, and others that the
campers included Harvard Divinity students, told them the encampment put his physical safety at
risk, and informed them that Jewish Harvard community members had already reported being
physically confronted and verbally harassed. Kestenbaum asked how Harvard would ensure his
and his classmates’ safety, but the administrators refused to respond.
257. By April 26, the encampment had expanded to over thirty tents. The campers,
making clear their intentions to restrict free access to the campus, posted a large sign at the
encampment entrance which read: “Welcome to the liberated zone! Make sure to talk to one of
us before entering.” The organizers designated student “safety marshals,” who patrolled the
encampment and refused visibly Jewish people access to the grounds it occupied. These
“marshals” wore bright neon vests and repeatedly followed and harassed Jews walking through
or around Harvard Yard.
258. Every time Kestenbaum tried to walk through Harvard Yard since the
encampment began, he was followed closely by the “marshals.” For example, when, on May 2,
Kestenbaum walked through Harvard Yard to go to Widener Library, no fewer than seven
marshals followed him, including four Harvard Divinity students he recognized. One of the
Harvard Divinity students—who participated in the assault on the Jewish student at the October
18 Die-In—was given the honor in early May of being named by Harvard Divinity as “class
marshal” for commencement, and was awarded an academic prize on May 8 by Harvard
Divinity. Kestenbaum reported the incident to Dean Frederick, Professor Holland, Dean
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Whelsky, and OEDIB, among others, on May 4, and asked what would be done to prevent this
sort of harassment. He received no response.
259. Various Harvard administrators confirmed that the encampment violated Harvard
policy. Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Bill Stackman and the Harvard Law
Dean of Students Office emailed students, confirming that the encampment’s unauthorized
actions “[were] a violation of rules” and stating that: “Interference with the academic mission or
business functions of the University will not be tolerated. Disruption or interference that hinder
members of our community from performing their normal duties and activities will be regarded
as an unacceptable obstruction of the essential processes of the University and will lead to
disciplinary consequences[.]” In blatant violation of this warning, on May 8, the occupiers
refused to submit to HUID checks and surrounded the administrators chanting “shame!” and
banging on drums and buckets.
260. On April 27, Dean Dunne emailed Harvard College students confirming that “the
encampment in Harvard Yard has continued and grown in direct violation of Harvard policies,”
and that their “[m]aintaining and participating in this extensive encampment of tents in Harvard
Yard constitutes an ongoing violation of University rules,” and stating that the “[a]mplified
sound and other noise regularly coming from the encampment has disrupted the living spaces of
first-year students in adjacent dormitories during . . . a critical juncture in the academic year
when students study and prepare for examinations and complete end-of-term projects.” Dunne’s
email was forwarded to Harvard Law students by the Dean of Students Office on April 28.
261. On May 2, SAA Member #2 and other Jewish students met with Title IX Officer
Tulgan and the Senior Director of Student Affairs Lakshmi Clark to discuss the possibility of
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taking their exams remotely because of safety concerns from the encampment. The
administrators informed them that they would be unable to do so.
262. On May 2, Kestenbaum and other Jewish Harvard students placed 1,200 small
Israeli and American flags near Harvard Divinity to honor the 1,200 victims of October 7. The
installation also included a poster of those kidnapped by Hamas. Though HUPD had taken no
steps to stop hundreds of student protesters and those camping on Harvard Yard, HUPD officers
quickly approached Kestenbaum while he was placing flags and took a photo of his
identification. Kestenbaum reported this incident to Professor Holland, Dean Frederick, Dean
Whelsky, and others, and requested information on “who called the police [on him,] for what
purpose, and what will be done as a result.” Kestenbaum has not received a response.
263. Over the next two days, vandals ripped the flags out of the ground and scattered
them across campus and destroyed the hostage poster. Kestenbaum reported this to several
administrators on May 4, and included a video of one of the vandals in action, but no one
acknowledged his complaint.
264. On May 3, the encampment expanded to the side of Harvard Yard in front of
Widener Library—where commencement is scheduled to take place on May 23—and set up
another eight tents there.
265. Also on May 3, SAA Member #2, who is visibly Jewish based on her Star of
David necklace and similar jewelry, was denied entry to Harvard Yard by a Harvard security
guard. She was trying to get to Professor Bowie’s final exam review session and followed the
same route she had traveled all year, from the subway exit through Harvard Yard to the Harvard
Law building. She watched a Harvard security guard stationed at the gate allow someone else
into the Yard just moments before she handed that guard her HUID card. However, the security
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guard told her she was not permitted to enter. SAA Member #2 had to walk outside the
perimeter of the Yard to get to her review session. Despite reporting this incident to Title IX
Officer Tulgan, SAA Member #2 has not been given any explanation for why she was denied
entry. SAA Member #2 later left the review session through Harvard Yard but was followed by
one of the encampment “marshals” until she exited the Yard. Shaken by this experience, she
avoided walking through Harvard Yard when she returned to campus to take her final exams.
266. On May 3, Kestenbaum and Harvard Hillel Rabbi Davis met with Dean Whelsky
to discuss the numerous incidents of antisemitism he had been reporting for months. Whelsky
refused to tell Kestenbaum what, if anything, Harvard was doing about the Harvard Divinity
students who had published an article in which they called Kestenbaum a “Zionist doxxing
crybaby,” or identify any concrete step anyone at Harvard had taken or would take to address the
antisemitism he had been long reporting to Harvard. When Kestenbaum asked what the
administration would do to combat antisemitism, Whelsky responded in faux ignorance of
months of widely reported antisemitism at Harvard and Kestenbaum’s own reports: “How have
you seen antisemitism manifesting?” Whelsky also told Kestenbaum that there was “no
problem” with faculty members, even deans, participating in the encampment, which Harvard
administrators had already admitted violated Harvard policy, or with chanting “globalize the
Intifada.” Whelsky also dismissed Kestenbaum’s concerns regarding FSJP’s publication of the
antisemitic cartoon on February 19.
267. On May 6, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Interim President Garber addressed the
encampment for the first time. He sent a University-wide email in which he “call[ed] on those
participating . . . to end the occupation of Harvard Yard,” and acknowledged that the
“continuation of the encampment presents a significant risk to the educational environment of
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the University.” He then explained that those who “participate in or perpetuate [the
encampment’s] continuation will be referred for involuntary leave from their Schools.” In
response, Professor Johnson—the former Harvard PSC faculty advisor who resigned after
allowing them to post the blatantly antisemitic cartoon—gave a speech in support of the students
during which he spewed harmful and false rhetoric. Using a megaphone, for example, Johnson
falsely claimed that “the International Court of Justice has declared that there is plausible
evidence that a genocide is occurring in Gaza.” Hours later, HOOP organized a rally of over 400
Harvard students and Cambridge residents to march from the gates of Harvard Yard to Garber’s
house. Before beginning the march, organizers made speeches, including one by a student who
posed the question: “Does Harvard think this is going to stop? The student Intifada has engulfed
the entire country.”
268. The following day, on May 7, over 300 faculty members signed a public letter
urging Garber to negotiate with the students.
269. On May 8, Interim President Garber met with members of HOOP to ask that they
end the encampment in exchange for a meeting with more top Harvard officials. They rejected
his offer. On May 10, at the end of the encampment’s second week, Garber offered to waive the
disciplinary actions against participants if they ended the occupation. The students again
refused, demanding confirmation that Harvard would disclose and divest from all investments in
Israel.
270. Even as Garber offered to let the student campers off scot-free in exchange for
ending their occupation of Harvard Yard, their violations of Harvard’s policies continued to
mount. For example, on May 7, the encampment students gathered to chant “there is only one
solution, Intifada revolution,” as they banged drums and other noisemakers. Kestenbaum
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watched as HUPD officers in Harvard Yard allowed the disruptive event to occur on the eve of
final examinations. On May 8, the protestors removed the American flag flying above the John
Harvard statue and replaced it with a Palestinian flag—something they had already gotten away
with on April 27.
271. On May 9, the campers hung a large banner over the encampment, which depicted
Interim President Garber, who is Jewish, as a devil with horns and a tail—a classic antisemitic
trope—sitting on a toilet, with a caption stating, “Alan Garbage funds genocide.” One of the
Antisemitism Task Force members, Professor Boaz Barak, stated that he was “embarrassed for
Harvard” that such an antisemitic trope had been used by its students. He also stated: “There is
certainly antisemitism and hate among that movement.” Kestenbaum reported this banner to
Dean Frederick, DIB, OEDIB, and other administrators that day, but again received no response.
272. On May 10, more than 200 students, faculty, and staff gathered at the
encampment. Kestenbaum saw that several protestors were wearing neon orange vests reading
“FACULTY AND STAFF.” The protestors chanted, among other things, “Intifada! Intifada!”
Kestenbaum placed a single sign next to the encampment protestors’ signs near the John Harvard
statute. Within a few seconds, Kestenbaum turned to see a “marshal” throwing his sign away.
Kestenbaum asked the marshal to put it back, but the “marshal” refused. Professor Rantisi
watched but refused to intervene. Kestenbaum reported this theft to OEDIB, Dean Frederick,
among others, but again received no response.
273. On May 11, someone with a HUID (i.e., a student or Harvard employee) used bolt
cutters to cut a lock securing Johnston Gate to allow roughly 150 protesters access to Harvard
Yard for a Saturday afternoon protest. Harvard confirmed that “persons not affiliated and
affiliated with the University” attended. On May 12, a crowd of protestors gathered at one of the
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Harvard gates. At least five students climbed to the top of the gate to hang a banner reading
“Welcome to the Liberated Zone.” By May 13, the encampment still had nearly fifty tents.
274. On May 14, Harvard capitulated to the unlawful occupiers, entering into an
agreement with protest organizers from HOOP, an unrecognized student organization not
permitted to conduct any activities on campus at all, let alone stage an occupation of Harvard’s
main public space. Interim President Garber announced that Harvard schools should begin
reinstating demonstrators who had been placed on involuntary leave, that Harvard would
expedite Administrative Board hearings in line with “precedents of leniency,” and that HOOP
would be offered meetings with Harvard’s governing boards about divestment from Israel.
275. HOOP announced that it will “re-group and carry out this protracted struggle
through other means,” and that supporters should “rest assured” that the concessions it gained
from Harvard would not “pacify” it. HOOP continued, “we can only come back stronger in our
fight for Palestine,” and “Our fight for Palestinian liberation does not begin nor end with this
encampment.” A key encampment organizer said: “This action, this movement, wasn’t just the
finale of a semester, it was the beginning.”
E. Harvard’s Double Standard Towards Addressing Antisemitism
276. Harvard’s deliberate indifference in response to the egregiously hostile
environment to which its Jewish and Israeli students are subjected stands in stark contrast to its
swift and decisive actions to address bias-related incidents when the victims are not Jewish. This
discriminatory double standard has created and exacerbated the discrimination and harassment
that Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish student members, and other Jewish students are forced to
endure at Harvard. Such deliberate indifference is demonstrated by Harvard’s choice to not
address anti-Jewish harassment on campus—on the ground that Harvard values open expression
above all else—even though Harvard moves decisively to address discrimination, harassment,
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and bigotry when perpetrated against non-Jewish groups. Harvard’s invidious and egregious
double standard is reflected in, among other things, its: selective application of free expression
principles, official statements and programs addressing bias or important social issues,
disciplinary actions against faculty, and disciplinary actions against students and student groups.
277. Harvard’s double standard in its enforcement of its own policies was highlighted
in HJAA’s May 2024 report (see Exhibit A), which encompassed reports from fifty Jewish
members of Harvard’s community. The report found that Harvard’s hostile environment for
Jews was already well-established before October 7, 2023, including numerous examples in
classrooms and Harvard-sponsored speakers and events—such as the speaker who said that
“American Jewish immigrants have always been a foundational building block for the white
supremacist infrastructure.”
278. The report described Harvard “repeatedly ignor[ing] Jewish students’ complaints
despite clear violations of” policy, so that there were “few to no consequences for the
perpetrators of [antisemitic] hate speech and bullying,” and an example of Harvard’s double
standard, when Harvard Law sent an email the same day a “gay law school student was assaulted
by another law school student” announcing that the attacker had been suspended, but Harvard
failed to do the same thing when a Jewish student was assaulted by another student. The report
quoted students on the “psychological effects” of the antisemitic rallies at Harvard, where
repeated shouts of “Globalize the Intifada,” and “there is only one solution, Intifada revolution,”
led them to feel that other students “want dead Jews,” and that they could not go into Harvard
Yard or to Widener library because of a “stampede of people” shouting for death to Jews.
Students recounted having to “be in class with someone who posted the day before that they are
supportive of the murder and rape of my people.” Students talked about their intense fear at
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Harvard: “I am scared to be a Jew here right now”; “I feel more safe in Israel than here”; “It’s
pretty scary to walk around campus knowing someone who is comfortable physically assaulting
a religious Jew is potentially still on campus”; “I was afraid to leave my [Harvard Yard
dormitory] because there were people outside chanting [] ‘Globalize the Intifada.’”
Harvard Only Embraces Free Expression Principles When It Can Use Them to
Protect and Permit Antisemitic Harassment
279. At the heart of Harvard’s double standard is its discriminatory application of free
expression and other principles. Harvard’s campus is a safe space for students of all protected
minority groups other than Jews.
280. Harvard’s invocation of free expression principles to justify permitting antisemitic
harassment is both hypocritical and false, especially given that Harvard is ranked dead last on
free speech—an “abysmal” rating—out of the 248 colleges assessed by the Foundation for
Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard protects speech only when it espouses positions
Harvard supports and prohibits speech adverse to the interests of other groups Harvard deems
worthy of protection. Harvard’s double standard is apparent when one compares Harvard’s
failure to discipline anti-Jewish harassment with its warning to freshmen—during the Title IX
training—that “sizeism,” “fatphobia,” “cisheterosexism,” “racism,” “transphobia,” “ageism,” and
“ableism” are prohibited because they “contribute to an environment that perpetrates violence.”
Indeed, Interim President Garber has acknowledged this double standard exists, describing the
“social shunning” of Jewish students and their complaints “that in some classes, only certain
points of view on controversial issues are presented and seen as welcome.”
281. Harvard also has no problem censoring controversial speakers or discussions—
unless they espouse antisemitic views, in which case Harvard insists it is obligated to permit
them on free expression grounds. In 2021, for example, Harvard School of Engineering and
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Applied Sciences canceled a course on a policing strategy involving military tactics after student
organizations expressed concerns about the subject matter. And in 2022, the Harvard English
Department disinvited Dr. Devin Buckley from speaking on campus because she is on the board
of an organization that opposes incarcerating biological males with biological females or
permitting them to participate in women’s sports. But, as alleged above, Harvard readily
permitted El-Kurd and Hill to appear on campus spewing anti-Jewish rhetoric, Holocaust denial,
and calls for Israel’s extermination.
Harvard Takes Decisive Action to Address Hate, Violence, and Harassment
Unless Jews Are the Targets
282. When bigotry impacts protected minority groups other than Jews—even when
there is no actual harassment or violence—Harvard has issued forceful condemnations. For
example, in 2016, Harvard Law abandoned its longstanding shield because it displayed the
family crest of Isaac Royall, Jr., a slaveholder. Harvard Law leadership oversaw a public
campaign to denounce the shield as a painful reminder of slavery, including forming a special
committee, soliciting community involvement, providing regular updates, and seeking approval
from Harvard’s governing body to retire the shield. That same year, Harvard changed the title of
“house masters” to “faculty deans” because, it said, the former evoked slavery. In 2022, Harvard
released “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery,” a 132-page report on Harvard’s racist history that
provided recommendations for combating its institutional racism, and committed $100 million
towards amelioration efforts.
283. Neither the recommendations in the “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery” report,
nor then-President Lawrence S. Bacow’s announcement of a plan to “address the persistent
corrosive effects of those historical practices” identified therein, mentions an exception for
“freedom of expression.” Yet Harvard now invokes free expression principles as a pretext to
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retroactively justify tolerating antisemitism and marginalizing its Jewish community. For
example, in Harvard’s November 9 statement announcing the Antisemitism Advisory Group—as
in many of its other statements concerning Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack and its aftermath—
President Gay emphasized that Harvard is “at [its] strongest when [its members] commit to open
inquiry and freedom of expression as foundational values of [Harvard’s] academic community.”
Even though the Antisemitism Advisory Group is toothless, over one hundred faculty members
signed a November 13 letter criticizing Harvard’s decision to create it as an attack on
“intellectual freedom.”
284. Harvard has gone to great lengths to make its campus more “inclusive” over the
last few years. Harvard’s OEDIB, formed in 2021 as a “relaunch[]” of its 2018 precursor office,
for example, purportedly strives “to guide Harvard’s culture toward inclusive excellence.”
According to its website, “OEDIB views diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as the
pathway to achieving inclusive excellence and fostering a campus culture where everyone can
thrive.” Jewish students, however, are excluded from those efforts.
285. Harvard has selectively taken forceful stands on global conflict and social justice
issues that it deems worthy. As a recent study by the AMCHA Initiative concluded, “there is a
flagrant double standard in how the vast majority of school leaders treat Jewish students as
compared to members of other student minority groups in the aftermath of group
trauma.” Harvard embodies that double standard. For example, Harvard has regularly issued
numerous strong statements and sponsored numerous events condemning racist police killings
and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
286. Harvard’s response to Hamas’s October 7 massacre was quite different. Rather
than cancel its partnership with offending foreign institutions, as the Davis Center for Russian
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and Eurasian studies did at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Harvard’s FXB Center
maintains its partnership with Birzeit University, which is inextricably intertwined with Hamas.
When asked during the House Antisemitism Hearing about her denial of a request to fly Israel’s
flag in Harvard Yard following October 7, despite then-President Bacow’s earlier decision to fly
Ukraine’s flag, President Gay merely demurred that the Ukrainian flag decision was “made by
[her] predecessor as an exception to a long-standing rule.”
287. Harvard’s commitment to DIB and anti-racism initiatives does not include
protecting or supporting Jewish students. Harvard’s DIB efforts deem Jews to be “oppressors,”
rather than “oppressed,” which explains why anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hate speech and
harassment on campus is treated far differently than similar conduct against other groups. As
Harvard Chabad Rabbi Zarchi has noted, Harvard has a “beautiful culture” where community
members “don’t remain silent when we experience or witness the slightest form of
discrimination,” but it is a “double culture in which, when it comes to matters of the Jewish
community, there’s nothing being said.”
288. Harvard Medical School Professor Gabriel Kreiman recently echoed this
sentiment when he told the Washington Free Beacon on March 19, 2024, that Harvard’s “current
version of DEI is full of double standards and is in many cases almost openly anti-Semitic.”
Professor Kreiman organized an Israel solidarity mission, and expressed that many Harvard
faculty members were hesitant to participate for concerns of “being harassed or attacked or
losing [career] opportunities.” Others only joined on the condition of anonymity because of
similar fears.
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Harvard Does Not Hesitate to Discipline Faculty Members Who Make Racist or
Unpopular Statements, Except When the Statements Are Antisemitic
289. Harvard regularly disciplines faculty members who appear to support
discrimination or harassment against groups other than Jews. For example, in 2011, Harvard
removed courses taught by Professor Subramanian Swamy after he wrote an op-ed advocating
that to “negate the political goals of Islamic terrorism in India,” India should “[e]nact a national
law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion,” “[r]emove . . . 300 masjids
[mosques],” and “declare India a Hindu Rashtra [nation] in which non-Hindus can vote only if
they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus.” Professor Eck, who would later
sign the November 13, 2023 faculty letter attacking President Gay’s statement against
antisemitism, called for Professor Swamy’s discipline, arguing that his “op-ed clearly crosses the
line by demonizing an entire religious community and calling for violence against their sacred
places,” and that “[t]here is a distinction between unpopular and unwelcome political views.”
290. In 2020, Professor David Kane invited Charles Murray, a libertarian political
scientist and sociologist whose controversial books and articles are viewed by many as racist, to
give an online lecture. Backed by student campaigns against Professor Kane, then-Dean Gay
announced an investigation into Kane and temporarily removed him from his position before he
was ultimately ousted from Harvard.
291. Starting in March 2023, Harvard Public Health Professor Tyler VanderWeele
faced extensive scrutiny after X users resurfaced his 2015 participation in an amicus brief urging
the Supreme Court not to set forth a federal constitutional view on gay marriage. Harvard’s
response was swift and decisive. Following student complaints, Professor VanderWeele’s
department hosted “listening sessions,” and the dean of education and chief DIB officer made
him participate in a “restorative practices process” to explain his views to the community.
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Harvard Public Health’s deans and administrators sent multiple emails to department chairs,
Harvard’s Council on Academic Freedom (a faculty organization devoted to promoting free
inquiry, intellectual diversity, and civil discourse), and students, noting students’ feelings of
harm and betrayal and setting eight “listening sessions.”
292. Harvard Public Health administrators sent more emails to large lists of
community members, referring to Professor VanderWeele’s views as “reprehensible,” having
“cause[d] deep hurt, undermine[d] the culture of belonging, and ma[d]e other members of the
community feel less free and less safe,” and as being “in conflict with our . . . stated goals of
advancing Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging as well as our commitment to sound
public health policy.” The Harvard Public Health dean defended his remedial approach as
necessary to avoid upsetting the students.
293. Similarly, on November 28, 2023, Dr. Joan Donovan, an expert on social media
disinformation, submitted a whistleblower declaration to Harvard, DOE, and the Massachusetts
Attorney General’s Office, accusing Harvard of terminating her position as a Harvard Kennedy
research director because she sought to publish internal Facebook messages that purported to
show Facebook’s knowledge of the public harm it allegedly causes. Dr. Donovan alleged that
when Harvard learned of her plan, it was processing its largest donation ever: $500 million from
the founder of Facebook’s philanthropic organization. Harvard thereafter began to
systematically restrict Dr. Donovan and her work until ousting her in August 2023. Dr. Donovan
accused Harvard of stifling her free speech and abusing its commitment to academic freedom to
protect Facebook, as Dean Elmendorf told her: “I want you to know that you have no academic
freedom. . . . I want to remind you that you’re staff here.”
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294. But Harvard does nothing to protect Jews in response to complaints concerning its
faculty, including Harvard Public Health professors’ antisemitic coursework and tweets, or
Professors Wispelwey’s and Krieger’s exclusion of Jewish students from the benefits of class.
Professor Wispelwey went so far as to co-author an article, “As Genocide Rages, Doctors Must
Choose: Care or Collaborationism,” published on November 25, 2023, in which he argues that
“we should refuse to nuance or debate preventable atrocity or to permit the fantasy of a middle
ground for those who wish to abstain from ‘taking a side’ . . . . The only ethical stance for
physicians—or anyone else—is to demand a permanent ceasefire, an immediate end to ethnic
cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank, and the dismantling of the apartheid system that
ensures an unending stream of both perpetual and punctuated violence.” Even after receiving
countless reports through Harvard’s anonymous bias reporting hotline, including one against
Harvard FXB Center’s Abdulrahim—who tweeted a graphic glorifying a Hamas terrorist
paraglider a day after Hamas’s massacre and who continues to tweet messages glorifying the
Intifada—Harvard continues to do nothing. Nor has Harvard acted to protect Jewish students
from Professor Johnson, the former faculty advisor for Harvard PSC, who, in addition to his
active participation in many students’ acts of discrimination and policy violations, was the first
signatory of the November 13 faculty letter, signed a 2022 statement supporting BDS, and signed
a 2014 letter urging speakers to avoid the University of Illinois which had rescinded an offer to a
professor because of his antisemitic tweets.
Harvard Punishes Students for Policy Violations That Do Not Involve Antisemitism
295. Harvard does not hesitate to discipline students who engage in discrimination or
otherwise violate its policies when the targets are not Jews. For example, while Harvard ejected
students who stormed University Hall during a 1969 building takeover in protest of the Vietnam
War, and arrested many participants, the students who took over University Hall in November
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2023 have faced no true consequences; in fact, they were feted with burritos and candy. In 2016,
Harvard canceled the remainder of one of its men’s soccer team’s seasons for producing sexist
“scouting reports” rating female soccer recruits. In 2018, Harvard placed a Christian student
group on administrative probation for asking a female student leader to resign after she started
dating another woman. In 2019, Harvard rescinded the acceptance of a mass-shooting survivor
because of his past use of racial slurs. In 2020, Harvard dismissed three freshmen for hosting a
party in their campus house in violation of COVID-19 social distancing rules. And in 2022,
Harvard warned its freshmen class that “sizeism” and “fatphobia,” among other harmful
discriminatory behavior, perpetuate “violence” in violation of Harvard policy.
296. On January 23, 2023, Harvard Law Deans Ball and Monroe sent out an email to
all Harvard Law students informing them about a “security incident that occurred” on campus
that day, where an “individual affiliated with [Harvard Law] entered our campus and is reported
to have punched a student while also uttering a homophobic slur.” The deans demonstrated
Harvard’s ability to take swift action when they told all students that “[t]he individual is no
longer at large and is barred from our campus,” further noting that “[w]e condemn
unconditionally all violence, hatred, and homophobia.”
297. On March 1, 2024, climate protesters disrupted a talk by Senator Joe Manchin at a
Harvard Institute of Politics event. According to a Harvard spokesperson, “[a] Harvard
University police officer ordered the protesters to leave the Kennedy School campus.” Yet
Harvard and HUPD have done virtually nothing to prevent antisemitic students and faculty from
disrupting events and academic activities. For instance, on October 19, 2023, SAA Member #2
watched as HUPD officers observed, but took no action against, protesters, including non-HUID
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cardholders, who bypassed card scanners and infiltrated a Harvard Law building to engage in an
antisemitic takeover.
298. Meanwhile Harvard tolerates not just the incitement of violence against Jewish
and Israeli students, but actual violence. Harvard has not taken any meaningful disciplinary
action against students for their repeated use of antisemitic tropes or participation in antisemitic
harassment and intimidation. For example, though Harvard purportedly began to issue
disciplinary notices to students involved in the Harvard Yard encampment, it soon capitulated,
with the president announcing that constituent schools should begin reinstating demonstrators
who had been placed on involuntary leave, that Harvard would expedite Administrative Board
hearings in line with “precedents of leniency,” and that HOOP would be offered meetings with
Harvard’s governing boards about divestment from Israel.
F. Plaintiffs Are Being Denied Equal Access to Harvard’s Educational Opportunities
299. Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members at Harvard are acutely aware
that, solely because of their Jewish identities, Harvard views and treats them as second-class
citizens in the Harvard community, undeserving of the protections that Harvard affords non-
Jewish students. Because of Harvard’s persistent refusal to comply with its obligations to stop
discrimination and harassment against Jewish students, Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish student
members, and other Jewish students are deprived of the benefits that non-Jewish students enjoy,
including, but not limited to, physical protection; emotional support; a sense of inclusion and
belonging; participation in educational, extracurricular, and Harvard-sanctioned social activities;
the ability to freely express their Jewish identity in class, written coursework, and on campus;
and their right to express their support for and attachment to Israel, their ancestral homeland,
where many, including Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, have friends
and family.
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300. To the contrary, as a result of Harvard’s actions and inactions alleged herein,
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members at Harvard are treated differently from, and
made to feel less important than, other non-Jewish students. Students, along with Harvard
faculty members, are able to taunt, demonize, assault, harass, intimidate, ostracize, and
discriminate against Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, and other Jews with
impunity. Kestenbaum, SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, and other Jewish students do
not feel physically safe on Harvard’s campus or in its classrooms and other facilities and avoid
certain areas of campus. Harvard permits Kestenbaum’s and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student
members’ classmates to praise Hamas, celebrate the slaughter of Israeli citizens, deny the rape
and abduction of Israeli women, and call for the annihilation of Israel and its citizens.
301. As Antisemitism Advisory Group member Horn has acknowledged, since
October 7, “Jewish students [at Harvard] could no longer expect to be able to study in the library,
eat in dining halls, or attend class without being repeatedly told by their classmates sometimes
through a bullhorn, that Jews are genocidal murderers deserving of perpetual intifada.” Horn has
further admitted that “[t]he mountain of proof at Harvard revealed a reality in which Jewish
students’ access to their own university (classes, teachers, libraries, dining halls, public spaces,
shared student experiences) was directly compromised.”
302. Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members also justifiably fear the
harassment, discrimination, and intimidation they face, on any given day, from professors and
Harvard leadership—who are supposed to teach and guide them—and from their fellow students,
all of whom are required to treat them with respect and dignity pursuant to Harvard’s policies.
As a result of Harvard’s deliberate indifference to its hostile educational environment,
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members are often unable to focus, study, or
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perform their course work to the best of their ability, thereby inhibiting their ability to take full
advantage of their Harvard education.
303. Harvard’s refusal to stand against antisemitism has also inhibited Kestenbaum,
SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, and other Jewish students’ ability to take full
advantage of non-classroom activities. As the sole Orthodox Jewish student at Harvard Divinity,
Kestenbaum made it his mission when he joined Harvard to be a model representative of
Orthodox Jews and an active citizen of the Harvard community. For example, Kestenbaum often
attended events hosted by groups with different beliefs, including the weekly Halaqa hosted by
one of the Muslim Harvard Divinity professors, where students and faculty would gather to read
Islamic poetry and engage with the Quran. Harvard’s refusal to stand against antisemitism has
left Kestenbaum too afraid to continue to participate in Jewish activities, much less those of other
cultures; many of the classmates and professors he tried so hard to befriend now shun him
because he is Jewish; and he has been driven to avoid public spaces like Widener Library, fearful
of unregulated antisemitic rallies and disruptions. Harvard has abandoned Kestenbaum, treating
him as a second-class citizen and an appropriate target of abuse and harassment because he is
Jewish. Kestenbaum—who regularly wears recognizably Jewish garb—never hid his Jewish
identity and should not need to do so now (as many of his Jewish friends have done, trading
kippot for baseball hats). But he is followed through Harvard Yard by the encampment
attendees, harassed on social media, and bullied by his classmates for being proud of his
Jewishness and standing up for what he believes in.
304. SAA’s Jewish student members are also not shy about their Jewish identities.
SAA Member #5 always wears, and SAA Member #1 often wears, a kippah, and SAA
Member #2 proudly wears a Star of David necklace and an Israel bracelet, and displays pro-
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Israel pins and stickers on her backpack and laptop cover. SAA Member #3 used to frequently
speak in Hebrew and discuss Israel with classmates. But during their time at Harvard, their
Jewish identities have made Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members targets for
harassment, physical violence, and other acts of antisemitism perpetrated by students and faculty
members.
305. SAA Member #1 has been deeply affected by the antisemitism on campus and the
administration’s failure to respond. As a Jew with family in Israel, and who has lived and
worked there as an emergency medical technician, he fears for his safety at Harvard, and has
withdrawn from his classmates and schoolwork. He is ostracized for being Jewish, with some of
his classmates encouraging others to shun him. Since October 7, SAA Member #1 has not been
able to fully engage in his studies or Harvard’s social experiences, because nearly every day, he
is forced to confront his fears concerning uncontrolled antisemitic mobs on campus or the
antisemitic ravings of his teaching fellow or professor. As he has reported to his professors and
the Dean of Students Office, he missed approximately half of his classes during the fall 2023
semester, and could not participate in many class discussions for the lectures he did attend.
Rather than focus on his studies, SAA Member #1 had to argue with Professor Hanson and the
administration about whether his Torts final exam would require students to take an anti-Israel
stance. To make matters worse, Professor Hanson threatened SAA Member #1 for having to
miss class, even though Hanson’s refusal to avoid discussions of the war during his Torts class
was a large contributor to the student’s fear of, and inability to focus on, school. Not only that,
but because of the administration’s refusal to remove Bharmal from his teaching fellow position,
SAA Member #1 could not take advantage of the review session and educational resources in yet
another one of his first-year courses, Civil Procedure. When SAA Member #1 reported specifics
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on how he had been denied those educational opportunities, Harvard not only dismissed his
concerns, but refused to pass his complaint to the Harvard Law Administrative Board.
306. SAA Member #2 feels extremely isolated on campus, as her only connections
now are to Harvard’s small Jewish community. She feels vulnerable walking on campus by
herself because she knows at any given moment, a protest could turn violent and she could
become a victim of harassment or worse. SAA Member #2 missed nearly ten lectures during the
fall 2023 semester out of safety concerns over antisemitic protests. Her fears continued into the
spring 2024 semester, so much so that she remained off campus even after Passover ended
because of her and her family’s concerns over the encampment. She was followed by a student
“marshal” simply for being a Jew in Harvard Yard, causing her to change the path she took to get
to the law school. The encampment—and Harvard’s failure to address it—led to a constant
stream of harassment of her fellow Jewish classmates, which was extremely distracting during
finals. When the administration refused to allow her to take her finals remotely, avoiding the
fallout from the encampment became impossible.
307. SAA Member #3 likewise feels isolated because of Harvard’s lack of interest in
protecting Jewish students from the daily antisemitic disturbances and harassment. The
incessant antisemitic protests have caused SAA Member #3 to miss classes and change her study
locations, which previously included Caspersen lounge. When she cannot avoid being on
campus, SAA Member #3 is forced to wear headphones to drown out the noise from the protests
lest the genocidal chants interfere with her ability to focus on schoolwork.
308. SAA Member #4 has faced years of inaction by the administrators to whom they
have repeatedly reported incidents of anti-Jewish bias. They have now given up hope that
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Harvard will ameliorate antisemitism after being told by Chief DIB Officer Barbosa that his
office does not have expertise in antisemitism.
309. SAA Member #5, who considers himself an outgoing and approachable person,
has been marginalized, as many classmates refuse to speak to or engage with him since the
October 7 massacre. He feels ostracized for wearing a kippah, fears for his physical safety, and
has missed nearly a dozen lectures because of the antisemitic climate on campus. His isolation
has been made even more pointed since the encampment. As he walks through Harvard Yard,
the student “marshals” watch him intently and take notes on his movements, despite the fact that
he completely ignores them. He is targeted so heavily because of his kippah or other indicia of
his Jewishness.
310. These students have had to spend their time at Harvard fearing for their physical
safety, enduring anti-Jewish abuse and harassment, and communicating with Harvard
administrators over antisemitism that Harvard is doing nothing to stop. They have been unable
to focus on their coursework or otherwise enjoy their Harvard experience. SAA Member #1
summed up the student experience in a November 16, 2023 email to Harvard Law’s Title IX
program officer, following Harvard’s repeated failure to stop unauthorized antisemitic student
protesters from “blatantly ignor[ing]” the deans: “I’m having a really hard time attending this
school as are many other Jewish students. I used to hope that the administration will do better
but today I lost all hope. . . . [The administration] should know that [its] failure to do so is
deeply hurting so many of the Jewish students on this campus.”
311. Harvard’s actions and inactions described above not only deprive Kestenbaum
and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members of their right to the educational and extracurricular
opportunities afforded other students—which have led and will continue to lead to academic,
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social, and professional consequences—but also severely impact their health, mental well-being,
and sense of security.
COUNT I
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq.
(Intentional Discrimination and Hostile Environment Towards Jewish Students)
312. Plaintiffs repeat and reallege the allegations of the preceding paragraphs as
though fully stated herein.
313. Harvard receives financial assistance from the United States Department of
Education and is therefore subject to suit under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
314. Discrimination against Jews and/or Israelis—including based on actual or
perceived ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin—is prohibited under Title VI,
as reflected not only in decades of Title VI jurisprudence, but also in the written policies of the
Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Education.
315. Kestenbaum is and identifies as Jewish, and his status and identification as a Jew
brings him within the scope of Title VI’s protections. SAA’s members include Jewish students
at Harvard, who are also within the scope of Title VI’s protections.
316. Title VI prohibits a recipient of federal funds from intentionally treating any
individual worse, even in part, because of his or her ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or
national origin.
317. The acts and omissions of Harvard and its administrators subjected, and continue
to subject, Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members at Harvard to discrimination and
harassment on the basis of their actual and/or perceived Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic
characteristics, or national origin.
318. Harvard and its administrators had actual notice that such discrimination and
harassment, over which Harvard has substantial control and the authority to remediate, was and
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continues to be so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it created and continues to
create a hostile environment based on Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national
origin that deprives Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members of full access to
Harvard’s educational programs, activities, and opportunities.
319. Harvard and its administrators intentionally discriminate against Kestenbaum and
SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members on the basis of their actual and/or perceived Jewish
ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin, as exhibited by Harvard and its
administrators’ deliberate indifference to the antisemitic abuse, harassment, and intimidation of
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, in violation of Title VI. Specifically,
Harvard and its administrators clearly and unreasonably failed, and continue to fail, to cure or
otherwise adequately, appropriately, and meaningfully address, ameliorate, or remedy the
discrimination against Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members and the hostile
environment that they and other Jewish students are forced to endure at Harvard because of their
race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin. Additionally, Harvard continues to grossly fail to
take prompt and effective steps reasonably calculated to end the harassment, eliminate any
hostile environment, and prevent the harassment from recurring. Such unlawful deliberate
indifference causes Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members to be subjected to a hostile
educational environment.
320. The environment at Harvard, which has been rendered hostile for Kestenbaum
and SAA’s Jewish members as a result of their Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or
national origin, is sufficiently severe, pervasive, persistent, and offensive such that it deprives
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members of equal access to the educational
opportunities and benefits that Harvard provides to non-Jewish students.
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321. Harvard and its administrators actively and intentionally engage in this pattern of
severe and/or pervasive discrimination.
322. Harvard and its administrators also directly and intentionally discriminate against
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, with their actual or perceived Jewish
ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin a substantial or motivating factor in
Harvard’s actions.
323. Harvard continues to unreasonably fail to act, or to act grossly inadequately and
discriminatorily, and with leniency, tolerance, deliberate indifference, and/or unjustifiable delay,
in applying its policies to known or reported incidents involving antisemitism or where the
victim or complainant is a Jewish and/or Israeli student, including Kestenbaum and SAA’s
Jewish Harvard student members. As detailed above, Harvard’s actions, inactions, and conduct
were, and continue to be, intended to treat Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student
members differently as Jewish students as compared to other similarly situated non-Jewish
and/or non-Israeli students.
324. Harvard’s acts and omissions were the actual, direct, and proximate causes of
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish student members’ injuries.
325. As a result of the foregoing, Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student
members have suffered, and continue to suffer, substantial damages, in amounts to be determined
at trial.
326. Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members have been and will
continue to be injured because Harvard has and will continue to deny them equal access to the
educational opportunities, benefits, and full value provided to other students, and has and will
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continue to intentionally discriminate against them on the basis of Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic
characteristics, or national origin.
327. Plaintiffs are entitled to appropriate injunctive relief under Title VI, because
Harvard has knowledge of, and has been and continues to be deliberately indifferent to, a hostile
environment that is severe, persistent, and pervasive; there is no adequate or speedy remedy at
law to prevent Harvard from continuing to discriminate against its students on the basis of
Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin in violation of Title VI; and the
harm Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members will otherwise continue to suffer
is irreparable.
328. Plaintiffs are entitled to attorneys’ fees and costs pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1988.
COUNT II
Breach of Contract
329. Plaintiffs repeat and reallege the allegations of the preceding paragraphs as
though fully stated herein.
330. At all relevant times, an express contractual relationship existed between Harvard,
on the one hand, and each of Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members, on the
other hand, by virtue of their enrollment at Harvard and as defined by and through Harvard’s
written codes, policies, and procedures governing student and faculty conduct, including, but not
limited to, the: Non-Discrimination Policy, Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, Protest
Rules, Student Organization Policies, and Harvard’s various student handbooks, which often
adopt and expand on University-wide policies. Through the documents and materials it
publishes and provides to students, Harvard makes contractual commitments to its students
concerning safety, bias-related abuse, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination.
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331. Under those contracts, Kestenbaum and each of the SAA Jewish Harvard student
members agreed, among other things, to pay Harvard tuition, and Harvard agreed, among other
things, to provide them a discrimination-free environment to be achieved by Harvard abiding by,
and adequately and appropriately enforcing Harvard’s policies.
332. Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members have complied and
continue to comply with their obligations under these contracts.
333. Harvard breached and continues to breach its contracts with Kestenbaum and
SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members by, among other things, its continued failure to comply
with its obligations under these contracts, including by, among other things, failing to take
measures to ameliorate, prevent, and punish the discriminatory and harassing conduct that
Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members have endured and continue to endure,
failing to enforce numerous provisions of Harvard’s policies, failing to meet Kestenbaum and
SAA’s Jewish Harvard student members’ reasonable expectations of the educational benefits to
which they are entitled, all of which includes Harvard’s failure to comply with the following
provisions, among others:
 “Discrimination on the basis of . . . any [] legally protected basis[] is unlawful and
is prohibited by this Policy.” (Non-Discrimination Policy.)
 “Bullying, hostile and abusive behavior, and power-based harassment directly
threaten the ability of community members to engage in the free exchange of ideas
and pursue their educational and professional goals. Such behaviors, as defined in
this Policy, are prohibited at Harvard.” (Non-Discrimination Policy.)
 “Interference with [freedom of speech, academic freedom, freedom from personal
force and violence, and freedom of movement] must be regarded as a serious
violation of the personal rights upon which the community is based.” (Statement
on Rights and Responsibilities.)
 “[I]nterference with members of the University in performance of their normal
duties and activities must be regarded as unacceptable obstruction of the essential
processes of the University.” (Statement on Rights and Responsibilities.)
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 “Theft or willful destruction of the property of the University or its members must
also be considered as unacceptable violation of the rights of individuals or of the
community as a whole.” (Statement on Rights and Responsibilities.)
 “It is implicit in the language of the Statement on Rights and Responsibilities that
intense personal harassment of such a character as to amount to grave disrespect
for the dignity of others be regarded as an unacceptable violation of the personal
rights on which the University is based.” (Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities.)
 “It is implicit in the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities that
any unauthorized occupation of a University building, or any part of it, that
interferes with the ability of members of the University to perform their normal
activities constitutes unacceptable conduct in violation of the Statement and is
subject to appropriate discipline.” (Statement on Rights and Responsibilities.)
 “[I]t is the responsibility of officers of administration and instruction to be alert to
the needs of the University community; to give full and fair hearing to reasoned
expressions of grievances; and to respond promptly and in good faith to such
expressions and to widely expressed needs for change.” (Statement on Rights and
Responsibilities.)
 “Any act or threat of physical violence must be regarded as a complete lack of
respect for the deepest values that unite the community.” (Faculty of Arts and
Sciences Free Speech Guidelines.)
 “A disrupter who resists removal and persists in causing disruption should be
subject to severe disciplinary measures.” (Faculty of Arts and Sciences Free
Speech Guidelines.)
 “In cases of obstruction, . . . the offenders should be punished for breaking the law
of trespassing or rules against interfering with freedom of movement.” (Faculty of
Arts and Sciences Free Speech Guidelines.)
 “Yet our commitment to freedom of expression by its nature entails tolerating some
speech that members of the community may receive as offensive or harmful.
Although this expression may feel deeply injurious to some who hear it, it is
nevertheless protected and permissible speech, unless it takes on a character that
violates University or School policies on harassment, discrimination, or bullying.”
(Public Health Guidelines for Free Expression, Open Debate, Protest, and Dissent.)
 “Using or threatening force or violence, such as defacing a sign or assaulting a
speaker or a member of the audience, is never permitted. Any interference with
freedom of movement or with freedom from personal force or violence is a serious
violation of personal rights.” (Harvard Law Protest and Dissent Guidelines.)
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 “[A]ny form of protest that disrupts the conduct of a[] [] class would violate the
University-Wide Statement of Rights and Responsibilities’ prohibition against
interference with ‘the performance of the normal duties and activities’ of
[Harvard].” (Harvard Law Protest and Dissent Guidelines.)
 “When a meeting is closed, dissent by non-attendees is limited to activity outside
the meeting that does not impede access to the meeting or substantially interfere
with the communication inside.” (Harvard Law Protest and Dissent Guidelines.)
 “Chanting or making other sustained or repeated noise in a manner which
substantially interferes with the speaker’s communication is not permitted.”
(Harvard Law Protest and Dissent Guidelines.)
 “[A]ll may participate freely within a climate of openness, trust, and sensitivity.”
(Harvard Divinity Statement of Community Values.)
 “[I]n seeking the long-term welfare of all, we endeavor to accept responsibility for
the impact of [their] actions on our community, our environment, and the world.
We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our behavior and our use of
resources.” (Harvard Divinity Statement of Community Values.)
 “Organizations defined as non-Harvard or as unrecognized organizations are not
permitted to conduct any activity at Harvard even though their activities involve
Harvard undergraduates.” (Student Organization Policies.)
 “Student organizations may not co-sponsor on-campus events with external or
unrecognized organizations.” (Student Organization Policies.)
334. As a direct, proximate, and foreseeable consequent of the foregoing breaches,
Kestenbaum has been damaged and continue to sustain substantial damages, in amounts to be
determined at trial.
COUNT III
Breach of the Implied Covenant of Good Faith and Fair Dealing
335. Plaintiffs repeat and reallege the allegations of the preceding paragraphs as
though fully stated herein.
336. Harvard has breached the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing implied
in its contracts with students, including Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish Harvard student
members. Among other things, Harvard selectively applies or enforces its student handbooks,
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guidelines, policies, procedures, course catalogs, registration materials, bulletins, circulars, and
regulations in bad faith and in a discriminatory way—improperly motivated by shared ancestry,
race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin bias—treating incidents of abuse, harassment,
intimidation, or discrimination against Jewish students, including Kestenbaum and SAA’s Jewish
Harvard student members, in a more lenient, tolerant, forgiving, and nonchalant manner than it
treats similar incidents against other minority groups.
337. As a direct, proximate, and foreseeable consequence of the foregoing breaches,
Kestenbaum has been damaged, and continue to sustain substantial damages, in amounts to be
determined at trial.
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
Plaintiffs hereby demand a jury trial for all issues so triable.
PRAYER FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, plaintiffs pray and request that a judgment be entered in their favor, and
against Harvard awarding them:
A. Injunctive relief enjoining Harvard and its agents from establishing,
implementing, instituting, maintaining, or executing policies, practices,
procedures, or protocols that discriminate against Jewish students on the basis of
their Jewish ancestry, race, ethnic characteristics, or national origin, including
Kestenbaum and SAA’s members, and ordering Harvard to take all necessary and
appropriate remedial and preventive measures against antisemitic discrimination
and harassment, such as the following: (i) disciplinary measures, including
termination, against deans, administrators, professors, and other employees
responsible for the antisemitic abuse permeating the school that Kestenbaum and
SAA members experience, whether because they engage in it or permit it; (ii)
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disciplinary measures, including suspension or expulsion, against students who
engage in such conduct; (iii) declining and returning donations, whether from
foreign countries or elsewhere, implicitly or explicitly conditioned on the hiring
or promotion of professors who espouse antisemitism or the inclusion of
antisemitic coursework or curricula; (iv) adding required antisemitism training for
Harvard community members; and (v) appointing a neutral expert monitor to
oversee compliance with this Court’s order.
B. Compensatory and consequential damages in amounts to be determined at trial;
C. Reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs of suit, and expenses;
D. Pre-judgment interest and post-judgment interest at the maximum rate allowable
by the law; and
E. Such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.
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Dated: May 28, 2024 Respectfully submitted,
ALEXANDER KESTENBAUM and STUDENTS
AGAINST ANTISEMITISM, INC.
By their attorneys,
/s/ Marc E. Kasowitz
Marc E. Kasowitz*
Daniel R. Benson*
Mark P. Ressler*
Andrew L. Schwartz*
Joshua E. Roberts*
Andrew C. Bernstein*
KASOWITZ BENSON TORRES LLP
1633 Broadway
New York, New York 10019
Tel: (212) 506-1700
mkasowitz@kasowitz.com
dbenson@kasowitz.com
mressler@kasowitz.com
aschwartz@kasowitz.com
jroberts@kasowitz.com
abernstein@kasowitz.com
Timothy H. Madden (BBO #654040)
DONNELLY, CONROY & GELHAAR, LLP
260 Franklin Street, Suite 1600
Boston, MA 02110
Tel: (617) 720-2880
thm@dcglaw.com
*Admitted pro hac vice
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63 Filed 05/28/24 Page 131 of 131
EXHIBIT A
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 1 of 50
HARVARD
JEWISH
ALUMNI
ALLIANCE
The Soil Beneath the Encampments:
How Israel and Jews Became the Focus
of Hate at Harvard
by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA)
May 2024
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 2 of 50
The Soil Beneath the Encampments:
How Israel and Jews Became the Focus of Hate at Harvard
May 2024
____________________________________________________________________________
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
PART I: Jewish Students in Their Own Words 10
1. Faculty and Teaching Fellows (TFs) Don’t Hide Their Extreme Bias and Hostility 11
2. The Lack of Viewpoint Diversity and Debate Seeds Hate 13
3. Jewish Students Lack Full Academic Access 13
4. Hostility and Exclusion Also Pervaded Students’ Lives Outside the Classroom Before
October 7th, 2023 15
5. The Jew Hate Became Louder, Prouder, and Visible to the World 17
PART II: What the Education Has to Do With It 21
1. The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Across Harvard Schools, Departments, and Programs 21
2. The Narrative: Israel Is the Embodiment of the World’s Worst Evils 24
3. In Search of Alternative Perspectives, Including from the Center for Jewish Studies 29
4. Event Speakers/Visiting Professors with a Paper Trail of Antisemitism 33
5. Anti-Democratic Middle Eastern Countries Picking up Harvard’s Tab 34
PART III: Sidechat: Where No One Knows Your Name 36
PART IV: Harvard’s Nonresponse 39
Conclusion: Harvard, Are You Listening? 41
Appendix A: Harvard Events Perpetuating the Anti-Israel Narrative 43
Appendix B: The Narrative’s Inaccuracies, Distortions, and Omissions 49
HJAA Audit, page 2
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 3 of 50
The Soil Beneath the Encampments
How Israel and Jews Became the Focus of Hate at Harvard
A Report by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA)
May 2024
“Harvard signals that Jews are only acceptable so long as they don’t fully embrace Judaism and choose to practice their
religion. The second half of the year taught me that the only hope of surviving Harvard as a Jew was to not dress “too
Jewish,” request the university accommodate Jewish holidays, speak Hebrew, or, God forbid, actually support Israel’s
right to exist.”
– Anonymous former student
“I can hear the protesters chanting “globalize the intifada” in the morning from my bed… Students can call zionists
blood-thirsty vipers, and that’s okay… We keep meeting with the Administration, and nothing happens. They are not
enforcing their time, place, and manner restrictions. These students are getting a pass which leads me to wonder:
what’s going to happen next year?”
– Charlie Covit, Freshman
Executive Summary
Background on the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA) and Report
On October 8th, as the terrorist attack on Israel that murdered 1,200 people was still ongoing, more than 30
Harvard student groups signed a statement that “h[e]ld the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all
unfolding violence.” In the following weeks, many Harvard students rallied in support of a
genocidal terrorist group that had just committed crimes against humanity while simultaneously
condemning Israel as a racist, apartheid, and genocidal state worthy of elimination.
This paradox was a wake-up call:
Something was profoundly wrong at our beloved alma mater.
Hence, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance was formed. We now have 3,000 members.
Shortly after HJAA launched, a small group of HJAA members—none of whom knew each other
in advance—came together to research the day-to-day experiences of Jewish and Israeli Harvard
students and to examine and explore the root causes of the hatred on display.
To do that, we—professionals in the fields of education, executive search, literature, medicine,
social work, and software development—had extensive conversations with 50 current and former
Jewish students and faculty members about their experiences at Harvard, both inside and outside
the classroom. These discussions mainly took place between November 2023 and February 2024.
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At the same time, seven HJAA members studied Harvard’s educational program. Although we had
limited access, we examined course catalogs for the past two school years, school and department
websites, event calendars, the offerings of various centers and programs, and selected syllabi.
While considerable focus in the media has been on student-generated antisemitism, we
wanted to explore if and how Harvard as an institution – its faculty and educational
programs – might be fueling the hatred we were witnessing.
This report is not intended to be definitive or exhaustive. That would require full access to
classrooms and a year, if not more, of effort. However, as the crisis at Harvard has been unfolding
rapidly, we felt the imperative to release our findings—not as a final document, but to spur more
research and action to counter the degradation of standards and alleviate the pain felt by too many.
What we found was worse than we had anticipated.
Main Findings
Harvard Has Been a Hostile Environment for Many Jewish Students,
Including in the Classroom Since and Before October 7th
Through conversations with 42 Jewish students, we learned that they had been
systematically targeted and excluded not only by other students but also within classrooms and
by professors. Every student we interviewed, except one, discussed feeling alienated and
excluded, if not outright harassed.
While we realize that 42 students may seem like a small sample (roughly 6% of the Jewish population
at Harvard), it is nonetheless informative that their feelings were so similar. We recognize not every
Jewish student is affected. As a former student stated, “It is ok to be Jewish, but any student who is
‘too Jewish’ suffers.” “Too Jewish,” she explained, means showing any external sign of being Jewish
or expressing support for Israel. (Student A)
What follows are some of the remarks from students, starting with their experiences in the
classroom. All the students except for two insisted on anonymity because they feared academic,
social, and even physical retribution if their identity became known. In fact, those students insisted
we scrub any information that might even potentially identify them.
● “[The professor] said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Israel.’ He looked at me and said … ‘I
need to ask you to leave the class.’ No other visiting student was asked to leave.’” Kim
Nahari, Sophomore
● “I attempted to attend the History department’s Palestine event but was turned away by an
organizer who recognized me, despite my having registered, with him giving the excuse of a
lack of space.” (Student B)
● “[T]here’s a big class on the Holocaust that’s like a general education class, so it’s not just for
people in a major. My friend took this class, and there was a teaching fellow who … was
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saying things like it really wasn’t that bad. And look at all the ways that Jews contributed to
the Holocaust happening.” (Student C)
● “I took a class in the Spring of ’23 called Religion, Nationalism and Settler Colonialism [at
Harvard Divinity School].… The class was just a 12-week hate fest.” (Student D)
● “On October 11th, the Religion and Public Life department [of the Divinity School] released
their statement trying to contextualize and rationalize the violence…. The professor offered
no apologies. She is inviting a Palestinian speaker next week who publicly said that Israel
made up the stories about babies being beheaded and women being raped.” (Student D)
● “Almost everybody I know, including myself, does not represent their true attitudes in the
classroom.” (Student E)
● A faculty member echoed this student: “It’s indoctrination, not education. The last place
you will have a free, interesting discussion is a Harvard classroom.” (Faculty A)
Jewish students also were harassed, bullied, and excluded by other students well before
October 7th. Since then, it just got louder, prouder, and more visible.
● “It’s so much harder for the students who are visibly Jewish. I have a friend who wears a
kippah who was physically cornered by a group of students demanding he denounce the
so-called genocide.” – Charlie Covit, Freshman
● “Last year, I had a mezuzah outside my dorm, which was taken down.” (Student F)
● “Israelis are the only people where their nationality is held against them. Doesn’t happen to
my friend who is Russian…. [My Israeli friend] was called a war criminal.” (Student G)
● “‘A Zionist state cannot happen without apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism.’ That
was on the wall during apartheid week. And they get people to believe them.” (Student G)
● “No other group gets compared to the Nazis… Because of my Jewish and Zionist identity,
people think I am a monster. I have heard people say, ‘Zionists should be slain.’” (Student H)
● “All the … [orthodox] guys on campus have started wearing baseball caps.” (Student I)
● “They use the word Zionist so they can say that they’re not antisemites….” (Student J)
Jewish students feared for their safety.
● “They are saying, ‘I am scared to be a Jew here right now.’” (Student E reporting on the
sentiment of fellow Jewish students.)
● “This felt to me like they wanted dead Jews.” (Student H)
● “All the protests are right outside Mass Hall…. There were days I was afraid to leave my
room.” (Student I)
Harvard, Through its Curriculum and Faculty,
Planted and Spread the Seeds of Hate Well Before October 7th
Our research found that when student protesters rally for Hamas as freedom fighters and
lob at Israel labels that represent the world’s worst evils, they are repeating what they are
taught in classrooms and at department-sponsored events.
It begins with a distorted, often inaccurate recurring narrative—practically a
script—taught across departments, courses, events, and faculty advocacy. That narrative
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promotes the view that Israel—a tiny country with half of the world’s Jewish population—is the
last remaining colonial settler power embodying the world’s worst evils: racism, apartheid, and
genocide. The narrative promotes the view that the Palestinian people are innocent victims of
Jewish (white) oppression and that known terrorist groups are simply “political movements.”
Many Harvard programs and departments, in all or part, promulgate this narrative.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) is out in front, followed by the School of Public
Health and the Divinity School. Faculty promoting this narrative also span the departments of
Anthropology, African American Studies, English, Ethnicity, Migration and Rights, Government,
History, Music, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Social Studies, Sociology, Studies of
Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and Visual Arts, as well as Harvard’s Kennedy School, Law School,
Medical School, Carr Center for Human Rights, the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American
History, and the Weatherhead Institute of International Affairs
In 2022-23, Harvard held at least 20 events that spread the virulently anti-Israel narrative.
Examples include:
● Jerusalem: Examining Settler Colonialism and Undoing Colonial Knowledge Production
● Settler Colonialism, Structural Racism and the Palestinian Right to Health
● Palestine Trek: Bearing Witness to Apartheid, Military Occupation, and Settler-Colonialism
● Colonial Cartography in Palestine-Israel and the Decolonising Potential of Counter-Maps
In January 2024, 112 faculty joined the new Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
(FJP). Under the umbrella of the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), this new
faculty group calls for a boycott of Israel and all companies that “sustain Israeli apartheid, settler
colonialism, and systematic human rights.”
Faculty have the right to voice their opinions and sign documents as individuals. They don’t have the
right to post an indisputably antisemitic cartoon, as FJP did in February 2024. While that cartoon
was taken down after being criticized, those responsible were never penalized, and the group put an
equally offensive post in its place. In protests and the recent encampments, FJP’s faculty and staff
have linked arms with Harvard’s version of Students for Justice Palestine to drive the anti-Israel
narrative and – intended or not – the subsequent hostility to Jews on campus.
Partnerships and visiting speakers and professors magnify false narratives and hate.
● The School of Public Health partners with the terrorist-supporting Birzeit University in
the West Bank. Birzeit prohibits Israeli Jews from campus, hosts military parades for
Hamas, and posted “Glory for Martyrs” three days after October 7th. Harvard students can
take a three-week course at BIRZEIT.
● In 2022-23, Harvard hosted Emad Shahin, CMES Shawwaf Visiting Professor, who taught
five classes on the modern Middle East, including Jihad, War and Peace in Islamic Law and
Practice. (Previously, Shahin had been convicted in absentia of “conspiring with foreign
armed groups, including Hamas and the Lebanese group Hezbollah,” to destabilize Egypt.)
Shahin’s course describes terrorist groups as “contemporary political movements.” A cursory
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look found this excerpt from the required reading: “[T]he suicide bomber belongs in an important
sense to a liberal tradition of armed conflict.”
● Harvard opens its classrooms and event spaces to a steady stream of speakers and fellows
with a paper trail of unchecked antisemitism. The views of these speakers include:
○ “Fascists. Terrorists. Colonizers. There is no morally defensible argument for
supporting Zionism. It’s blood-thirsty and violent.”
○ “It’s also a historical fact that American Jewish immigrants have always been a
foundational building block for the white supremacist infrastructure in this
country….We know that from the data.”
○ “Israel tests its weapons on Palestinian children.”
○ “What happened on 10/7? The burnt bodies were Hamas militants & now we learn
Israeli helicopter fire may have killed ravers!”
In rejecting this narrative, one student noted: “In terms of our education… people don’t understand
what Zionism is. They think it’s white settler colonialism. People need to understand the history, not
just the Holocaust, but of the Jewish people and why it’s so important for there to be a Jewish state.”
(Student E) But many students, Jewish and otherwise, don’t know this information—and they aren’t
going to learn it at Harvard. When Harvard’s instructors make Israel the world’s worst oppressor
while omitting facts disputing their claims, students, understandably, believe the one-sided narrative.
Our review found only a few faculty and programs offering a more balanced or alternative
perspective on the Hamas/Israel war or the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We found a few at
the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and some (largely before October 7th) at the
Law School. An independent auditor will need to find if there is a critical mass of other examples.
The Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) seems to prefer looking away. In 2023-24, only one of its
40 courses (besides Hebrew courses) even partially focused on Israel. Between October 7, 2023 and
April 2024, only three of CJS’ 34 events were on the Israel-Hamas war or the crisis facing Jews
worldwide.
The Social Media Platform Exclusively Used By Harvard Students
is Replete with Unchecked Antisemitism
This year, Sidechat, Harvard’s anonymous social media platform requiring a Harvard email address
to log on, included posts like:
● “Gas the Jews”
● “stfu pedo lover! All of you Zionists are the same. Killers and rapists of children.”
● “Pro-genocide soph0more… looks just as dumb as her nose is crooked.”
Posts like these spurred Harvard, in January 2024, to ask Sidechat to better moderate content and
restrict access only to undergraduates. After that, un-coded Jew hate perhaps tamped down some.
There still is plenty of “life would be better if Zionism did not exist” and “Zionist Nazis.”
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Harvard’s Administration Continues to Be Unresponsive
to Most Attacks on Jewish Students
The Administration has repeatedly ignored Jewish students’ complaints despite clear violations of
Harvard’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies. There have been few to no consequences
for the perpetrators of hate speech and bullying. And now we have learned there will be no
consequences for those students, faculty, and staff in the protests and encampments who have made
Jews feel physically unsafe, disrupted and imperiled the wider Harvard community, and broken
Harvard’s own code of conduct.
As one student told us, “The double standard of the Harvard administration is very jarring. A gay
law school student was assaulted by another law school student. An email went out to every student
at the law school the same day saying that they were suspending the person. It has been three weeks
since the assault [of a Jewish student at Harvard Business School], and only one of the people has
been removed from an official Harvard position [but not suspended].”
As Freshman Charlie Covit observed: “There have been so many meetings, but nothing has
happened….Why can you scream ‘globalize the intifada’ outside my dorm room, and there is no
punishment? What’s going to happen next year when they are choosing not to enforce their rules
now?”
The Israeli student who was kicked out of a class for being Israeli said, “First, I reached out to Hillel,
and I asked them what I should do. They told me to file a complaint through the DEI [office]. I had
a conversation with my Resident Dean and Dean Khurana…. Everyone said, ‘Hey, I hear you.’ But,
there was no follow-up.”
We, too, never received a response to an earlier draft of this report, which we shared with Interim
President Alan Garber, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, and Executive Vice President
Meredith Weenick on January 22, 2024. President Garber said he wanted to share the report with
his Task Force on Antisemitism. In April 2024, the Task Force’s co-chair, Professor Derek Penslar,
said he never got a copy.
In Conclusion
In presenting this report, HJAA has no intention of stifling free speech or academic freedom. Our
objective is to advocate for (as is stated in Harvard’s own code of conduct) “a community that is
open, welcoming, and inclusive and that supports all community members in pursuit of the
University’s mission of learning, teaching, research, and discovery.” Harvard’s mission also requires
a safe learning and non-hostile work environment.
We reject how the University is balancing free speech and academic freedom with Jewish
students’ rights to access an education free from harassment and hate.
Harvard’s double standard in applying its code of conduct is the basis for HJAA’s first stated request:
that the Administration and Corporation “take swift, concrete and public action to enforce the
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University’s codes of conduct uniformly and without exception, and discipline students, faculty and staff
who violate them.” A complete list of HJAA objectives is at the end of the report.
We prepared this report to help repair, restore, and strengthen Harvard. We hope it spurs further
bipartisan—that is, nonpartisan—investigations at #Harvard and other educational institutions.
###
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PART I:
Jewish Students in Their Own Words
Harvard Has Been a Hostile Environment
For Many Jewish Students,
Including in the Classroom,
Before October 7th.
We felt compelled to listen to students because no one else was. Between mid-October 2023 and
February 2024, one intrepid HJAA leader interviewed 22 current or former Harvard students and
six Harvard faculty members. Four other HJAA members had conversations with roughly 20 other
students. We also spoke with four additional faculty members. Most of the students we interviewed
were not Israeli students.
We conducted our education audit at arm’s length, but Harvard’s Israeli and Jewish students shared
their experiences in their own words. Their testimonials capture the bullying, harassment, exclusion,
and even outright hate students face throughout their lives at Harvard.
Through these discussions, we learned that Jewish students had been systematically
targeted and excluded not only by other students – which we expected to find based on early
media coverage – but also within classrooms and by professors. Every student we interviewed
discussed feeling alienated and excluded if not outright harassed.
There are two points to make before turning to the testimonials. First, when we spoke to students
about sharing their testimonies, many started retracting their statements or insisting on anonymity
(including that we scrub from their testimonies all possible identifying information). They had come
to an understandable conclusion: We’ve been asking for help from the administration for months to no avail;
why should this time be different? And therefore, why should I open myself up to academic, social, and even physical
retribution? On a university campus, this fear is alarming.
The faculty members were even more afraid of speaking with us on the record; they worried it could
get them fired or undermine a promotion. At Harvard, in the 21st century.
The faculty members were even more afraid of speaking with us
on the record; they said it could get them fired or undermine a
promotion.
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Second, we do not claim that every Jewish student is affected. For, as one student clarified for us,
“It’s ok to be Jewish at Harvard, as long as you aren’t ‘too Jewish.’” She went on to explain, “The
only hope of surviving Harvard as a Jew was to not dress “too Jewish,” request the university
accommodate Jewish holidays, speak Hebrew, or God forbid, actually support Israel’s right to exist.”
As more recent theoretical frameworks recycle antisemitic tropes to cast all Jews as the worst of
“white” oppressors, many more Jewish students are caught in the crosshairs. As another student told
us, “The pro-Palestinians see Israel as the white colonizer oppressor. It’s the same thing they say
about ‘the white Jews: They bought their way into the school, they have money, they have
connections. It’s the same mindset.’”
“It’s okay to be Jewish at Harvard, as long as you aren’t ‘too
Jewish.’” The only hope of surviving Harvard as a Jew was to not
dress “too Jewish,” request the university accommodate Jewish
holidays, speak Hebrew, or God forbid, actually support Israel’s
right to exist.”
1. It Starts in the Classroom Where Faculty and Teaching Fellows
(TFs) Don’t Hide Their Extreme Bias and Hostility.
Students see the bias in the differential treatment of students, faculty statements, and class
cancellations.
● “I am taking a class with Professor Penslar, Modern Jewish History. Penslar signed the letter …
[that] calls Israel an apartheid state …. What I have been surprised by in the class is one of
the TFs is vehemently anti-Israel, showing only one side.” (“TFs” or teaching fellows are
often called “teaching assistants” at other universities)”
● “I took a class in the Spring of ’23 called Religion, Nationalism and Settler Colonialism [at
Harvard Divinity School].…The class was just a 12-week hate fest…. One of the classes was
titled ‘The Holocaust and Ongoing Nakba.’ It was just a way to compare the treatment of
Palestinians to the way Jews were treated during the Holocaust.”
● “[T]here’s a big class on the Holocaust that’s like a general education class, so it’s not just for
people in a major. My friend took this class, and there was a teaching fellow who … was
saying things like it really wasn’t that bad. And look at all the ways that Jews contributed to
the Holocaust happening.”
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● “[In March 2023] I joined one of my best friends for her Middle Eastern class because she
was presenting and invited me to watch her presentation. [There were about] 30 students [in
the class], and there were other people in the class who were [also] coming to see their
friends present. In the middle of the class, the professor stopped the lecture …. He asked
me if I was a student [in his class], and I said, ‘No, my friend invited me to watch her
present.’ Then he said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Israel.’ He looked at me and said . . . ‘I
need to ask you to leave the class’…. People are uncomfortable because I am from Israel.
This means that he had to ask [only] me to leave a class where others were also … there to
listen to their friends….”
“Then [the professor] said, ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Israel.’ He
looked at me and said … ’I need to ask you to leave the class….’”
● “On October 11th, the Religion and Public Life department [of the Divinity School] released
their statement trying to contextualize and rationalize the violence. Saying there are two
sides. This was so horrible that the interim dean had to come the next day and say it was so
horrible, and it only reflects the views of those who signed it. The professor offered no
apologies. She is inviting a Palestinian speaker next week who publicly said that Israel made
up the stories about babies being beheaded and women being raped.”
● “Post-October 7th, there was a really unsettling section…. It was mostly an effort to
contextualize why Hamas’ actions were justified.”
● “I can tell you right now that I’m currently in a class on Ottoman history taught by Professor
Cemal Kafadar…. I’ve basically stopped going. I mean, Professor Kafadar also signed that
letter and has been pretty vocal, and the TF has told us all to go to these teach-ins [e.g.,
Evolving War in Israel/Palestine, a teach-in sponsored by CMES].
● “One of the TFs canceled class to go protest with the Palestinian Solidarity Committee.”
“One of the TFs canceled class to go protest with the Palestinian
Solidarity Committee.”
● “Literally three days ago, [during the] EC 10 lecture [large introductory economics course]..
there was a walkout…. [PSC supporters] used EC 10 as the central location to begin this
rally. These people were not students of the class and walked into the class with their own
agenda [and] with megaphones. ‘If you support us, free Palestine, come walk with us.’ About
five people stood up and walked out. The professor… afterward… said, ‘If anyone feels that
they need to leave, this class is being recorded.’”
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Sometimes, Faculty Antisemitism is Blatant
● In 2023, after students filed a complaint, Harvard conceded that a Kennedy School
Lecturer intentionally discriminated against three Israeli students in his class.
● In January 2024, the first visible action of the newly formed Harvard Faculty and Staff for
Justice in Palestine was to create an Instagram post with a horrific antisemitic picture.
While that cartoon was taken down after being criticized, the group put another offensive
post in its place. Harvard rebuked the faculty and removed a professor from his role as the
advisor of Harvard’s student pro-Palestine group, Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
No other consequences ensued.
2. The Lack of Viewpoint Diversity and Debate Seeds Hate
The absence of viewpoint diversity and debate enables false and inflammatory labels to be
weaponized in and outside the classroom.
● “Jewish history is routinely pushed under the rug.”
● “In terms of our education, that is the most important thing. People don’t understand what
Zionism is. They think it’s white settler colonialism. People need to understand the history,
not just the Holocaust, but of the Jewish people and why it’s so important for there to be a
Jewish state.”
● “[S]uch a significant percentage of the student body think Israel is a colonialist apartheid
state.”
● Obviously, we’re talking about Jews and Muslims in this time in this place. Muslims
colonized … and imprisoned all the Jews there and murdered a bunch of people, and we’re
just glossing over that part….”
3. Jewish Students Lack Full Academic Access
Israeli and Jewish students also don’t have full academic access to Harvard. They avoid
certain classes and majors because of the hostilities they would face, don’t participate in
class discussions for fear of academic retribution, and are excluded by those who hope to fill
events and lecture halls with like-minded peers.
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● “My older sister went to Harvard. She took a Middle East politics course. When she
expressed her opinions on Israel [in her assignments], her grade would suffer. She had a
terrible experience. Because of her experience, I never wanted to take a class about Middle
East politics.”
● “When I came to Harvard, I really wanted to study Middle Eastern studies. I took a class in
the Middle East department, and I wanted to take more, and both [my brother] and his
boyfriend said, “You can’t concentrate on Middle Eastern studies, you will suffer.”
“You can’t concentrate on Middle Eastern studies, you will suffer.”
● “Israelis are not in these Middle Eastern studies classes. There were lots of times I felt weird
and uncomfortable saying I was from Israel in my section when I took a Middle Eastern
Studies class. That is the only reason why I’m not pursuing [Middle Eastern studies] as my
concentration.”
● “[I am] dropping my NELC [Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations] department class
because it’s a hostile environment for me.”
● “I haven’t challenged my TF, I don’t feel comfortable. I’m not going to change my TF’s
opinion. It’s not worth it. The section is a small class. The way the grading in the classes
works, it is so heavily dependent on participation that it leaves room for interpretation….
● I don’t make arguments that the TFs disagree with because they don’t seem to grade based
on the validity of the argument.”
Jewish students who attend one-sided events can be marginalized and publicly
ridiculed––or even blocked from entry.
“I attempted to attend the History department’s Palestine event but
was turned away by an organizer who recognized me, despite my
having registered, with him giving the excuse of a lack of space.”
● “I attempted to attend the History department’s Palestine event but was turned away by an
organizer who recognized me, despite my having registered, with him giving the excuse of a
lack of space.” [The organizer continued allowing other students to enter.]
● “Last year, the PSC invited Mohammed el-Kurd to speak. I decided that I was going to listen
to him because we have free speech and I wanted to hear what he had to say. I decided to
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ask a question of him: ‘Mr el-Kurd, do you condemn the killing of innocent Israeli, Jews,
American civilians across the world as a form of resistance and liberation?’ He said, ‘I’m not
going to dignify that racist question with a response.’ 200 of my fellow peers were clapping
for him.”
● “I attended this Mohammed el-Kurd event last year. A few days later, this proctor [resident
advisor] came up to me at Annenberg and said, ‘You had a really interesting question. I’d
love to find time to chat with you.’ He said, ‘Let’s grab a meal next week.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’
I have never heard someone praise terrorists like he did. He’s a proctor, so you say yes when
he asks you for lunch. I thought he was an authority figure…. I had a crazy conversation
with him over lunch. I just remember the trauma of that conversation. It made me realize
for the first time that there are some people who truly are so crazed in their beliefs that
freedom fighters are the solution to a problem. That really jarred me.”
“I have never heard someone praise terrorists like he did…. I
thought he was an authority figure…. I just remember the trauma
of that conversation.”
4. Hostility and Exclusion Also Pervaded Students’ Lives Outside
the Classroom Before October 7th, 2023
Students told us it starts during Convocation and the First-Year International Program (“FIP”),
before students enter their first class as freshmen. And it permeates every aspect of their supposed
new home: where they study, sleep, eat, and socialize. Sometimes, it’s harassment. Sometimes, it’s
pure hate. To be clear, while Israeli students still face the most abuse (i.e., they are called
“murderers” to their face), the isolation, harassment, and hostility extend far beyond them.
Before Day 1 of Class
“From day one at the First Year International Program, people heard
that I was from Israel, and some people stopped talking to me,
including some of the leaders [of the orientation program].”
● “Convocation freshman year is the first week. My entire convocation was
corrupted—hijacked by the PSC [Palestine Solidarity Committee]…. At convocation, I felt
like these people really, really don’t want me here. They want me to feel unwelcome. My
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being a Zionist and a Jew is contrary to their values, and they will use inflammatory rhetoric
and tactics that are intentionally designed to hurt me.”
● “[At] my very first experience at Harvard, there was an anti-Israel protest at our convocation.
The head of FIP was very unkind to me. He didn’t say anything, but he treated me
differently from other people. Then I saw him demonstrating during convocation, and then I
was like, ‘Oh, it makes sense.’”
● ‘From day one at the First Year International Program, people heard that I was from Israel,
and some people stopped talking to me, including some of the leaders [of the orientation
program]. There is an ice breaker event where you divide up by country, and it’s known
among the Israelis to stay in your room or go [join the] Europe [group]. That is from Day 1
[at Harvard].”
● “I remember that [at the] First Year International Program during pre-orientation … one
specific student turned around and left after I answered that I was from Israel. I see her a lot.
That was an unforgettable moment.”
“My being a Zionist and a Jew is contrary to their values, and they will
use inflammatory rhetoric and tactics that are intentionally designed to
hurt me.”
What Israeli and Jewish students see when they walk around their campus home
● “Last year during apartheid week, I had to walk by a wall with an image comparing Israel to
the Nazis with an image of cattle cars going into a gate. I was appalled that there would be
Nazi comparisons; no other groups get compared to the Nazis. I ended up switching my
walk to class so I could avoid walking by the wall.”
● “‘A Zionist state cannot happen without apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism.’ They
had that on the wall during apartheid week. And they get people to believe them. People
know and understand racism, apartheid, and colonialism, and [the PSC have used those
words] to get them to believe [that they are true about Israel].”
● “[They] have managed to put the Palestinian context within a very American context using
language like white supremacy etc. [They are] great at [creating their own] narrative.”
Where they sleep and eat and with whom they socialize
● “Last year I had a mezuzah outside my dorm, and that was taken down.”
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● “Someone carved a swastika on the bulletin board at Currier House. It was in 2022, around
the time of apartheid week and The Crimson BDS movement.”
● “What I find most distressing, and what influences my happiness most, is that when I walk
into the house dining hall, and I say, ‘hi,’ people won’t say hi back just because I was born in
Israel and served in the Israeli military. That goes a long way with [affecting] your feeling of
belonging.”
● “You can’t eat in Adams, literally. I ate there once and I was like, ‘I am never going back
there.’ They all know what Israelis look like. They actively stare at us…. [They] know I’m
Israeli and hate me for it. Some of them stop talking when I walk near them. Someone from
my NELC [Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations] department class looks away when
she sees me.”
● “This one girl who wasn’t in our blocking group but also was invited [to the Dominican
Republic] wouldn’t come because I was going. I am Israeli, and she didn’t want to be
pictured with someone who is Israeli. She wasn’t shy [about it], she was public about it….”
And what student organizations and causes they can join
● “It’s what happens when Black Lives Matter, which everyone agrees with and supports, says
that in order to support this cause, you also have to support the Palestinian cause. It’s that.
And then on campus where it’s like everything is advocacy, everything is social movements
that I actually care a lot about, but then I get excluded from these spaces.”
● One of my best friends is one year older and invited me to the first [PSK punch] event. The
punch master is from Egypt and told his friends that I can’t come because I don’t adhere to
PSK values because I served in the IDF beyond the mandatory requirement. I tried to talk to
him [the Egyptian co-punchmaster] and he won’t even exchange a word with me. The PSK
kids said, “it was your decision to stay in the IDF post your mandatory term.”
5. The Jew Hate Became Louder, Prouder, and Visible to the
World
We conducted our interviews from mid-October 2023 to February 2024, during the period when
there were constant anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests but before the encampments had yet to take
over the Yard (which occurred in April.)
“They want dead Jews”—the psychological effects of the ongoing protests.
● “As a first year, we’re based in Harvard Yard, and most of what is going on takes place there.
Even if I didn’t want to involve myself, I can’t avoid it. If I want to go to Widener [the main
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campus library], there are times that I can’t go because there is a stampede of people on the
steps. Hard to avoid because of where we’re located.”
● “Today they were screaming, ‘There is only one solution, Intifada revolution.’ And saying
‘Globalize the intifada….’ One of the most crazy things I have seen – this is the first time I
heard people say something that felt to me that they want dead Jews.”
● “Two days after I came back to campus [from being home in Israel], I saw a protest [being]
led by the PSC in Harvard Yard. There was a huge sign that said, ‘Stop the Genocide in
Gaza.’ I was just back to campus [having gone] to the funeral of my best friend who was
brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival. And I just got emotional
seeing such provocative and hateful signs.”
● “I have this flight or fight reaction when waking up in the morning and hearing the
protestors chanting. I can’t always tell what they’re chanting, but I always feel that fear, feel
triggered, and I [don’t want to] walk through them to find out what they’re saying.”
“[T]his is the first time I heard people say something that felt to me
that they want dead Jews.”
The harassment and hate ramped up.
“Israelis are the only people where their nationality is held against
them. Doesn’t happen to my friend who is Russian….”
● “We all knew people who were just murdered. And to see this [statement with all the student
groups], [on October 8th or 9th], we couldn’t believe it. We know people at these
organizations, we are in classes with them. It didn’t make sense [to us]. It was an extreme
way of exposing what people think. It was disgusting for us…. We couldn’t take the space to
mourn.”
● “Someone I know was studying in [xxx] library. He couldn’t focus because he was sitting
next to ~15 people in Keffiyehs who wanted to write an op-ed in support of that proctor
who had been let go. My friend didn’t want to stick around and study for the math exam.
They had severely skewed what had happened, and how they were presenting it wasn’t even
rooted in fact. It was just a mishmash of claims that the proctor had made. They said there
were no complaints against the proctor, but that’s not true, there were at least three
complaints.”
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● “Someone living in my [house] is friends with some other Israelis. At some point, [my friend]
told me that this girl was talking to someone on my floor, and the girl on my floor said [that]
I ‘murdered people….’ This girl on my floor asked this person I don’t know well (but we’re
now friends) if she knew me and then said, ‘Did you know she was in the IDF, and therefore
she murdered people.’”
● “They see [Israelis] as murderers…. People are actively telling people to not be friends with
[Israelis]. Israelis are the only people where their nationality is held against them. Doesn’t
happen to my friend who is Russian…. [My Israeli friend] was called a war criminal.”
● “We all knew people who were just murdered. And to see this [statement with all the student
groups], [on October 8th or 9th], we couldn’t believe it. We know people at these
organizations, we are in classes with them. It didn’t make sense [to us]. It was an extreme
way of exposing what people think. It was disgusting for us…. We couldn’t take the space to
mourn.”
● “[Students on campus] are saying we’re lying…. How am I supposed to be in class with
someone who posted the day before that they are supportive of the murder and rape of my
people? I could’ve been that person.”
Jewish students feared for their physical safety.
“It’s pretty scary to walk around campus…. And I’ll tell you that he
and pretty much all the other [orthodox] guys on campus have started
wearing baseball caps.”
● “I’m engaged and my fiancé [who wears a kippah] was walking on campus on October 9th,
and someone who [my fiancé] believed to be another student came up to him and spit in his
face, oh my God, just on campus… I’ll tell you that he and pretty much all the other
[orthodox] guys on campus have started wearing baseball caps.”
● “I am scared to be a Jew here right now.”
● “I think I feel more safe in Israel than here. I just think everyone knows my identity, and the
only thing that protects me from people hurting Israelis is that they have too much to lose
because they are Harvard students.”
● It’s pretty scary to walk around campus knowing someone who is comfortable physically
assaulting a religious Jew is potentially still on campus…. And I’ll tell you that he and pretty
much all the other [orthodox] guys on campus have started wearing baseball caps.
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● “I felt very afraid even walking to Annenberg because, outside the science center, there
would be protests or people asking me a question you can’t say no to – like, ‘Did you
condemn the murder of Palestinian children?’”
● “All the protests are right outside Mass Hall. A lot of the time, they are on the side where the
dorm entrance is. There were days I was afraid to leave my room because there were people
outside chanting, ‘End the occupation’ and ‘globalize the intifada.’”
● “It’s scary to walk through the protest. I usually walk through the back doors [or the] side
entrances at [the] science center.”
● “Since October 7th, there are certain things [I] notice that I didn’t notice before. There is a
police car constantly parked in front of Hillel. [It makes you think], are we in a state of
danger if they have to place that kind of protection outside?”
Students understand that “Zionist is a code word for Jew.”
● “They use the word Zionist so they can say that they’re not antisemites….”
● “Because of my Jewish and Zionist identity, people think I am a monster. I have heard
people say, ‘Zionists should be slain.’ I have heard people say, ‘You can’t possibly believe an
Israeli, they are all settlers.’”
● “It’s very clear at HDS [Harvard Divinity School] that Zionism is a very dirty, insulting word.
To be called one is an insult. [It is] certainly not something you self-identify [as] publicly.”
● “What’s disappointing is that they are smarter, and Zionist is a code word for Jew. You can’t
say Judaism is wrong, or the Jews control the media, but you can say Zionists control the
media. And that’s what is so hard [because they use the word Zionist so they can say that
they’re] not antisemites….”
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PART II:
What the Education Has to Do with It
Harvard, Through its Curriculum and Faculty,
Planted and Spread the Seeds of Hate Well Before October 7th
1. The Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Across Harvard Schools, Departments,
and Programs
The educational focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is notable given the fact that Israel is a tiny
country (the size of New Jersey) whose total population is 9 million, 7 million of whom are Jewish.
Coverage of other world disputes and suffering appears to pale in comparison.
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) is out in front, followed by the Divinity School and
the School of Public Health.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict saturates the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (“CMES”)
● CMES doesn’t offer courses because it is not an academic department but sponsors dozens
of events annually.
○ Last school year (2022-23), close to 20% of CMES events (10 of 56) addressed the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict—the same number of CMES events on Iran, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, and Egypt combined. During the same period, CMES held no events on the
genocide in Sudan.
○ CMES gave equal focus to only one other topic: the Ottoman Empire (which lasted
600 years and spanned Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa).
○ In 2015, the bloodiest year of the Syrian civil war when 110,000 people were killed,
CMES held only 3 Syrian-focused events.
○ From October 7, 2023 to April 2024, CMES sponsored 17 events on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict, 25% of all of its events.
● After October 7th, CMES joined a collaboration of other universities and Birzeit University
to organize fourteen “teach-in” sessions to put “Gaza in context.”
● CMES has announced that “Palestine” will be one of its two themes for its 2024 – 2025
visiting research program.
● CMES also has an office in Tunisia.
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In 2022-23, roughly 20% of CMES events focused on Israel and the
Palestinian Territories—equal to the number of events on Iran, Iraq,
Saudi Arabia, and Egypt combined.
The School of Public Health has a program exclusively devoted to the Palestinians, the
Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, in partnership with Birzeit University.
● This program offers the Palestine Social Medicine Course, a three-week course at Birzeit
University in the West Bank that “introduces students to the social, structural, political, and
historical aspects that determine Palestinian health.”
● Birzeit University prohibits Israeli Jews from campus, hosts military parades for Hamas
featuring children wearing mock explosive vests, names buildings and events after convicted
terrorists involved in plotting attacks against Jewish civilians around the world, and posted
“Glory for martyrs” three days after October 7th.
● Another public health course, “GHP 264: The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health,”
makes Palestine/Israel one of three case studies.
● The School of Public Health has also sponsored these events here.
Harvard has a partnership with a West Bank university, Birzeit, which
prohibits Israeli Jews from campus, holds rallies honoring Hamas,
and posts “Glory for martyrs” 3 days after October 7th.
At Harvard Divinity School, the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative (RCPI) appears to focus
entirely on the Palestinians. (RCPI is part of the Religion and Public Life Program.)
● Between 2019 and 2023, RCPI’s fellowship program brought roughly 23 fellows to Harvard,
the vast majority of whom were engaged in projects related to the Palestinians.
● Divinity School courses include Religion, Nationalism, and Settler Colonialism: the Case of
Israel/Palestine (HDS 3337) and Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and
Belonging in Israel/Palestine (HDS 3335).
● HDS 3335 also offers a trip to the West Bank and Gaza.
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Harvard faculty members have also spearheaded and/or signed four anti-Israel
university-wide statements/petitions since May 2021.
● Statement by Harvard Faculty in Support of Palestinian Liberation, 80 faculty signers (May
2021).
● Statement in Support of The Harvard Crimson and Palestinian Liberation, 49 signers (May
2022). This statement follows the Crimson’s endorsement of BDS, the Boycott, Divestment,
and Sanctions movement against Israel.
● Faculty Open Letter to President Claudine Gay, 79 signers (October 19, 2023).
● Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FJP), 111 signers (posted initially with
signatories in January 2024). Revised and reposted here on February 21, 2024). This faculty
group is under the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI.
Note that this report does not challenge the rights of faculty members and others to voice
their opinions and sign documents as individual scholars. Understanding how faculty members
joining this group bring their political views into their hiring decisions and course offerings is
important. Moreover, when joining protests and then the encampments, faculty and staff have linked
arms with Harvard’s version of Students for Justice Palestine to drive the anti-Israel narrative and –
intended or not – the subsequent hostility to Jews on campus.
While the above four statements have 174 independent signers, a core group of roughly 47
Harvard faculty members takes the lead in driving the Palestinian-focused programs,
courses, and events, writing in the popular press, helming trips to the Palestinian territories,
creating and/or signing the petitions/statements, and joining (or leading) protests.
● 15 of the 47 faculty members are full professors, 10 are associate/assistant professors, 13 are
lecturers, 2 are visiting professors, and 7 are instructors.1
● In addition to CMES, the Public Health School and the Divinity School, these faculty span
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Kennedy School, Law School, and Medical School.
Other affiliations include the Carr Center for Human Rights, the Charles Warren Center for
Studies in American History, and the Weatherhead Institute of International Affairs.
● FAS departments include the departments of Anthropology, African American Studies,
English, Ethnicity, Migration and Rights, Government, History, Music, Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations, Social Studies, Sociology, Studies of Women, Gender, and
Sexuality, and Visual Arts, Government, History, Sociology, Music, Visual Arts,
1 This number only includes Harvard faculty with clear teaching responsibilities. 35 of the 47 joined the new
Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine in January 2024; 11 others aren’t members of this new group
but actively promote the narrative described in the next Section. We don’t include the 14 teaching fellows who
joined the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine even though they, too, may be teaching students.
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Anthropology, English, African American Studies, Near Eastern Languages and
Civilizations, Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights, and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
2. The Narrative: Israel as the Embodiment of the World’s Worst
Evils
When Harvard’s protesters rally for Hamas as freedom fighters and lob at
Israel labels that represent the worst evils, they are repeating what they are
being taught in classrooms and at campus events.
It begins with a distorted, often inaccurate, recurring narrative, practically a script, taught
across departments, courses, events, and faculty advocacy. That narrative promotes the view
that Israel—a tiny country with half of the world’s Jewish population—is the last remaining
colonial settler power embodying the world’s worst evils: racism, apartheid, and genocide. The
narrative presents the Palestinian people as innocent victims of Jewish (white) oppression and
known terrorist groups, such as Hamas, as “political movements.” The narrative’s omissions are as
significant as its distortions and inaccuracies.
Once Harvard’s instructors make Israel the top perpetrator of the world’s evils while omitting facts
disputing their claims, Harvard’s students accept that one-sided narrative.
Israel is the last remaining colonial settler power embodying the
world’s worst evils.
Because we lacked access to classrooms and to most course syllabi, we could only identify potentially
relevant courses by searching for words such as “Israel” and “Palestine” in Harvard’s course catalog’s
titles and descriptions. This is why HJAA is insisting that an independent, third-party auditor with
full access to the educational offerings and classrooms be appointed to identify the full range of
courses with lectures or units promoting either the anti-Israel narrative or a more balanced one.
These are examples of courses we found that either clearly address the conflict or may have relevant
lectures/readings:
● Religion, Nationalism, and Settler Colonialism: The Case of Israel/Palestine (HDS 3337 – Professor
Diane Moore). “[E]xamines the conceptual logic of using a settler-colonial lens to interpret
the history and politics of Israel/Palestine … [and] identify the relevance of global
anti-racism and social movements.…”
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● Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/Palestine (HDS 3335 – Atalia
Omer, Diane Moore) examine[s] a diversity of narratives regarding displacement and
belonging in and about Israel/Palestine, centering concerns with human rights, historical
justice and accountability, and critical religious literacy….
● The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health (GHP 264, School of Public Health – Professor Bram
Wispelwey) introduces students “…to the concept of settler colonialism and its health equity
implications for indigenous and settler populations…[u]tilizing case studies from the United
States, South Africa, and Palestine/Israel.
● Palestine Social Medicine Course (School of Public Health – Yara Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh,
David Mills, Osama Tannous, Bram Wispelwey) offers both conceptual and practical
engagement with the structural determinants of health affecting Palestinians in the West
Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel, and the Diaspora. “The Palestine Social Medicine Course occurs
annually at Birzeit University in the West Bank, occupied Palestinian territories.”
● Middle East Ethnography: Discourse, Politics, and Culture (Anthropology 2690 – Professor Steven
C. Caton). “The discursive construction of culture and its complex politics are examined in a
wide range of ethnographies that have been written recently on countries in the Middle East,
including … Israel/Palestine…. Among the theoretical topics to be considered are
orientalism, colonialism and post-colonialism, nationalism, self, gender, and tribalism.”
● Political Violence and Power (Freshman Seminar 720, FAS – Dr. William Whitham) “explore[s]
the ethics, psychology, and sociology of political violence over the past 150 years. We’ll
examine fin-de-siècle anarchists, communist regimes across Eurasia, German Nazism and
Italian fascism, anti-colonial struggles in Algeria and Palestine, and the rise of jihadi
networks and far-right ‘lone wolves.’”
● A Critical Introduction to the Study of the Middle East Course (Hist 1800 – Professor Jesse Howell)
“introduces students to the medieval and modern history of the Middle East. Readings and
discussions will also focus on key Harvard University 856 of 1891 categories of analysis
such as orientalism, modernity, capitalism, gender, (post)colonialism, nationalism,
anthropocene.”
● The Making of the Modern Middle East (Late-18th Century to the Present) (Hist 1009 – Professor
Rosie B’sheer). The diverse themes… include… the formation of modern nation states,
colonialism and imperialism—past and present—social and intellectual movements,
gender politics, petro-states in global perspective, and Islam and politics.
● Coloniality, Race, and Catastrophe (Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights 139 – Professor Mayra
Rivera). “[E]xplores the relationship between coloniality, race, and ecology through the lens
of “catastrophe.”
● Re-mediating Colonialism (English 90RC, Pamela Klassen). “This seminar focuses on the public
memory of settler colonialism and Indigenous dispossession in North America and Turtle
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Island….” (Turtle Island is a name for North and Central America, used by some
Indigenous peoples, as well as by some Indigenous rights activists who are making the case
that Palestine’s and Turtle Island’s liberation are entwined).
In 2022-23 and 2023-24, Harvard held many events that spread the virulently anti-Israel
narrative (see Appendix A for more examples and Part 2, Section 3 for more balanced events.)
● Examples before October 7, 2023
○ Harvard Law School sponsored an event for students who had traveled to the
Palestinian territories to “bear witness to the apartheid, military occupation, and
settler-colonialism firsthand.”
○ Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization beyond Partition
(Leila Farsakh, Maha Nassar, Susan Akram). “Shows how notions of citizenship,
sovereignty, and nationhood are being rethought within the broader context of
decolonization.” (CMES)
○ Settler Colonialism, Structural Racism, and The Palestinian Right to Health Special Edition: A
Conversation with the Authors (Osama Tanous, Ben Bouquet, Maria Helbich, Ghada
Majadli, Razzan Quran, Emily Schneider). “[E]xplore[s] the conceptual and material
connections between settler colonialism, structural racism, and human rights
approaches to Palestinian health.” (School of Public Health)
○ Colonial Cartography in Palestine-Israel and the Decolonising Potential of Counter-Maps (Zena
Agha). “Examines the ways we have (re)imagined and (re)drawn the land over the
past 100 years, particularly around the partition of Palestine in 1948… and examines
what counter-mapping and return look like in a destroyed place.”(CMES)
○ Palestine Trek Bearing Witness to apartheid, military occupation, and settler-colonialism. This
year, 170+ Harvard graduate students went on a spring break trek to occupied
Palestine. They met with Palestinian activists, lawyers, academics, students, artists and
witnessed apartheid, military occupation, and settler-colonialism firsthand. (Harvard
Law School)
● After October 7, 2023, it was more of the same.
○ Israel-Hamas War? Tackling the Root Causes (Israel’s settler-colonial and carceral
occupation). Francesca Albanese (CMES)
○ Palestine and the Historian: A History Department Symposium, included a Panel: “Borders,
Apartheid, and Carcerality.” (History Department)
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○ The South Africa ICJ Genocide Case Against Israel: Implications for Palestinian Health,
Timothy Fish-Hodgson, Katherine Iliopoulos, Tlaleng Mofokeng, Rania Muhared
(CMES, Public Health)
○ We Charge Genocide, the Potential and Limits of International Law (Nora Erakat).
○ “Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba,”2(Areej
Sabbagh-Khoury).
○ Palestinian Women in Gaza: War, Health, and Feminist Solidarity, (Zahra Ali, Lila Sharif,
Sara Ihmoud).
CMES’s recommended Readings and Digital Resources on Palestine doesn’t seem to include a
single resource providing a more balance or an alternative perspective.
● Professor Cemal Kafadar (CMES Director) and Professor Rosie Bsheer (CMES Associate
Director) curated a list of roughly 60 resources with the expressed purpose to “offer analyses
and histories of expulsion, occupation, settler colonialism, forced evictions, home
demolitions, and annexation that situate the current struggle as part of the ongoing Nakba
of 1948 and in relation to the Naksa of 1967.”
The demands by the Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine in its January 24
statement also repeat the narrative.
● “The US government, media, and other institutions of knowledge production have long
provided financial, military, moral, and political cover for the Israeli occupation and its
colonial, racial violence.”
● “We call on the university to withdraw investments from the State of Israel and all
companies that sustain Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and systematic human rights
abuses against Palestinians.”
● “As educational workers, we are focused on boycotts of Israeli academic institutions that
support apartheid and colonial occupation.”
Some Harvard courses/faculty appear to excuse or even valorize violence against Israel.
Some courses/faculty appear to excuse or even valorize violence
against Israel
2 The meaning of “the Nakba” is hotly debated. In Arabic, “Nakba,” which means “catastrophe,” is the term
Arab countries use to describe the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Israel and others call this war “the War of
Independence.” As with everything else related to this subject, there are multiple perspectives on the
evolution of the word’s meaning.
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● CMES’ website references Hamas 15 times without using the word terror or terrorism.
● Roughly a decade ago, Sara Roy, a Harvard lecturer and associate of the Center for Middle
Eastern Studies, published a book claiming Hamas had “emphasized not political violence
but rather community development and civic restoration….” The lecturer still hasn’t
acknowledged any contradiction with her previous claim.
● Jihad, War and Peace in Islamic Law and Practice (MODMDEST 207), taught by Emad
Shahin, describes terrorist organizations (Al-Qaeda and ISIS) as “contemporary political
movements.” Excerpts from a required reading: “[T]he suicide bomber belongs in an
important sense to a liberal tradition of armed conflict for the establishment or defense of a
national community.”
● In her EdX course, Professor Diane Moore, Associate Dean of the Religion and Public Life
Program at the Divinity School, describes the terrorist group Hamas as “a Palestinian
Islamic movement, founded with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state that
includes the West Bank.”
● A now-removed October 13, 2024 statement by the Divinity School’s Religion and Public
Life Program after Hamas’ massacre of Israelis acknowledged the “losses on both sides.” It
went on to say, “Start with the rockets fired into Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023,
and not with the illegal occupation of Palestinian land by Israel and the blockade of
Gaza since 2007, and you have an entirely different story.” The passive-voice mention
of “rockets fired into Israel” is the stand-in for the self-reported (and self-recorded)
massacre and the murdering of over 1000 Israeli civilians, including Palestinian Muslims.
Some students understand that these narratives are false. As one student noted: “In terms of our
education… people don’t understand what Zionism is. They think it’s white settler colonialism.
People need to understand the history, not just the Holocaust, but of the Jewish people and why it’s
so important for there to be a Jewish state.” But many students, Jewish and otherwise, don’t know
this information. Once Harvard’s instructors make Israel the top perpetrator of the worst evils while
omitting facts disputing their claims, Harvard’s students accept that one-sided narrative.
Once Harvard’s instructors make Israel the top perpetrator of the worst
evils while omitting facts disputing their claims, Harvard’s students
accept that one-sided narrative.
The Source of the Narrative’s Labels
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Soviet Union Cold War Propaganda Disseminated to Western Academics
There is now substantial literature, including here, here, and here, on how many of the anti-Israel
slogans were the brainchild of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Soviets wanted to
weaken and divide Israel, Jews, and America and unify the Arab world under Soviet leadership.
Still, they also recognized that overt antisemitism wouldn’t fly so soon after the Holocaust.
So, they made antisemitism respectable through “anti-Zionism.” Soviet apparatchiks applied
age-old antisemitic tropes to Israel, invented new ones to resonate with left-wing Western
academics, and then packaged and disseminated the propaganda directly to the European and
American Left and the developing world. Its staying power is due, in part, to elder Arab leaders
who were educated and financed by the USSR.
We can thank Soviet propaganda for many of the slogans we hear across Harvard’s campus today,
including:
● “Zionism is Racism.”
● “Zionists weaponize antisemitism.”
● “Anti-Zionism is not equal to antisemitism.”
● “Israel is conducting genocide.”
● Israel is a “settler colonial state.” (This was coined in 1965 by a Syrian-Palestinian
academic/diplomat, Fayez Sayegh, before Israel controlled the Palestinian territories.)
This history explains why, according to Einat Wilf, Israeli scholar, former politician, and Harvard
graduate, every time someone repeats these slogans, “a Soviet angel claps its wings.”3
We can thank Soviet (KGB) propaganda during the Cold War for many
of the slogans we hear on Harvard’s campus today.
3. In Search of Alternative Perspectives, Including from the
Center for Jewish Studies (CJS)
Given Harvard’s mission “to advance new ideas and promote enduring knowledge,” we would have
expected that the University would prioritize preparing its students to research, analyze, debate, and
grapple with the most complex topics and problems of our time.
3 Labeling Israel an “apartheid state” began at an NGO Forum in 2001 in Durban, South Africa (during the
UN’s World Conference against Racism).
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Some Harvard offerings seem to present greater balance or another perspective on the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
2022-23 School Year
● Harvard Law School sponsored a number of events that provide another perspective.
○ The four events in February 2023 included Progressive Case for Israel (Former NYC
Mayor Bill de Blasio), Deconstructing Apartheid: International Humanitarian Law &
Israel (Anne Herzberg), Diversity in Israel (Anne Herzberg), and an event with
Ambassador Dan Shapiro.
○ In the Spring of 2023, the Law School, in partnership with the Center for Jewish
Studies, also offered a series of lectures on Jewish and Israeli law, although the nature
of the content isn’t clear.
● In the spring of 2023, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy
School held a 5-session study group, Frozen Conflict: Discussing Israel/Palestine with
Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian; Another Belfer Center seminar departing from the
narrative was Daniel Sobelman’s event in April 2023, Asymmetric Coercion and Rules of the
Game: Theory and Evidence from the Israel-Hamas Conflict in the Gaza Strip.
● Professor Derek Penslar offers a course, Jews in the Modern World (History 1017) that
includes lectures on Jews in Israel.
Since October 7, 2023
● The following events/series seek better balance:
○ Law Professor Noah Feldman offered an event about the war in November 2023.
○ One of 14 post-October 7th events sponsored by the Law School rejects the
anti-Israel narrative.
○ Kennedy School Professor Tarek Masoud hosted a series, Middle East Dialogues, to
engage diverse speakers. (One of the speakers, unfortunately, had previously claimed
that Israelis were the October 7th perpetrators and Hamas militants were the victims.)
○ Some speakers in a series by the Weatherhead Center about the war appear more
neutral (although at least one speaker focused mainly on Israel’s transgressions
leading up to October 7th).
There certainly isn’t a critical mass of faculty or events offering a more balanced or
alternative perspective on the Hamas/Israel war or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and
its history.
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It is essential that an independent third-party auditor who knows the ample and highly regarded
peer-reviewed literature on Israel, the Palestinians, Hamas, and the Middle East—and has full access
to Harvard’s curricula and classrooms—be appointed who can identify who is teaching students a
diversity of views. (See Appendix B)
There are two possibilities. Either Harvard’s professors know this peer-reviewed literature and
choose to ignore it, or they do not even know about it. Either way, it is not a good look for Harvard.
Either Harvard’s professors know this peer-reviewed literature and
choose to ignore it, or they do not even know about it. Either way, it is
not a good look for Harvard.
We expected that the Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) would be pushing back against the
narrative. Instead, CJS seems to want to avoid the topic of modern Israel almost entirely.
The Center for Jewish Studies (CJS) seems to want to avoid the topic
of modern Israel almost entirely.
● In 2023-24, only one out of 40 CJS courses (excluding language courses) even partially
relates to Israel. See here and here. Instead, it is teaching such subjects as:
○ Medicine in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust—Anatomy as Example for Changes in Medical
Science
○ Zombies and Spirits, Ghosts and Ghouls: Interactions between the Living and the Dead
○ Early Christian Apocrypha
○ Jewish Mysticism: From the Spanish Expulsion to the New Age
○ Advanced Topics in Jewish Law: The Law of the Messiah
○ Jewish Law and Critical Theory Seminar
In 2023-24, only one out of the 40 courses offered by Harvard’s
Center for Jewish Studies focuses even partially on Israel.
● Between October 7, 2023, and April 2024, it appears that only 3 of the 34 CJS-sponsored
events focused on the war between Israel and Hamas or on the crisis facing Jews worldwide.
Among the other events:
○ Ethiopian Jewish Identity: A Journey through the Prism of Scientific Knowledge
○ Black & Jewish, a Talk Series, I was not black, I became black here:” Formation of Blackness in
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Israel
○ Jews and Crypto-Christianity in 18th-Century Europe: The Case of Rabbi Jonathan Eibeschütz
○ Disastrous Diseases and Ritual Resilience: Early Modern Jews Confront Plague
○ The Missing Link? Early Modern Jewish Scholasticism
○ From the Four Corners of the World: Judeo-Arabic Journalism in 19th-20th Century North
Africa
○ Jewish Prayers for Divine Vengeance
○ It Could Lead to Dancing
○ Jews in Modern Europe Seminar
○ Israel at its Finest Hour: Emotional Management on the Eve of the 1967 War
○ Seeing Another People: Historical American Jewish Encounters with Palestinians
● CJS Professors hired by Harvard since 2000 seem to have other priorities.
○ One has expertise in “critical theory and gender and sexuality studies.”
○ Another focuses on “the interplay between Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew language
and literature in modern, secularizing Jewish culture … especially as they relate to
queer and gender studies, multilingualism, ex-Orthodoxy, and migration.”
○ A third CJS professor is a “critical theorist and a historian of modern European
philosophy and social thought, specializing in Frankfurt School critical theory,
phenomenology, existentialism, and Western Marxism.”
● Visiting professors/lecturers do not appear to fill the gap.
○ In 2022-23, CJS brought in an Israeli historian to teach two courses: one on the
Eastern European Jews 1700-1939 and the other on modern Jewish politics (which
addresses “Israel/Palestine” through the twentieth century but focuses on Central
and Eastern Europe).
○ In 2023-24, one visiting lecturer’s focus is “diversity-focused journalism,” while
another’s course is on Jews in the medieval period.
○ CJS’s 2023-24 fellowship theme is “Jewish migration in the 16th-21st centuries.”
4. Event Speakers/Visiting Professors with a Public Paper Trail of
Antisemitism
Professors, lecturers, and event speakers whom Harvard invites to campus celebrate violence
(against Israel and the West) and traffic in antisemitic tropes (including the blood libel claim that
Jews kill non-Jews to use their blood for their ritual food and drink.) More recently, speakers have
denied the October 7th massacre or blamed it entirely on Israel.
Examples of Harvard’s Event Speakers
Dalal Saeb Iriqat, speaker at Kennedy School
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○ “What happened on 10/7? The burnt bodies were Hamas militants & now we learn Israeli
helicopter fire may have killed ravers!”
Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University professor who has presented at multiple Harvard
talks/conferences (and, according to numerous sources, was the former spokesman for the
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1970s)
○ Referring to “a group of people, a lot of them in Israel and some in the United States,”
said, “Unfortunately, these people infest the Trump transition team; these people are going
to infest our government as of January 20.”
Mohammed el-Kurd, a frequent guest of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), who has
spoken at HLS in 2021, 2022, and 2023
○ Claimed that “they [Israelis] harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their
warriors our own.”
○ Stated that Zionists have an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood.”
○ Celebrated the Second Intifada (five years of Palestinian terrorism against Israel): “Today
marks 21 years since the start of the Second Intifada. Glory to those who resisted and
sacrificed. Glory to the martyrs…. The struggle continues until liberation.”
Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur, Palestinian territories, speaker at HLS event:
○ Her 2014 open letter said: “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish
lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust.”
Taurean Webb, a Harvard Divinity School Religion and Public Life Fellow, event speaker:
○ Said/wrote the following comments about American Jews: “It’s also a historical fact that
American Jewish immigrants have always been a foundational building block for the white
supremacist infrastructure in this country….We know that from the data.”
○ “Israel uses the idea of ‘chosenness’ and the European Jewish Holocaust as a tactic of
racial control.”
“It’s also a historical fact that American Jewish immigrants have always
been a foundational building block for the white supremacist
infrastructure in this country….We know that from the data.” – Harvard
fellow
Harvard’s recent visiting professors/scholars
● Emad Shahin, CMES Shawwaf Visiting Professor, taught five Harvard classes on the
modern Middle East during the 2022-23 school year. (Before that, Shahin had been
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convicted in absentia of “conspiring with foreign armed groups, including Hamas and the
Lebanese group Hezbollah,” to destabilize Egypt.) He is the professor who kicked an Israeli
visiting student out of class when he allowed other visiting to stay in class.
● Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a 2023-24 Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict
and Peace at the Divinity School:
○ In 2019, claimed that the Israeli military was using Palestinian children to test its
weapons.
○ Denied the rape of Israelis by Hamas on October 7th (despite live footage).
● Yael Berda, a Harvard visiting scholar since 2020, described Israel’s permit system for
allowing Palestinians to enter Israel as follows: “[I]t’s not about security! It’s about
segregation, separation, and containment.”
5. Anti-Democratic Middle Eastern Countries Picking Up the Tab
From 2020 to 2023, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies
(CMES) allegedly received $1.5 billion from foreign entities and
governments.
● Between 2014 and 2019, Harvard received $894 million from Middle Eastern
anti-democratic governments. During those same years, Harvard’s five gifts from Israel
totaled $3.1 million.
● From 2020 to 2023, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) allegedly received
$1.5 billion from foreign entities and governments.
● Although Harvard won’t publicize how it spends these funds, it sometimes is obvious—e.g.,
the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program and the four Prince Alwaleed Bin
Talal Professorships. Otherwise, it is a black box.
● A recent report connects the total amount of foreign funding by authoritarian countries to
US colleges with the erosion of free speech and an increase in antisemitic events on their
college campuses.
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PART III
Sidechat: Where No One Knows Your Name
The Social Media Platform Exclusively Used By Harvard Students
is Replete with Unchecked Antisemitism
Harvard’s very own anonymous social media platform, Sidechat, which requires a Harvard
email address to log on, has exploded with antisemitic tropes and posts.
● “When you see posts [on Sidechat] that are so vehemently anti-Israel and false and are
getting 500 – 700 upvotes, [it’s clear that] we’ve lost the information war on this campus
because you see such a significant percentage of the student body think Israel is a colonialist
apartheid state – just look at the upvotes.”
● “Sidechat is always gross, and I typically like it because a lot of it’s funny, and you just sort of
ignore the gross parts, but I had to delete it because it was just too much. I couldn’t handle it
emotionally. But one thing that I saw, and I actually reported it to the moderators for being
antisemitic, and then they didn’t take it down, they didn’t agree…. They were basically
saying, ‘I don’t understand why, I really don’t get how, okay, so some white Germans killed
some white Jews a while ago, and now they get a whole country [because of the]
Holocaust….’ People saw it and were like, ‘yes, I agree with this. This makes sense.’”
● Two friends and I wrote an article for the Crimson…. I was very proud to be a part of that.
There were no repercussions in person, but it was a different story on Sidechat. They always
claim they aren’t antisemitic, but the truth of [how they feel can be seen] on Sidechat. [After
our article was published], we were called Zionist puppets.”
“[On Sidechat] they were basically saying… ‘I really don’t get how,
okay, so some white Germans killed some white Jews a while ago, and
now they get a whole country [because of the] Holocaust….’”
Although there are too many Sidechat posts to share in this one document, below are some
examples.
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Posts like the ones above spurred Harvard, in January 2024, to ask Sidechat to better moderate
content and restrict access only to undergraduates. The un-coded antisemitism reputedly has
tamped down some since, but that is little comfort to Jewish students.
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The confidence students must have to post and like these posts, likely because they are anonymous,
exposes a deep-seated and pervasive hatred of Jews—and a serious education crisis—at Harvard.
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PART IV
Harvard’s Nonresponse
Harvard’s Administration Continues to Be Unresponsive
to Most Attacks on Jewish Students
The Administration has repeatedly ignored Jewish students’ pleas for help (and their formal
complaints) despite clear violations of Harvard’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies. There
have been few to no consequences for the perpetrators of hate speech and bullying. And now we
know there will not be consequences for those students, faculty, and staff in the protests and
encampments who have made Jews feel physically unsafe and disrupted and imperiled the broader
Harvard community.
Although we tried but failed to get information about the number of complaints/reports Jewish
students submitted and the resolutions, here is what we heard from students.
“The double standards of the Harvard administration is very
jarring.”
● From the student who was kicked out of a class for being Israeli: “First, I reached out to
Hillel, and I asked them what should I do. They checked, and they told me to file a
complaint through the DEI [office]. I had a conversation with my Resident Dean and Dean
Khurana…. Everyone said, ‘Hey, I hear you.’ There was no follow-up.”
● From the student who discussed the swastika in Currier House: “All Harvard did to address
it was that the faculty deans of Currier put out a statement that said, ‘We deplore hate.’ The
statement went to the Currier House email listserv. It was never addressed more broadly. I
have a friend who lived there and was very angry, and so that’s how I knew about it.”
● “The double standard of the Harvard administration is very jarring. A gay law school student
was assaulted by another law school student. An email went out to every student at the law
school the same day saying that they were suspending the person. It has been three weeks
since the assault [of a Jewish student at Harvard Business School], and only one of the
people has been removed from an official Harvard position [but not suspended].”
● “At the talk, one of the moderators was an HDS [Harvard Divinity School] student, and that
student is under FBI investigation for the now infamous protest at HBS [Harvard Business
School; this student participated in the assault on a Jewish student]…. He got fired from
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being a proctor but is still a student. I saw him in class today, wearing his Keffiyeh. HDS
students have written countless letters saying that they kicked him out because he’s black and
because he’s pro-Palestinian.”
● We keep meeting with the Administration, and nothing happens. They are not enforcing
their [First Amendment] time, place, and manner restrictions. These students are getting a
pass which leads me to wonder: what’s going to happen next year?”
● “[A University] administrator … said that ‘intifada’ is a 2 out of 10 in terms of hate speech.”
We, too, never received a response to an earlier draft of this report, which we shared with Interim
President Alan Garber, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana, and Executive Vice President
Meredith Weenick on January 22, 2024. On February 25th, President Garber asked us if he could
share our report with his Task Force on Antisemitism. Two months later, on April 25th, the Task
Force’s co-chair, Professor Derek Penslar, requested a copy of the report from us because he had
yet to receive one from the Administration.
Harvard’s double standard when it comes to protecting its Jewish students is the basis for HJAA’s
first stated request: For the Administration and Corporation to “take swift, concrete and public
action to enforce the University’s codes of conduct uniformly and without exception, and discipline
students, faculty and staff who violate them.” Here is a complete list of HJAA’s objectives and
requests.
HJAA Objectives and Requests
As concerned alumni of Harvard University, we, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA),
advocate for “a community that is open, welcoming and inclusive and that supports all community
members in pursuit of the University’s mission of learning, teaching, research and discovery” per
Harvard’s anti-bullying policy.
We believe that achieving the University’s stated mission requires an environment that encourages
informed dialogue, critical thinking, mutual respect, empathy, academic integrity, and academic
freedom. Harvard’s mission also requires a safe learning and non-hostile work environment.
To restore such a community, we request that the administration promptly:
● Take swift, concrete, and public action to enforce the University’s codes of conduct
uniformly and without exception, and discipline students, faculty, and staff who violate
them. Disrupting classes and occupying buildings should not be tolerated.
● Adopt the globally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
working definition of antisemitism, including its examples, as part of the official Harvard
policies for identifying and investigating alleged incidents of antisemitic discrimination,
harassment, intimidation, and other behavior.
● Adopt University-wide a set of clear principles on academic freedom and institutional
neutrality, such as those promulgated by The Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard.
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● Initiate an independent, third-party investigation tasked with creating a public report of
various practices at each Harvard school, including curriculum, events, admissions policies,
and student, faculty, or administrator behavior that may violate Harvard’s
anti-discrimination policy and/or its anti-bullying policy and/or IHRA definition.
● Launch a transparent inquiry, followed by a public report, about the Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) office objectives and practices at each Harvard school, in
light of their failure to sufficiently include Jews and antisemitism in their mission and
programming.
● Mandate that all faculty, staff, and offices whose responsibility is to address issues of
discrimination receive ongoing training on the IHRA definition with all its examples, and
the use of social media and other platforms to spread hate and bigotry.
Conclusion: Harvard, Are You Listening?
Denied equal access to an education and experience. Denied equal application of the code of
conduct. Afraid for their physical, emotional, and intellectual safety. Victims of a pervasive cancel
culture. Subject to a pervasive hostile environment, even within classrooms.
We will leave it to the academics to debate theoretically whether anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.
In practice, the impact for Jews at Harvard is what it has always been when any community,
academic or otherwise, obsessively demonizes and delegitimizes the only Jewish state.
The impact for Jews at Harvard is what it has always been
when any community, academic or otherwise, obsessively
demonizes and delegitimizes the only Jewish state.
As HJAA members, we started by examining the impact of Harvard’s education on Israeli and other
Jewish students. We now understand that the problem is far deeper. One faculty member explained
why: “Yes, students are under attack. But mainly, all of them should feel ripped off…. It is
indoctrination, not education.” A student with whom we spoke concurred, “Almost everybody I
know, including myself, does not represent their true attitudes in the classroom.”
Once again, Jewish and Israeli students are the proverbial “canaries in the coal mine.” What they are
experiencing reflects the failure of education writ large. Yes, they came for us Jews first, but
democratic, liberal values are at risk.
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Yes, they came for us Jews first, but democratic, liberal
values are at risk.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Harvard, are you listening?
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Appendix A
Harvard Events Perpetuating the Anti-Israel Narrative
September 2022 – June 2023
Work in Progress
Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
April 2023
Decolonizing Israel: The Potential Contribution of the Palestinian Citizens
Nadim Rouhana, Professor of International Negotiation and Conflict Studies, Fletcher School of
Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; Discussant: Atalia Omer, Professor of Religion, Conflict and
Peace Studies, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame, and the T. J. Dermot
Dunphy Visiting Professor of Religion, Violence, and Peacebuilding, Harvard Divinity School
Co-sponsors: CMES/WCFIA Middle East Seminar, CMES Middle East Forum
Co-sponsor: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
* * *
March 2023
Jerusalem: Examining Settler Colonialism and Undoing Colonial Knowledge Production
The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar is pleased to present
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Lawrence D Biele Chair in Law, Institute of Criminology-Faculty of
Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and Chair in Global Law, Queen Mary University of
London; Discussant: M. Brinton Lykes, PhD, Professor of Community-Cultural Psychology and
Co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Boston College
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s research focuses on trauma, state crimes and criminology,
surveillance, gender violence, law and society. She studies the crime of femicide and other forms of
gendered based violence, violence against children in conflict ridden areas, crimes of abuse of power
in settler colonial contexts, surveillance, securitization and social control.
Co-sponsor: Weatherhead Center
* * *
March 2023
American Public Views Towards the Middle East: The Political Psychology of Racialization
Karam Dana, Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative
Research at the University of Washington Bothell. Karam Dana is a Palestinian American academic.
Dana is one of the earliest scholars of Islam and Muslims in the US, and served as the co-PI of the
Muslim American Public Opinion Survey (MAPOS), which was one of the earliest national surveys
of American Muslims. He also studies the question of Palestine, the impact of Israeli occupation on
Palestinian society, and Palestinian transnationalism.
Co-sponsor: Weatherhead Center
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* * *
February 2023
Crossing a Line: Laws, Violence and Roadblocks to Political Expression – Book Event with
Amahl Bishara
Amahl A. Bishara, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University
Moderator/Respondent: Raef Zreik, Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict and Peace,
Co-Sponsor Harvard Divinity School
* * *
November 2022
Book event: “Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization
beyond Partition”
Leila Farsakh, Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts, Boston;
Maha Nassar, Associate Professor, Modern Middle East History, Islamic Studies at University of
Arizona; Susan Akram, Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University
Moderated by: Rabea Eghbariah, RCPI Topol Fellow
Co-sponsor: Harvard Divinity School Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative
* * *
November 2022
Colonial Cartography in Palestine-Israel and the Decolonising Potential of Counter-Maps
Zena Agha, PhD Candidate, Newcastle University; Visiting Fellow, CMES
This talk examines the geographical imaginaries of mapping practices in Palestine-Israel and the potential of
counter-mapping in a project of decolonisation.
Zena Agha is a Palestinian-Iraqi writer, poet and multi-disciplinary artist from London.
* * *
October 2022
Book talk: “Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire”
The CMES Middle East Forum, Harvard University, the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative,
Religion and Public Life, Harvard Divinity School, and The FXB Center for Health & Human
Rights present a tour of the newly released book
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
with contributors Asmaa AbuMezied: author of “Lost Identity: The Tale of Peasantry and
Nature;” Yousef Aljamal: author of “Travel Restrictions as a Manifestation of Nakba: Gaza, the
Path Backward is the Path Forward; Jehad Abusalim, co-editor and author of the introduction to
Light in Gaza, will provide concluding remarks.
* * *
October 2022
Viruses Remaking Borders? Unwanted Organisms in Palestine/Israel from Covid-19 to Climate
Change
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Natalia Gutkowski, Postdoctoral scholar, The Society of Fellows, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem
Moderator: Steven Caton, Khalid Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud Professor of
Contemporary Arab Studies, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Natalia Gutkowski is a social anthropologist and a political ecologist working on interfaces of state
governance and power in the agrarian environment in Palestine/Israel and beyond.
* * *
September 2022
Hamas in Cyberspace: Social Media and New Forms of Political Expression
The CMES Middle East Forum is pleased to present Mohammedwesam Amer, Fulbright
Scholar and Visiting Researcher, Centre For Middle East Studies, Harvard University; Dean, Faculty
of Mass Communication and Languages, Gaza University, Palestine
School of Public Health
May 2023
Escalating Violence and Restrictions on Health in Palestine: An On-The-Ground Perspective
Dr. Abdulsalam Khayyat, Vice President for Academic Affairs, An-Najah National University;
Yara M. Asi, PhD, Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global
Health Management and Informatics; Benjamin Bouquet, PhD, Technical Officer for Public
Health and Human Rights with the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territory;
Maryam Mustafa, Community Health Worker, health program coordinator in the Balata refugee
camp; Ossama Mustafa, Yafa Cultural Center Director of International Relations and Projects; Dr.
Fouad Nafaa, Head of Rafidia Hospital Surgical Department in Nablus.
Join the FXB Center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, the An-Najah National
University Virtual Exchange Collaborative, and the An-Najah Global Health Institute for a panel
discussion around the escalating violence and restrictions on health in Palestine with speakers
offering perspectives from their work in the region.
* * *
December 2022
Settler Colonialism, Structural Racism, and The Palestinian Right to Health Special
Edition: A conversation with the Authors
Carmel Williams, PhD, executive editor of Health and Human Rights, the FXB Center’s flagship
publication; Osama Tanous, MD, pediatrician and public health scholar based in Haifa and a
clinical instructor of pediatrics in the Technion, Haifa; Benjamin Bouquet, PhD candidate in
health and human rights and medical doctor in Palestine; Maria Helbich, MSc, clinical
psychotherapist (Psychodrama) from Vienna, Austria, specializing in gender-based violence and
trauma; Ghada Majadli, director, department of The Occupied Palestinian Territory at Physicians
for Human Rights Israel (PHRI); Razzan Quran, Doctoral Student in Psychodynamic
Psychotherapy, Palestinian social justice organizer; Emily Schneider, Assistant Professor of
Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northern Arizona University.
* * *
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October 2022
The Embodiment of Protest: Hunger Strikes, Human Rights, and the Health of Palestinian
Political Prisoners
The FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, Religion
and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School and the Middle East Forum, Center for Middle Eastern
Studies are pleased to present:
Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, Physician and Chairperson, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel
Sahar Francis, Director General, Addameer Prisoner’s Support and Human Rights Association
Moderator: Randa Wahbe, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Hunger strikes have been used as means for non-violent resistance and protest over the past several
decades by Palestinian political prisoners in Israel/Palestine. The featured panelists will draw on
their expertise and experience in the fields of health and human rights to explore various legal,
medical, and human rights dimensions of hunger strikes being staged by Palestinian political
prisoners.
Divinity School
May 2023 Video
The Palestinian Question as a Jewish Question
Raef Zreik, Religion and Public Life Visiting Scholar in Conflict and Peace
Zreik interrogates the ways questions of war and peace, borders, security, or the ‘two state’ solution
become more and more internal to Israel. Related intimately to the state’s identity, character and
constitutional structure and democratic nature, these questions highlight the merging conversation
of existence and essence. The Palestinian Question as a Jewish Question
* * *
September 2022
“Learning in Context: Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel/Palestine”
HDS students from the 2022 trip, in an evening of storytelling, poetry, and photography, discuss
their experiences of joy and resistance from their summer in Israel/Palestine.
https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/news/2023/4/8/video-displacement-and-belonging-israelpalestine
* * *
Harvard Law School
April 2023
Palestine Trek Bearing Witness
170+ Harvard graduate students went on a spring break trek to occupied Palestine. They met with
Palestinian activists, lawyers, academics, students, artists and witnessed apartheid, military
occupation, and settler-colonialism firsthand. Now, they’re back, and they’d like to share their
experiences with the rest of the Harvard community. Come join PalTrek’s Bear Witness share-back
session to learn about what they saw while in occupied Palestine, how it affected them, and how
their experiences connect to the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation.
* * *
HJAA Audit, page 45
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 46 of 50
April 2023
Graduate Students 4 Palestine: Go Back and Tell Them What You Saw
Curious about what it is like to spend your summer living in Israel/Palestine? Join graduate students
across the Harvard schools . . . as they share their experiences of joy and resistance from their
summer and how graduate students can get involved in the newly launched Graduate Students 4
Palestine.
* * *
March 2023
Settler Logics: The Israeli Settlement Movement in Context
Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler, Assoc. Prof. at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy,
Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) and Oded Haklai, Prof. of Political Science and Director of
the Laboratory for Ethnic Conflict Research at Queens University.
A discussion of the Israeli settler movement in light of current legal and political developments in
Israel and in comparison with other settler systems around the world.
* * *
February 2023
Litigating Palestinian Rights in the Israeli Supreme Court: Legitimation or Resistance
This talk explores cause lawyering and strategic litigation of Palestinian rights before the Israeli
Supreme Court. It reflects on the fundamental question of bringing Palestinian cases before the
Israeli Court: is it a strategy that ultimately contributes to legitimizing fundamentally unjust
policies, or is it a medium of legal resistance?
* * *
October 2022
A Conversation with Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine Program Director at Human Rights
Watch
Omar Shakir, Director of Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine Program will speak with students
about his work at HRW, apartheid in Israel, and global solidarity movements.
* * *
Harvard Kennedy School
February 2023
Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship
Dr. Yael Berda, MEI Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew
University, will discuss her new book, Colonial Bureaucracy and Contemporary Citizenship, which
examines how the legacies of colonial bureaucratic structures continue to shape political life after
empire, with a focus on the former British colonies of India, Cyprus, and Israel/Palestine,with MEI
Senior Fellow and journalist Rami Khouri.
Sponsored by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
HJAA Audit, page 46
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 47 of 50
The Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
See CMES
* * *
The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Nathan Thrall’s “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama”
A book talk with author Nathan Thrall as he discusses his latest book, A Day in the Life of Abed
Salama, with Carr Center Senior Fellow, Kenneth Roth.
Sample from the 2022 – 2023 School Year
HJAA Audit, page 47
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 48 of 50
Appendix B
The Narrative’s Inaccuracies, Distortions, and Omissions
There is a large and highly regarded peer-reviewed body of literature exposing the
prevailing narrative’s inaccuracies, distortions, and omissions.
● Jews were indigenous to the land of Israel and have had a continuous presence there for over
3000 years, with a Jewish kingdom by 900 BCE. (See here and here.) Jews who came from
Eastern Europe to Israel after World War II moved to Israel as bedraggled, displaced
refugees, often having languished in displaced person camps for years after WWII because
no country would take them.
● Less than half of Israelis are white. Israel is a multi-ethnic society. More than half of Israelis
are descendants of Jews coming from other Middle Eastern countries, having been expelled
(often violently) after Israel was established; more than 20% of Israelis have an Arab or
Druze identity. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not a racial one.
● Unlike in Gaza, Arab citizens of Israel have the same political rights as Jewish Israelis and
have served in the Israeli government, in parliament, and as judges.
● Hamas is not a grassroots movement of freedom fighters acting out a desperation; it is a
well-established and very well-funded franchise of a global network of armed organizations
devoted to global jihad, eliminating Israel, and killing as many Jews as possible. (Even its
more PR-friendly Charter in 2017 (a revision of its 1988 Charter) calls for eliminating Israel.)
The anti-Israel narrative omits vital facts about and the complexities of the Middle East.
● Israel’s violence against Palestinians and supposed desire to absorb the Palestinian Territories
anchor the narrative. What the narrative doesn’t cover:
○ There is no acknowledgment that, after living across the Middle East for 2500 years,
roughly 900,000 Jews were persecuted, lost their property, and faced severe violence
in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen before many of them
came to Israel.
○ Israel has offered, and the Palestinians have repeatedly (1937, 1948, 2000, 2008)
refused to accept a nation-state for themselves if it meant Israel would have a state of
its own.
○ During the most ambitious peace negotiations, the Palestinians launched the Second
Intifada. From 2000 to 2005, over 100 Palestinian suicide bombings maimed or killed
Israelis in Israeli buses, cafes, and streets.
○ Hamas launched significant attacks against Israel in 2008, 2009, 2014, 2021, and then
on October 7th. And, in between, it has fired tens of thousands of rockets into
southern Israel with the intent of maximizing civilian harm.
HJAA Audit, page 48
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 49 of 50
○ Israel is the size of New Jersey (8,600 square miles) and has a population of 9 million
people. Israel is surrounded by 22 Arab states which encompass 5 million square
miles and have over 450 million people. (See here)
● Harvard’s programs describe Gaza as occupied even though Gaza has not been occupied
since 2005 when Israel forcibly removed all Israelis living there. There was a ceasefire in
Gaza on October 6, 2023.
● Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, with free elections, an open press, and the
protection of minority rights. Certainly, Gaza isn’t a democracy. In Gaza, Hamas persecutes
minorities, including women and Christians, and kills anyone who is LGBTQ. As such, Israel
is an essential strategic ally and friend to the US and Western democracies.
● Prior to October 7th, Israel employment an estimated 140,000 Palestinians from the
Palestinian Territories; Israel also offered health care, including to the October 7th
mastermind, which saved his life.
HJAA Audit, page 49
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-1 Filed 05/28/24 Page 50 of 50
EXHIBIT B
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 1 of 43
1
Miles J. Herszenhorn, et al., Harvard President Gay Forms Advisory Group to Combat Antisemitism on Campus, THE HARV. CRIMSON (Oct. 30,
2023), https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/30/gay-hillel-speech/.
1.
Letter from Claudine Gay, President, Harv. Univ., to Harv. Community (Nov. 9, 2023), https://www.harvard.edu/president/news-
gay/2023/combating-antisemitism/ [hereinafter Letter].
2.
Antisemitism Advisory Grp., Potential Statement of Goals and Steps to Address Antisemitism Issues (Dec. 18, 2023) (unpublished doc.) (on file
with Committee) [hereinafter Antisemitism Advisory Group Recommendations].
3.
COMMITTEE ON
EDUCATION &
THE WORKFORCE
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Investigative Update
The Antisemitism Advisory Group and Harvard’s Response:
Clarity and Inaction
COMMITTEE STAFF
REPORT
On October 27, 2023, Harvard University’s then-President Claudine Gay announced the formation of an eight-member
Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG, or the Group) amidst considerable scrutiny of the University’s response to increased
antisemitism on its campus following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel(1). The AAG was composed of
Harvard faculty, alumni (including the Vice-Chair of Harvard’s Board of Overseers), and a student representative. In a
November 9, 2023, statement, Gay emphasized the importance of the AAG’s work, saying, “This group’s wisdom,
experience, and moral conviction will help lead us forward. The Advisory Group will work closely with me, guided by
Provost Alan Garber and with the help of the School deans, to develop a robust strategy for confronting antisemitism on
campus”(2).
These recommendations include “zero tolerance” of classroom disruptions; protecting shared learning environments;
holding student organizations accountable for adhering to University rules; countering antisemitic speech; reviewing the
academic rigor of classes and programs with antisemitic content; reviewing Harvard’s Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion,
and Belonging’s (OEDIB) inadequacy in addressing antisemitism; increasing intellectual diversity; and investigating the
potential influence of “dark money” from Iran, Qatar, and associates of terrorist groups on campus(3).
Additionally, the impetus for Gay’s November 9 statement touting the AAG was a letter from five of the eight AAG
members, warning that they could not continue in their advisory roles without significant concrete actions by university
leadership, given these members’ dissatisfaction with Harvard’s response to antisemitism and Harvard’s leaders’ failure to
clarify the AAG’s remit.
The Committee on Education and the Workforce investigation has found that in mid-December 2023 the AAG presented
Harvard’s leaders with a robust set of significant recommendations on combating antisemitism at Harvard, which were not
made public and remain unimplemented.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 2 of 43
2
The failure to implement the AAG’s advice did not come from a lack of engagement by Harvard’s seniormost leaders.
Harvard’s then-Provost and current Interim President Alan Garber attended and led each AAG meeting. Gay herself
attended nine of 15 AAG meetings. Unfortunately, this involvement, even if well-intentioned, did not translate to taking the
actions required to address the explosion of virulent antisemitism at Harvard in a meaningful way.
The following are some of the Committee’s findings in this investigative update:
In December 2023, Harvard’s AAG presented Harvard’s leadership with significant recommendations on goals and
steps to address antisemitism at the University.
The AAG found antisemitic harassment to be a significant problem at Harvard.
The AAG found there to be pervasive ostracization of Israeli students at Harvard.
A majority of the AAG threatened to resign over concerns about the inadequacy of Harvard’s response to
antisemitism and a lack of clarity on the AAG’s charge and future work.
The AAG had limited engagement with the deans of Harvard’s various schools.
The AAG had limited engagement with Harvard’s ultimate governing board, the Harvard Corporation.
There was a lack of clarity regarding plans and a timeline for the AAG to be succeeded by an Antisemitism Task
Force.
Harvard’s leaders failed to consult the AAG in advance of President Gay’s congressional testimony on antisemitism.
The AAG’s members identified numerous issues of concern for action to Harvard’s leaders. These included the
following:
The need to share more information on disciplinary outcomes publicly.
The importance of condemning antisemitic rhetoric as antithetical to Harvard’s values.
The insufficiency of Harvard’s response to reports of antisemitic incidents.
Concern regarding dramatic declines in Jewish enrollment at Harvard.
The need to examine terror financiers’ potential influence at Harvard.
The need to address masked protest on campus.
The above findings, which are detailed further below, are based on documents produced to the Committee in response to
its February 16, 2024, subpoena, including detailed contemporaneous notes of each AAG meeting recorded by the Harvard
Provost’s Office, as well as the Committee’s March 18, 2024, interview with AAG Member Dr. Dara Horn. The Committee
continues to receive documents from Harvard in its ongoing investigation and in response to its subpoena.
While the Committee believes there is a substantial and compelling public interest in releasing the AAG’s
recommendations and other findings, we also are mindful of the fact that the Group’s members offered their advice on a
confidential basis. As such, we will not be identifying statements by individual members of the AAG from records of the
Group’s activities. The Committee will identify statements made by Gay and Garber (and other senior administrators such
as Vice Provost Peggy Newell and Dean of Students Thomas Dune), given their positions as Harvard’s leaders responsible
for determining the University’s response to antisemitism. This Investigative Update will be followed by additional
releases on the Committee’s findings from its investigations of Harvard and other postsecondary institutions.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 3 of 43
4. Antisemitism Advisory Group Recommendations, supra note 3.
5. Horn Tr. 90, Mar. 18, 2024.
6. Id.
7. Antisemitism Advisory Group Recommendations, supra note 3, at 1.
8. Id. at 2.
9. Id.
10. Id. at 3.
11. Id.
FINDINGS
3
FINDING: In December 2023, Harvard’s AAG presented Harvard’s leadership with significant recommendations
on goals and steps to address antisemitism at the university.
The AAG presented a set of recommendations to Harvard’s leadership in a December 18, 2023 document titled “Potential
Statement of Goals and Steps to Address Antisemitism Issues”(4). Horn described this document as a “comprehensive list
of [the AAG’s] recommendations”(5). Horn further explained, “It was my understanding that this would be sent to a task
force to implement, although it was clear that that would be at the discretion of the future members of the task force”(6).
Several notable goals and steps outlined in the document include:
The goal: “Ensure safety of all people in the university community” including “physical safety” and “[f]reedom from
verbal harassment…”(7).
Steps to implement this goal included:
“Zero tolerance of disruption of classes and learning environments.”
“Shared spaces including classroom buildings, libraries and dining halls, should minimize permission for
banners, marches, sit-ins, leafletting, group protests or other behavior or organized campaigns to ensure that
individual students do not need to forgo using such spaces in order to be free of protest, disturbance and
advocacy (similar to restrictions on advocacy in or near polling places).”
“Collect concerns about selective or unequal enforcement, and rectify.”
“Student groups must adhere to university regulations concerning protests and other group activities. Failure
to comply may result in the removal of recognition”(8).
The goal: “Ensure student freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin/shared ancestry
as well as full participation in classrooms and other activities on campus” and “[p]revent and if necessary, sanction or
terminate recognition for student organizations that exclude or harass Jewish or Israeli students”(9).
Steps to implement this goal included:
“Review academic rigor of classes, panels, forums and other academic programs reported to have antisemitic
content.”
“Undertake a review of why the [OEDIB] and other Harvard offices were ill-equipped to address issues of
exclusion and harassment of Jewish and Israeli students arising before and after October 7, 2023”(10).
“Reform structural approaches to inclusion and diversity that may have inadvertently encouraged
antisemitism, and replac[e] them with materially different approaches”(11).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 4 of 43
12. Id. at 4.
13. Id. at 5.
14. Id. at 6
15. Id. at 7.
16. Id.
17. Id.
18. Id. at 3.
19. Id. at 4.
20. Id. at 2.
21. Id. at 1.
22. Id. 4
The goal: “Identify and counter speech that dehumanizes, threatens, or potentially incites violence against members of
groups; this could include a review of course offerings and student activities. Aside from direct incitement, actively
educate the community about what Harvard considers demonizing, false, and hateful antisemitic and anti-Israel
rhetoric, rather than banning it”(12).
The goal: “Promote understanding of Jewish history, culture, the Holocaust, history of Israel, and the roots and
evolution of antisemitism/hatred of Jews”(13).
The goal: “Consistent with academic freedom, increase the intellectual diversity of the faculty as well as the rigor of
academic classroom instruction”(14).
The goal: “Ensure free and rigorous inquiry and independence of the university from outside control by donors,
regardless of their identities, or disruption of activities and mission of the university by outside actors”(15).
Steps to achieve this goal included: “Investigate the flow and impact of external ‘dark money’ (from Iran, Qatar, or
individuals, or entities associated with terrorist groups as identified by the State Department)” to campus(16).
The goal: “Devise means to ensure accountability and continuous work to advance these goals” including the step to
“[d]evelop scorecard for the university and within individual schools to track efforts and results with regard to each of
the goals”(17).
The goals and steps outlined in the document are meaningful recommendations that would have had a substantial impact
on Harvard’s antisemitism problem had they been implemented. They address pressing needs, including ensuring physical
safety, preventing discrimination and harassment, enforcing University rules, enhancing academic rigor, addressing
problematic components of the University, countering antisemitic expression without infringing on protected free speech,
improving education about antisemitism and the Jewish people, and enhancing viewpoint diversity. Unfortunately,
Harvard’s leaders failed to follow the roadmap drawn for them by their own chosen experts.
The AAG’s goals and steps recognized factors that contributed to antisemitism at Harvard, such as “structural approaches
to inclusion and diversity that may have inadvertently encouraged antisemitism”(18) and a lack of programs and courses
that cultivate and encourage capacities and skills in civil discourse and evidence-based argument(19).
The AAG’s recommendations included many goals and steps that Harvard’s leaders could implement on an expedited
basis, such as requiring student groups to adhere to university regulations,(20) minimizing protests in shared spaces in a
manner that is “similar to restrictions on advocacy in or near polling places,”(21) and clarifying bullying and harassment
standards by providing examples(22).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 5 of 43
23. Horn Tr. 26 Mar. 18, 2024.
24. Antisemitism Advisory Group Meeting (Nov. 20, 2023), at 2. In this excerpt “Getzel” refers to Harvard Hillel’s Campus Rabbi Getzel Davis, who
was not a member of the AAG.
The AAG found antisemitic harassment to be a significant problem at Harvard. In her transcribed interview, Horn noted
that as she gained a fuller understanding of antisemitism at the University from hearing about student experiences, she
realized that direct harassment of Jewish students was a bigger problem than antisemitic chants at public rallies:
5
FINDING: The AAG found antisemitic harassment to be a significant problem at Harvard.
Q. You mentioned that you later gained a more complete understanding of the issue and the problem. Could you
elaborate on what you meant by that and what you came to understand?
A. Yes. After it became public that I was participating in this committee, students began approaching me directly with
their accounts of their experiences with anti‑Semitism on campus.
And at that point it became more clear to me that the real issue was less about what was going on at a public rally, or
what kind of slogans that were being used. That wasn’t really the issue. The issue was direct harassment of Jewish
students on campus. And that was of grave concern to me, and that was my ‑‑ yeah(23).
For example, part of Horn’s and the AAG’s understanding of the “real issue” came from hearing about harassment endured
by certain Jewish students and about Harvard’s leaders’ failure to take action in response. In its November 20 meeting,
the AAG discussed three disturbing incidents of antisemitic harassment that appear to have gone without discipline. The
official meeting notes detail how an AAG member relayed these incidents to the Group:
(24)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 6 of 43
25. Id.
26. Harvard College’s Dean of Students Office explains that “[t]utors oversee a part of the House (e.g., floor, entryway); they are the College Officer
for their designated community.” See Proctors and Tutors, HARVARD COLLEGE, https://dso.college.harvard.edu/proctors-tutors.
27. Meeting, supra note 24.
28. Id.
29. Id.
30. Email from Undergraduate Harvard Student to Claudine Gay, President Harv. University & Rakesh Khurana, Dean, Harv. College (Oct. 13, 2023,
3:44 PM) (On file with Comm.). 6
Not only did these incidents inform the AAG about the severe nature of antisemitic harassment on Harvard’s campus but
they also revealed to the AAG that the Harvard institutions that should have protected all students’ rights to a non-hostile
educational environment failed Jewish students. With respect to the student who was wearing a kippah (religious head
covering) and was spat upon, the AAG learned this student had not received answers from Harvard reporting channels or
from the Harvard University Police Department. With respect to the second, an Israeli student who was ejected from a class
by the professor after the professor asked “where she was from,” the AAG learned the student filed two complaints yet had
not received a full answer(25). (Additional detail also provided in the section below, Ostracization of Israeli Students).
Finally, with respect to the third student, who was followed and chased back to the student’s residential College House and
screamed at by a Resident Tutor,(26) the AAG learned that no discipline had been imposed and the situation was
“escalating”(27). Importantly, this incident also provided the AAG with evidence that antisemitic harassment limited this
student’s access to a non-hostile educational environment as the “student doesn’t eat in the dining halls anymore because
scared; clear this is affecting academic decisions, participation in activities”(28).
The AAG also discussed how power structures at Harvard contributed to antisemitic harassment and the University’s
handling of complaints by Jewish students, highlighting that authority figures such as teaching assistants and faculty were
engaging in such behavior:
An email chain produced to the Committee further corroborates these accounts, showing that a Harvard undergraduate
reported these or similar incidents to Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana and then-President Gay on October 13, 2023.
The document serves as additional evidence of a terrifying atmosphere for Harvard’s Jewish students.
The student wrote, “Harvard college students and affiliates are openly calling to bring the ‘Intifada’–a violent uprising
against Israeli civilians–to Cambridge, openly threatening Harvard Hillel, openly suggesting that people ‘gas all the Jews’
and ‘let em cook’ (this post had 25 net upvotes), openly saying ‘gotta get em all,’ ‘get got or leave,’ and ‘violence is the only
answer’ all in reference to the murder of Jewish civilians”(30).
(29)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 7 of 43
31. Id.
32. Id.
33. Id.
34. Email from Rakesh Khurana, Dean, Harv. College to Student, Harv. College & Thomas Dunne, Dean of Students, Harv. College & Alta Mauro,
Assoc. Dean for Inclusion & Belonging, Harv. College (Oct. 15, 2023, 2:01 PM) (on file with Comm.). 7
The student recounted how he or she and a friend had been subjected to shocking antisemitic incidents that were reported
to the University, writing, “The dangerous speech cited above is already being turned into action by Harvard affiliates. I have
been followed in the streets, as has at least one other Jewish student. A kippah-wearing friend was spit on by another
student. Every incident I’ve cited has been reported to the college, and all relevant ones have also been reported to
HUPD”(31). The student questioned the insufficiency of the University’s response to the endangerment of its Jewish
students, writing, “I do not understand what steps the university is taking to prevent these students who want to kill us from
taking action. These threats are coming from other Harvard college students–requiring Harvard IDs to get into the yard or
Shabbat 1000 will not help”(32).
Dean Khurana referred the incident to the Associate Dean for Inclusion & Belonging in the Harvard Dean of Students Office,
copying Dean of Students Thomas Dunne(34). However, Harvard’s attorneys have to date been unable to identify any
disciplinary actions the University took in response to these incidents.
(33)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 8 of 43
35. Email from Harv. Parent to Claudine Gay, President Harv. University & Victor Clay, Chief, Harv. University Police Dept. (Oct. 9, 2023, 10:58 PM)
(on file with Comm.).
36. Id. at 1.
37. Email from Katherine O’Dair, Chief of Staff to Harv. President Claudine Gay to Rakesh Khurana, Dean, Harv. College & Thomas Dunne, Dean of
Students, Harv. College (Oct. 10, 2023, 3:11 PM) (on file with Comm.).
38. Id. at 1.
39. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 13, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 1.
Another email chain documents a Harvard student’s parent who wrote to Gay and Harvard University Police Department
Chief Victor Clay on October 9, 2023, and reported an incident in which her son was chased by a Harvard University
employee, including information identifying the perpetrator(35):
8
(36)
(37)
Gay’s Chief of Staff Katie O’Dair forwarded the email to Khurana and Dunne, and Dunne said he knew the student and
would reach out to him(38). However, attorneys have to date been unable to identify any personnel or disciplinary actions
the University took in response to the incident.
An AAG member also noted concern that Jewish students found it disturbing that anti-Israel protests were crossing into
academic and personal spaces, such as a dinner for first-year students with faculty, as documented in official meeting
notes:
In short, the AAG had gathered evidence establishing that antisemitic harassment was a significant problem at Harvard: it
spanned from the classroom to residence halls, the University failed to resolve complaints regarding antisemitic incidents
in a satisfactory manner, authority figures engaged in antisemitic conduct, and collectively this created an environment of
fear and intimidation for Jewish students who experienced antisemitism.
(39)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 9 of 43
40. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Oct. 23, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 2.
41. Id.
42. Id.
43. Horn Tr. 22, Mar. 18, 2024.
The AAG identified the ostracization of Israeli Harvard students as a significant issue of concern. Even in the AAG’s first
meeting, Garber observed, “a lot of the problem we have is about shunning of Israeli students, have heard independently
from a lot of students, pervasive problem though maybe not universal; certainly in the College if not every School; not
antisemitic speech but voting off the island”(40).
9
FINDING: The AAG found pervasive ostracization of Israeli students at Harvard.
An AAG member found this deeply disturbing and indicated that to address the problem the “deepest element is needing to
come out and say that anti-Zionism is antisemitism”(41). The AAG member noted the lengthy historical record of
antisemitic actors such as the Bolsheviks passing their antisemitism off as merely “anti-Zionist:”
Horn provided a troubling example of this ostracization in her transcribed interview, explaining that an Israeli Harvard
student visiting a class to watch a friend’s presentation was asked by the professor to leave because of the student’s Israeli
identity:
Q. In the October 23rd meeting, Provost Garber discussed how a lot of the problem that Harvard had was about the
shunning of Israeli students, which he called pervasive but not universal. You called this deeply disturbing.
Can you please elaborate on this issue of ostracizing Israeli students?
(42)
A. … It became clear to us later that Israeli students were being harassed and ostracized by their peers and, in some
cases, by faculty…(43).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 10 of 43
44. Horn Tr. 23, Mar. 18, 2024.
45. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 15, 2023) (on file with Comm.).
46. Id.
47. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 15, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 3. 10
Q. Can you provide an example?
A. One example that was shared with me was actually from pre-October 7th, from the spring of 2023, when an Israeli
student was asked by a professor she was visiting a class. She was not a student in the class. She was visiting a class
to watch a friend’s presentation. The class was open to guests to watch the friend’s presentations. And the professor,
knowing nothing about her, asked where she was from, and she said, “I’m from Israel.” And the professor told her to
leave the class because she was making people uncomfortable(44).
Harvard’s attorneys corroborated that they understand such an event (based upon the description in the AAG notes) took
place in March 2023, but they have provided no further information to date indicating what response, if any, the University
took.
The AAG also discussed the ostracization of Israeli students in Harvard international students’ orientation experience. In a
November 15 meeting, an AAG member identified Harvard’s First Year International Student Orientation Program (FIP) as
being “organized to platform an extraordinary amount of stridently anti-Israel material; with the result that Israeli students
have been effectively (or explicitly) excluded”(45). Another member noted “FIP student leaders and participants ostracized
Israeli students, they’re [sic] pressure to boycott Israel and they have incorporated this into the programming” and that FIP
leaders threatened that if students participated in the university’s I-Trek Israel trip that they would not be able to be leaders
in FIP(46). The Group discussed the source of and potential paths to remediate the “pervasive” ostracization of Israeli
students at Harvard:
The pervasive ostracization of Israeli students at Harvard serves as further evidence of the extent of Harvard’s
antisemitism problem and why decisive actions to address antisemitism at the University are necessary.
(47)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 11 of 43
48. Letter from Antisemitism Advisory Grp. members to Claudine Gay, President, Harv. Univ. (Nov. 5, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 1.
49. Id.
50. Id.
51. Letter from Antisemitism Advisory Grp. members to Claudine Gay, President, Harv. Univ. (Nov. 5, 2023) (on file with Comm.).
52. Id.
53. Id.
54. Id.
On November 5, 2023—less than two weeks after the AAG’s first meeting—five of the Group’s eight members, including
Horn, wrote to Gay and Garber due to frustration with the inadequacy of Harvard’s leaders’ response to increasing
antisemitic harassment and a lack of clarity regarding the Group’s charge and future work. The AAG signatories called on
Harvard’s leaders to implement a series of specific measures to counter antisemitism that they believed “any plausible
vision of the University response to antisemitism will have to include”(48). The signatories warned that if Harvard’s
leaders refused to implement these measures, the signatories would not be able to continue in their roles and would
resign(49):
11
FINDING: The AAG found pervasive ostracization of Israeli students at Harvard.
The measures these members identified were categorized into short term (within 48 hours), medium-term (before spring
break), and long-term time frames(51). The requested short-term measures included publicly announcing that antisemitic
incidents are being actively investigated, including the notorious assault of an Israeli MBA student; acknowledging that
chants such as “from the river to the sea” and “intifada” are antisemitic calls for violence and Israel’s elimination;
banning masked protest; addressing protests in academic spaces and prohibiting teaching staff from pressuring
students to engage in political activism; and, more practically, providing the AAG with a virtual drop box and staffing(52).
Medium-term measures included creating a university definition of antisemitism and examining financial support from
state financiers of terror(53). Long-term actions included examining Harvard’s dramatic decline in Jewish enrollment and
having a task force serve as a “forceful reckoning with the appalling present” rather than a retrospective historical
examination(54).
(50)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 12 of 43
55. Id. at 1.
56. Id. at 2. 12
Many of the measures were accompanied by explanations:
(55)
(56)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 13 of 43
57. Horn Tr. 38-39, Mar. 18, 2024.
58. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 6, 2023), at 1.
59. Id.
60. Id.
In her March 18 transcribed interview with the Committee, Horn explained that the November 5 letter was prompted by a
lack of “concrete actions” by the administration:
A. There were a number of situations on campus that had come to our attention that we had raised to the
administrator’s attention and that they didn’t seem to be responding to in any meaningful or public way. So, briefly,
the harassment of the Jewish business school student, which had sort of been a viral video online, that was one
incident that was very public and seemed to demand a really public response. That was one of them.
Another one was ‑‑ this was shortly after this meeting with the deans, and other members of this Group shared my
dismay and that it didn’t seem like the deans at the various schools were taking this particularly seriously or if they
weren’t ‑‑ not that they weren’t taking it seriously, but they didn’t seem to be taking any kind of concrete actions.
There was Claudine Gay’s speech at Harvard Hillel, which was supposed to be sort of this public announcement of
our group, and its work was ‑‑ wasn’t ‑‑ had never been sort of shared with the entire university community. And
there were ‑‑ we were at this point sort of being inundated with requests or not requests but sort of, you know,
concerns from students sharing their experiences, and we didn’t really know what to do with these ‑‑ this, you
know, flooding of student complaints that we were getting. It was clear that something needed to be done, and we
were ‑‑ we had shared that with them a number of times at this point, and it didn’t seem like anyone was taking any
concrete action, and that was concerning to us(57).
The following day, November 6, 2024, an AAG meeting took place in which Gay, Garber, and Harvard Corporation Senior
Fellow Penny Pritzker participated. In the meeting, Gay apologized for the chaos and lack of clarity of the AAG’s work and
emphasized that she took the matter seriously(58). She asked the members to continue their work with the Group and
expressed her concern that a mass resignation “would be explosive, and would make things even more volatile and unsafe,”
as detailed in the meeting notes(59):
13
(60)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 14 of 43
As a result of the November 6 discussion, Gay issued a November 9 statement to the Harvard community, which addressed
several of the demands in the November 5 letter(61). In her statement, Gay acknowledged that the October 18 incident at
Harvard Business School (which was explicitly identified in the letter) was being investigated by the FBI and the Harvard
University Police Department, condemned phrases such as “from the river to the sea,” and established an email inbox for
the AAG(62). However, Harvard’s response to antisemitism did not fundamentally change. In her transcribed interview, Horn
explained that she remained frustrated that Harvard’s leaders’ response remained lacking on many issues:
61. Letter, supra note 2.
62. Letter, supra note 2.
63. Horn Tr. 74-75, Mar. 18, 2024.
63a. Horn Tr. 39, Mar. 18, 2024.
64. Horn Tr. 74, Mar. 18, 2024. 14
Q. And did the university’s response to anti‑Semitism materially improve after that?
A. I continued to be frustrated with some of the lack of response as we moved forward with our work(63).
Horn further explained that the AAG signatories’ request for a written charge clarifying their remit was never fulfilled:
A. …We repeatedly asked them for a written charter or charge delineating what our responsibilities would be and, you
know, what our remit was, and they did not provide that to us. We had no kind of written – no written agreement about
what our purpose was and what our responsibilities and the limits and possibilities of our Group were.
Q. Was that ever rectified?
A. It was not(63a).
Q. And the public statement was, to the best of your recollection, the November 9th statement that President Gay
issued?
A. Correct.
Q. And was the clarity on the group’s charter or role ever provided?
A. No(64).
Despite the threat by the majority of the AAG to resign as a consequence of Harvard’s leaders’ failure to respond with
urgency to the pervasive antisemitism at Harvard, and despite their identification of specific measures to be taken to
remediate that antisemitism, the response of Harvard’s leaders remained lacking. Members of the AAG remained frustrated
by the inadequacy of Harvard’s leaders’ response beyond Gay’s initial public statement.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 15 of 43
(66)
Gay’s November 9 statement indicated that the AAG would work to develop its strategy “with the help of the School
deans”(65). Such engagement with the deans was significant, given the deans’ autonomy in running their respective
schools. However, the deans of Harvard’s various schools (e.g., Harvard College, Harvard Law School) only met with the
AAG once and in that meeting the AAG members were not given the opportunity to present their own views; rather, the
deans provided the AAG a “one way” presentation on antisemitism at their individual schools, as documented in the below
excerpt of the official notes of the November 9 meeting:
Horn’s account of the meeting in her transcribed interview confirmed this statement on the nature of the meeting. Horn
said, “This was presented as a one-way meeting where the deans were presenting to us. There was not an opportunity in
that meeting to respond to them – maybe to ask fact questions or something – but it was not a dialogue with the deans. It
was presentation”(67). According to Horn, each dean “presented their overview of how this issue of anti‑Semitism was
being expressed in their – at their school or in their program”(68).
65. Letter, supra note 2.
66. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 9, 2023), at 1.
67. Horn Tr. 35, Mar. 18, 2024.
68. Horn Tr. 34, Mar. 18, 2024.
69. Horn Tr. 37, Mar. 18, 2024 (“Q. Do you think, was there ‑‑ was there another such meeting or any other further engagement with any of the
deans? A. Not with our Group, no.).
70. Horn Tr. 37, Mar. 18, 2024.
71. Id.
72. Horn Tr. 34, Mar. 18, 2024. 15
FINDING: The AAG had limited engagement with the deans of Harvard’s various schools.
Despite Harvard having indicated to the AAG that a later meeting would provide an opportunity for the AAG members to
share their thoughts with the deans, Horn confirmed that such a meeting did not ever take place(69). Horn also explained,
“Harvard is quite decentralized, and each school at Harvard seemed to have its own policies and procedures. I’m told that a
number of these schools maybe had their own groups or task forces that were working on this issue”(70). According to
Horn, the AAG “did not” engage with these school-specific groups or task forces and “[o]nly heard about it from – at this
one meeting with deans”(71).
In her interview, Horn noted that she found the meeting itself “disturbing,” given that some of the deans themselves did not
appear disturbed by the flagrant examples of antisemitic conduct discussed:
Q. And what was your assessment of what the deans said or your main takeaways?
A. I found it extremely disturbing.
Q. What did you find disturbing?
A. I found that the things that these deans were mentioning going on in their campuses were very disturbing, and they
didn’t really seem disturbed by these things that were happening. And that disconnect was something that was
disturbing to me(72).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 16 of 43
73. Horn Tr. 35-36, Mar. 18, 2024.
74. Horn Tr. 36, Mar. 18, 2024. 16
Q. And what do you mean when you say that the deans didn’t appear to be disturbed?
A. To be fair, this was, like I said, 13 or 15 people, and not every person was identical to every other person. But I
recall – and I’m not going to recall which individual dean said what.
Q. Sure.
A. But there were a lot of comments that were made describing what to me clearly seemed like harassment of Jewish
students and that were then presented as, “Well, I can see why students would be bothered by that and might perceive
that as harassment.”
And the things they were describing were things like students being chased through buildings; students being
followed on campus; students being directly confronted in class; students being – there were a number of other
examples.
And it was not presented as like, “Well, yes, we have a problem with harassment on our campus,” and it was presented
as like, “Well, I can see why some people might see this as harassment.”
And, again, I don’t want to paint with a very broad brush. Some deans – this isn’t to speak to every single person in
that meeting. But the overall impression was disturbing to me for that reason(73).
Horn noted that she did not believe the deans’ reactions were malicious but rather that they were perplexed: “It was less
that I thought they were trying to excuse it. It was, if anything, they seemed perplexed by the situation. And, if anything, I
regarded that as a positive in that it seemed possible that people – we could have a conversation and explain this issue
and educate people”(74). If correct, Horn’s assessment suggests that Harvard’s leaders’ failure to schedule the originally
promised second meeting for school deans to hear from the AAG meant that Harvard’s leaders missed an opportunity to
improve the university’s response to antisemitism by educating the leaders of its various schools. A more substantive
discussion between the AAG and the deans could have also resulted in the deans better understanding changes that
needed to happen within each of their schools to ensure all their students felt safe. In the end, the limited nature of the
AAG’s interactions with the deans of Harvard’s various schools inhibited the AAG’s ability to present recommendations to
the deans, enhance the deans’ understanding of antisemitism and its manifestations at Harvard, and build a collaborative
strategy to combat antisemitism, as Gay had indicated would occur.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 17 of 43
75. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 6, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 1.
76. Horn Tr. 19, Mar. 18, 2024.
77. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Oct. 23, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 1.
78. Id. 17
On January 19, 2024, Harvard’s Interim President Alan Garber announced a new presidential task force on antisemitism as
well as one on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. The announcement came without a clear explanation of either what had
happened to the AAG or why a new and separate task force was necessary. Horn’s interview indicated that the AAG was
unclear about Harvard’s leaders’ reason, plans, and timeline for succeeding the AAG with a separate task force and found
the plan for such a transition concerning. The University’s explanations that a task force was procedurally necessary were
also contradicted by its actual practices.
FINDING: The AAG had limited engagement with Harvard’s ultimate governing board, the Harvard Corporation.
The AAG’s interactions with the Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s ultimate governing board, were extremely limited. The only
participation by the Corporation’s fellows (board members) in the AAG’s work was Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker’s
attendance at a single AAG meeting on November 6, immediately following a majority of the group threatening to
resign(75). Horn confirmed in her interview that the AAG had no other engagements with the Harvard Corporation Fellows:
Q. Did other members of the Harvard Corporation attend – did senior fellow Pritzker or other members of the Harvard
Corporation otherwise engage with the advisory group, to the best of your knowledge?
A. No(76).
Not only did the Harvard Corporation engage minimally with the AAG but also that single interaction was with one fellow
and took place after the majority of the AAG had threatened to resign. Given the Harvard Corporation’s role in governing
the university and its fellows’ active involvement in responding to Harvard’s antisemitism crisis, the AAG’s lack of
opportunity to engage with the fellows raises questions.
FINDING: There was a lack of clarity regarding the plans and timeline for the AAG to be succeeded by an
antisemitism task force.
There was a lack of clarity regarding the AAG’s scope and the potential transition to a task force dating back to
early in the Group’s tenure
In its first meeting on October 23, 2023, it was explained to the Group that Harvard’s leaders purposively chose to create an
‘advisory group’ rather than a ‘task force’ to yield “action now in a much more compressed timeline” and that a task force by
contrast could take “a year” to complete its work, as the official meeting notes indicate(77):
(78)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 18 of 43
18
79. Horn recalled discussion of a potential task force approximately a month into the group’s work. The reference to a task force in the November 5
letter indicates that the notion of one had been discussed.
80. Horn Tr. 10, Mar. 18, 2024.
80a. Horn Tr. 11, Mar. 18, 2024.
81. Horn Tr. 12, Mar. 18, 2024.
82. Horn Tr. 88, Mar. 18, 2024.
Significantly, Horn explained in her transcribed interview that Harvard’s leaders did not communicate that the AAG would
eventually be replaced by a task force at the outset of the AAG’s work. When Harvard’s leaders indicated partway through
the AAG’s work that the AAG may be followed by a task force,(79) they did not offer a clear timeline for this to take place:
Q. Was it communicated to you from the outset that the Advisory Group would be followed by a task force, or was this
indicated later?
A. That was indicated later.
Q. When was that first communicated?
A. I’m not sure of the exact date, but I believe the people in the administration started mentioning that possibility,
probably about a month into our work(80).
Q. Was an anticipated timeframe for the Advisory Group to complete its work communicated at the start of the
process before the task force was communicated?
A. No(80a).
Q. When Harvard administrators first informed the Advisory Group that there would be a task force, did they present
the timeline in which the Advisory Group would complete its work and the task force would begin its work?
A. Not that I recall. Toward the very end in December — I actually would say no. At some point in December, they
started talking about wrapping up our work with these recommendations that would be passed to a task force(81).
Horn further explained that, while Gay’s December 5 testimony before the Committee did not have an explicit impact on the
timing of the transition, there was a clear interest by Harvard administrators in collecting the AAG’s recommendations and
moving on from the AAG following the hearing:
Q. And did the December 5th testimony have any impact on the timing of when the transition would be made from the
dissolution of the Advisory Group and the standing up of the new task force?
A. Not explicitly, but it seemed quite clear that there was an interest in getting our recommendations and moving on.
Q. An interest by whom?
A. By the administrators(82).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 19 of 43
19
83. Horn Tr. 11, Mar. 18, 2024.
84. Horn Tr. 10, Mar. 18, 2024.
Horn found the move by Harvard’s leaders to replace the AAG with a task force not only to have been unclear but also to be
concerning and perplexing:
Q. Did it raise concerns among the Advisory Group members when it was communicated that they would be
succeeded by a task force?
A. I was concerned. I don’t know that I can speak for other members.
Q. Why were you concerned?
A. I didn’t really understand why we were creating a committee to create another committee. And I sort of chalked
that up to my ‑‑ perhaps as a writer who works by herself, I chalked that up to my lack of understanding of large
organizations.
But I also was concerned that we were putting a lot of time and effort into our work with the administration, and I
didn’t really see how our recommendations would be transferred to a future group(83).
Harvard’s leaders’ reasoning for transitioning from the AAG to a task force was unclear and inconsistent with
actual practice
The reasoning for bifurcating the University’s efforts between an initial advisory group and a subsequent task force was
also unclear. According to Horn, Harvard’s leaders suggested that the AAG would provide recommendations for a future
task force to pursue and claimed that it was a standard practice for an advisory group to precede a task force:
Q. What was the intended relationship between the Advisory Group and the task force?
A. There was a suggestion that our Group’s purpose was to give recommendations to a future task force. That was
something that the administrators started to articulate, yeah, about a month into the process, but had not really been
addressed before.
Q. Did the administrators present a rationale for why they were choosing to split the efforts in this manner?
A. They at one point ‑‑ I questioned it. I was curious why ‑‑ what the purpose of that was. And it was claimed by the
administrators that this was always how they created task forces(84).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 20 of 43
20
85. Horn Tr. 10-11, Mar. 18, 2024.
86. Horn Tr. 93, Mar. 18, 2024.
87. Hilary Burns & Mike Damiano, At Harvard, ‘Israel did 9/11’ scrawled over poster of baby kidnapped by Hamas, THE BOS. GLOBE (Jan, 22, 2024),
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/01/22/metro/harvard-university-trouble/; Andrew Silow-Carroll, Many Jews criticized Harvard’s Oct. 7 response.
Fewer are applauding President Claudine Gay’s resignation., JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY (Jan. 5, 2024), https://www.jta.org/2024/01/05/united-
states/many-jews-criticized-harvards-oct-7-response-fewer-are-applauding-president-claudine-gays-resignation.
Horn noted that Harvard’s leaders’ explanation to her that task forces were always preceded by advisory groups did not
seem to be accurate:
Q. Did you have any indications as to whether that was accurate or not?
A. At the time, I pointed out that that didn’t seem to be accurate, because they had immediately created ‑‑ shortly after
October 7th, they had very quickly created an anti‑doxxing task force for students who were subjected to doxxing.
Q. And there was no advisory group preceding that?
A. Not that I was aware of(85).
Notably, there also did not seem to be any advisory group preceding Harvard’s creation of the Presidential Task Force on
Combating Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Bias in January 2024. Horn stated that was her understanding as well:
Q. In addition to the Anti-Semitism Advisory Group, was there an Islamophobia advisory group?
A. There was not. Or if — I mean, if there was, I didn’t know about it(86).
Horn was disturbed by Garber’s appointment of Task Force co-chair Derek Penslar, who had made public
statements that reports of antisemitism at Harvard had been “exaggerated.”
If accurate, this distinction undercuts the justification offered to Horn and other group members for succeeding the AAG
with a separate task force.
Q. So on January 19th, Alan Garber, then Harvard’s newly appointed interim president, announced the Presidential
Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, as well as a parallel one focused on Islamophobia.
What was your reaction to that announcement? …
In her transcribed interview, Horn questioned the later decision by Harvard’s leaders to appoint history professor Derek
Penslar to co-chair the antisemitism task force, given his previous public statements that reports of antisemitism at
Harvard had been “exaggerated”(87):
A. Well, there were two things that were – that I thought were – that sort of – two things that disturbed me a little bit.
Or I should – one thing that disturbed me a little bit.
One of the co‑chairs of the task force that they had appointed was someone who had publicly stated that
anti‑Semitism on campus was an exaggerated problem, and I thought that that was an odd choice for someone to lead
a task force on this topic who was going into it with his only public statement about this issue being that he felt it was
exaggerated. I thought that that was a strange choice.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 21 of 43
88. Horn Tr. 92-93.
89. Rishi Goel, Dissent: Penslar Minimizes Antisemitism. He Can’t Lead the Fight Against It., THE HARV. CRIMSON (Jan. 30, 2024),
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/30/dissent-penslar-antisemitism-taskforce/.
90. Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers), TWITTER (Jan. 21, 2024, 2:43 PM), https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1749155870284693775.
91. Id.
92. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Dec. 7, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 1.
93. Id. 21
Former Harvard President Larry Summers tweeted that, “given [Penslar’s] record, he is unsuited to leading a task force
whose function is to combat what is seen by many as a serious anti-Semitism problem at Harvard”(90). Summers found the
announcement of the new task force and Penslar’s appointment as co-chair so troubling that he said, “I have lost
confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a
place where Jews and Israelis can flourish”(91).
Q. That was Derek Penslar?
A. Correct. And to be clear, yeah, my concern was not – was about his public statements about anti‑Semitism on
campus(88).
Horn’s criticism of Penslar’s appointment was shared by other members of Harvard’s Jewish community. Six Harvard
students wrote in an opinion editorial in the Harvard Crimson, “We find Penslar’s belief that claims of antisemitism on
campus have been exaggerated — an argument he has repeated on multiple occasions — disqualifying for a number of
reasons,” including that Penslar’s comments indicated he would be “more focused on downplaying the issue of
antisemitism than confronting it” and that faculty who make such comments “only embolden those who deny the problem of
antisemitism here and provide the University cover to do nothing about it”(89).
FINDING: Harvard’s leaders failed to consult the AAG in advance of President Gay’s congressional testimony on
antisemitism.
Despite Gay’s indication to the Harvard community that the AAG would guide Harvard’s response to antisemitism on its
campus, she failed to consult the AAG for advice regarding her December 5, 2023, testimony before Congress. This failure
is particularly remarkable since the AAG was a natural place for her to go for guidance, as the centralized entity tasked with
understanding the factors enabling antisemitism at Harvard and that it was developing goals and steps to address it and
presented to Harvard’s community as guiding the University’s response in close collaboration with the President. The AAG
meeting notes recorded by the provost’s office document the AAG’s “troubled” reaction to Gay’s failure to seek its “advice”
before giving congressional testimony from the Advisory Group stood up to address the precise subject of the testimony
(92):
(93)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 22 of 43
94. Horn Tr. 86, Mar. 18, 2024.
95. Horn Tr. 86-87, Mar. 18, 2024.
96. David Wolpe (@RabbiWolpe), Twitter (Dec. 7, 2023, 2:39 PM), https://twitter.com/RabbiWolpe/status/1732847411175796747. 22
In her transcribed interview, Horn explained that she was disappointed by the lack of consultation: “Yeah. I mean, yes, I
was disappointed not to be consulted and also thought it was strange not to be consulted”(94). She also expressed
extreme disappointment with Gay’s testimony itself, and in particular Gay’s lack of acknowledgment that antisemitism was
a “pervasive” and “systemic” problem at Harvard:
A. I was extremely disappointed.
Q. Why?
Q. What was your reaction to President Gay’s testimony before the committee?
A. I was extremely disappointed because ‑‑ the sort of moments that went viral from that hearing were as
disappointing to me as they were to many, many other people. But, in addition to that, I was disappointed that she did
not say that this was a problem that was pervasive at ‑‑ on Harvard’s campus.
I felt that the way that this was presented in her testimony was as though this were about rallies and free speech and
this difficult line with rallies and free speech, and that sort of there were maybe some individual incidents where things
had crossed a line.
And to me, that did not capture the extent to which this was a pervasive, I would say, systemic problem on campus.
And I felt that she could’ve ‑‑ I felt that her testimony did not acknowledge that, and that was disappointing to me and
to others on the committee(95).
The AAG members met internally prior to their next formal meeting following Gay’s congressional testimony and discussed
their disappointment with her testimony. One member, Rabbi David Wolpe, publicly resigned on December 7, writing that
“both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference
I had hoped”(96).
At the AAG’s first formal meeting after the hearing on December 7, Harvard’s leaders did not explain why the AAG had not
been consulted regarding Gay’s hearing testimony nor did they apologize for the lack of consultation. Horn recounted these
events in her transcribed interview:
Q. And when you met on December 7th, was there any discussion of the President’s testimony?
A. We expressed our disappointment that we had not been consulted.
A. We met – we – before – we met ourselves, not with – and just the members of us who were not part of the
administration, to be clear. We were all extremely disappointed.
At that point, Rabbi Wolpe made the decision to resign. I thought about resigning. We talked about what our next
steps would be.
And that was prior to our next meeting, which I believe was the 7th of December.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 23 of 43
97. Horn Tr. 87-88, Mar. 18, 2024.
98. Antisemitism Advisory Group Recommendations, supra note 3, at 1–6. 23
A. They kind of wanted to move on to actionable things.
Q. Did they explain why the Advisory Group was not consulted?
Q. And how did the Harvard leaders in attendance react?
Q. Did they explain later?
A. No.
A. Not at that meeting.
A. Not at that meeting.
Q. Did they do so later?
Q. Did they offer any apology for the lack of consultation?
A. No(97).
FINDING: The AAG’s members identified numerous issues of concern for action to Harvard’s leaders.
Harvard’s leaders’ failure to consult the AAG regarding Gay’s testimony is shocking given that the publicly stated purpose
of the group was to guide the University’s response to antisemitism. The lack of acknowledgment of this disconnect by
Harvard’s leaders following the disastrous hearing is further evidence of their unwillingness to acknowledge—even to their
own advisors —the inadequacies of their response.
Over the course of its work, the AAG’s members identified many issues of concern relating to antisemitism at Harvard to
the university’s leaders, including the need to provide more information on disciplinary outcomes to the Harvard community,
the importance of condemning antisemitic rhetoric as antithetical to Harvard’s values, the insufficiency of Harvard’s
leaders’ response to reports of antisemitic incidents, the dramatic decrease in Jewish enrollment at Harvard, the need to
examine concerns of potential terror financing connected to Harvard, and the need to address masked protest on campus
(98).
The need to share more information on disciplinary outcomes publicly
The AAG raised the need for Harvard to share more information on antisemitic incidents and disciplinary outcomes, in
order to demonstrate to the Harvard community that the University was taking meaningful actions to address antisemitic
violations of university rules. However, Harvard administrators did not do so, citing only privacy concerns. Horn explained
that the AAG members were confident that an appropriate solution could be found, but Harvard’s leaders failed to find one,
instead resorting to excuses:
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 24 of 43
99. Horn Tr. 15-16, Mar. 18, 2024.
100. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 27, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 3.
101. Id.
(101)
24
Q. Could you provide several examples?
A. Yes. One example is that they ‑‑ there were certain egregious incidents of students that were openly violating code
of conduct with what we felt was anti‑Semitic behavior of harassing Jewish students. We repeatedly asked them to
make this public to the university community, that, number one, that these incidents had happened; and, number two,
that the students who participated in those incidents were being disciplined by the university.
And their response to that was that the disciplinary procedures were confidential. And we repeatedly tried to tell them
that there were surely ways that they could make clear to the university community that these incidents were
happening, that they were anti‑Semitic incidents, and that action ‑‑ that serious action was being taken in terms of
disciplining students who participated in anti‑Semitic harassment of Jewish students.
And they never really did that, in my opinion. I mean, they continuously said that it was, you know, had to be, you know,
confidential(99).
A. There were a number of recommendations that we made throughout the process that they would often give us
reasons why they were unable to implement. And we found that very ‑‑ we often found that very frustrating at various
points in this process.
The AAG persisted in raising the need to release disciplinary outcomes. In one meeting, Gay, Garber, and Vice Provost
Peggy Newell discussed the possibility of releasing information on disciplinary cases in a manner informed by Harvard’s
Title IX reporting(100):
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 25 of 43
102. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Oct. 23, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 1.
103. Id. at 3.
104. Id. at 2.
105. Id. at 3. 25
The AAG noted the proliferation of hateful and eliminationist antisemitic rhetoric, such as the slogan “from the river to the
sea,” and the need to condemn it as antithetical to Harvard’s values(102). One member explained the motivation for
proposing this step: “if we can’t come out and say that is who we are, the rest of this doesn’t much matter”(103). The
discussion by the AAG on this point was robust. For example:
Despite the repeated pleas by the AAG to provide disciplinary outcomes for antisemitic incidents and discussion with
Harvard’s leaders regarding avenues for doing so that were consistent with Harvard’s release of similar sensitive
information, such as Title IX reporting, more than six months after October 7, Harvard’s leaders still have failed to share
meaningful information on antisemitic incidents and disciplinary outcomes with the University community.
The importance of condemning antisemitic rhetoric as antithetical to Harvard’s values
(104)
(105)
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106. Horn Tr. 26, Mar. 18, 2024.
107. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Dec. 4, 2023) (on file with Comm.), at 3.
108. Id.
109. Id. 26
In her transcribed interview, Horn elaborated on why AAG members believed it was important for Harvard’s leaders to
condemn this hateful rhetoric, and she emphasized that the AAG was not seeking to suppress free expression:
A. These rallies were not a critique of Israeli policy. They were calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. And
they were celebrating the Intifada. There was a lot of, “Globalize the Intifada. Long live the Intifada. There is only one
solution. Intifada revolution.”
The Intifada was, of course, the campaign of terrorism against Israeli Jews that resulted in the murders of over a
thousand Israeli Jews about a generation ago. And we do not regard that as political critique, we regarded that as a
call for the murder of Israeli Jews.
I want to be clear that we were not – not even – not at that point and not at any point, we were not asking the
university to ban these slogans or anything like that. We were asking the university to condemn these slogans.
And I think that’s an important distinction. We wanted it to be clear that it was not about suppressing students’
expression. Students can say what they want. But it was that we wanted the administration to be clear on how they
felt about these or what they believed about these kinds of eliminationist rhetoric(106).
Once the AAG recognized the proliferation of hateful and eliminationist antisemitic rhetoric on Harvard’s campuses, the
AAG put forth that Harvard’s leaders should condemn it with strength and clarity. This guidance presents a notable contrast
from President Gay’s widely-criticized language in her December 5 testimony.
The insufficiency of Harvard’s response to reports of antisemitic incidents
AAG members discussed the insufficiency of Harvard’s institutional response to reports of antisemitic incidents. One
member noted that Jewish students who complained of antisemitic harassment or disruptions to the learning environment
were merely told to “phone in a complaint” and felt they had “no one to go to other than Jewish students or to me or [AAG
member]” and that the “University has not publicly provided anything publicly supportive or helpful other than president’s
statement”(107). Another AAG member observed that “students have seen inaction from the University, sense that
someone has to prove their case that something is antisemitic, when you have students coming into classroom shouting
that Jews should die, it’s not subtle” and that “Jewish students don’t feel like we’re taking this seriously; pervasive
atmosphere here on campus; don’t see University responding to this in any manner other than remember to follow the rules”
(108).
(109)
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110. Id.
111. Id.
112. Id.
113. Id.
(110)
(113)
In an AAG meeting, an AGG member observed that Harvard’s existing Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying policies (NDAB)
covered much of the conduct that was of concern, but that it was not being enforced(111). It was not just the AAG members
who concluded that the NDAB policies applied. Garber acknowledged that on October 8, he, Gay, and Harvard College Dean
Rakesh Khurana visited Harvard Hillel and heard students provide examples of what appeared to be clear NDAB violations
(112).
27
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114. Horn Tr. 81, Mar. 18, 2024.
115. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Oct. 23, 2023) (on file with Comm.).
116. Union for Reform Judaism, Insider’s Guide to College Life (Jul. 12, 2013), https://issuu.com/reformjudaism/docs/college_reprint_cropped/15?
e=5480200/4019908/; Hillel International, Harvard University, https://www.hillel.org/college/harvard-university.
117. Id.
118. Meet the Class of 2027, THE HARV. CRIMSON, https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/freshman-survey/beliefs/.
(115)
Though the AAG and Harvard’s leaders determined the NDAB policies could be used to improve the sufficiency of Harvard’s
response to reports of antisemitic incidents, Harvard’s leaders have yet to apply these policies effectively in responding to
reported antisemitic incidents.
28
Both the AAG and Harvard’s leaders concluded that many of the antisemitic incidents could be addressed simply by
enforcing existing NDAB policies. But Harvard’s OEDIB, which is responsible for implementation of NDAB policies, did not
do so. In her interview, Horn provided an example of how OEDIB failed to assist a Jewish student with concerns related to
antisemitism by a professor:
There was a student who shared that she was concerned about certain things that were going on in classrooms in her —
in the school she was in. And she had — she shared with me her whole exchange with ODEIB, or whatever the
abbreviation is, she shared with me her whole exchange with whoever the dean of students was at the school that she
was in.
And she shared with me the emails in which the school had, I believe, recommended that she meet with the professor.
It was like — she’s like, the dean was — I forget who said what, but it was like: How about if we have a meeting with
student, dean, professor you’re — who you’re complaining about, and some other administrator, where we talk this out?
And the student said: Well, this is like a three on one admin versus me, and it didn’t — and with the person who she was
— who she was concerned about in the room as one of the people on the admin side.
And she didn’t feel that that was an adequate response to her concerns. That didn’t — that seemed to her a way of
trying to eliminate her concern.
So that would be one example of the kind of thing that was coming at me from students(114).
Concern regarding dramatic declines in Jewish enrollment at Harvard
The AAG discussions raised concerns regarding the “dramatic decline” in the percentage of Jewish undergraduates at
Harvard, noting “25-30% were Jewish when [Alan Garber] was a student.” The AAG noted the impact of this decline:
The AAG’s concern regarding the decline of the percentage of Jewish students within the undergraduate population
matches public estimates of Jewish undergraduate enrollment decreasing dramatically. Estimates from Hillel International
indicate Harvard’s Jewish undergraduate population has fallen from approximately 1,675 students in 2013 to 700 in 2023
(116). This represents a decrease from 25 percent of the undergraduate student body to only 9.8 percent(117). A 2023
survey by The Harvard Crimson found 5.4 percent of the class of 2027 identified as Jewish(118). The Committee is
continuing to investigate these trends.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 29 of 43
119. Michelle N. Amponsah, Harvard Creates Task Force for Doxxed Students Amid Backlash Over Israel Statement, THE HARV. CRIMSON (Oct. 25,
2023), https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/10/25/doxxing-task-force/.
120. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Oct. 23, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 1.
121. Id. at 2.
122. Id. 29
The AAG was concerned by the contrast between the swiftness with which Harvard had responded to claims of “doxxing”
by signatories of the October 7 letter blaming Israel for the Hamas terror attack that day and the school’s lethargic
response to the attack and the antisemitic conduct that followed it on campus. On October 24, 2023, Harvard announced
the formation of a “task force to support students experiencing doxxing, harassment, and online security issues following
backlash against students allegedly affiliated with a statement that held Israel ‘entirely responsible’ for violence in the
Israel-Hamas conflict,”(119).
Harvard’s Doxxing Task Force Rollout Sent the Wrong Message
To one AAG member, it appeared as if the school’s “first major response to [its] antisemitism crisis” was “handing out milk
and cookies to antisemites” by quickly standing up resources to assist students responsible for promoting hatred on
campus. The AAG member expressed having “no patience for doxing” but was concerned by the message the
announcement sent and by the lack of consultation with the AAG(120).
Though the school claimed the Doxxing Task Force was intended to be a resource for all students, it was clear to members
of the AAG and the student body that it was widely perceived as having been formed to support antisemitic and anti-Israel
student signatories of the October 7 letter:
The swift and sympathetic reaction by the school to assist students promoting hatred against their peers stood in stark
contrast to Harvard’s conspicuous failure in addressing antisemitic incidents.
(121)
(122)
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123. From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing: Hearing
Before the H. Comm. On Ways & Means, 118th Cong. (2023) (statement of Dr. Jonathan Schanzer), https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2023/11/Schanzer-Testimony.pdf.
124. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 15, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 1.
(124)
30
AAG members raised significant concerns about potential influence by financiers of terrorism at Harvard following
November 2023 testimony before Congress on the nexus between terror finance and antisemitism at American universities
by expert Dr. Jonathan Schanzer(123). An AAG member noted that one of the groups discussed in Schanzer’s testimony,
American Muslims for Palestine, funded “PalTrek” trips for Harvard students to visit the West Bank and was involved with
the Arab Conference at Harvard. Garber told the AAG that Harvard’s Office of General Counsel would investigate the matter.
The Group discussed the issue in-depth:
The need to examine terror financiers’ potential influence at Harvard
As the above meeting notes reveal, the AAG discussed efforts by entities linked to terror finance to fund and influence
Harvard students.
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 31 of 43
125. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 15, 2023) (on file with Comm.) at 4.
126. Email from Attorney, King & Spalding LLP to Comm. Staff (Apr. 30, 2024, 5:00 PM) (on file with Comm.).
127. Id.
31
AAAs these notes reflect, Garber seemed to understand the serious danger that potential malign foreign influence at
Harvard posed, and he indicated he would task Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel (Harvard OGC) to investigate. The
Committee asked Harvard’s attorneys to clarify whether such an investigation was undertaken as Garber had indicated. The
Committee received a broad and generic response which included the statement that “Counsel identified information about
contracts and gift agreements from middle eastern countries [sic], including UAE funders, and no issues were
identified”(126). The response left ambiguous what actions Harvard OGC took to examine these specific concerns and how
seriously they were investigated:
Harvard recognizes that some foreign (and domestic) actors may seek to influence through gifts or contracts for their
own purposes or put the University’s name or work behind agendas. Harvard has, over many decades, established
policies and procedures to make sure the gifts and contracts it receives are lawful and consistent with the University’s
teaching and research missions, and with University policies. In this instance, Counsel identified information about
contracts and gift agreements from middle eastern countries [sic], including UAE funders, and no issues were
identified.
Harvard is committed to compliance with U.S. sanctions laws and regulations administered by the U.S. Department of
the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The University has protocols that are designed to address such laws
and prevent Harvard from entering into arrangements with persons or entities who are designated as a Specially
Designated National or Specially Designated Global Terrorist pursuant to Executive Order 13224(127).
Harvard’s attorneys point to the University’s established protocols to comply with U.S. sanctions laws and regulations.
However, the University’s existing compliance procedures would not necessarily have addressed the specific and credible
concerns identified by AAG members regarding potential malign influence by entities or individuals with a nexus to
terrorism. Given the lack of clarity on what specific steps Harvard OGC took in response to the AAG’s concerns, it is
uncertain whether Garber fulfilled his commitment to the AAG to genuinely examine whether such malign influence was or
was not occurring.
(125)
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128. Letter from Antisemitism Advisory Grp. members to Claudine Gay, President, Harv. Univ. (Nov. 5, 2023).
129. Antisemitism Advisory Grp. Meeting (Nov. 6, 2023), at 5.
130. Id.
131. Id.
132. Id.
133. MASS. GEN. LAWS ch. 268, § 34 (2024).
Members of the AAG raised the need to address the proliferation of masked protests on campus. The five members who
threatened to resign from the AAG in the November 5 letter called for a ban on masked protest within 48 hours as one of
their conditions(128). In the November 6 meeting in which the letter was discussed, an AAG member argued that, despite
there being legitimate concerns about a ban, “on balance we can’t have hundreds of students in masks marching through
campus because it’s inherently dangerous,”(129).
Gay flatly rejected a ban on masked protest, citing concerns about free expression and stating that she believed it was not
feasible to require a medical need for everyone who wears a surgical mask (131).
(132)
Notably, Massachusetts law prohibits wearing a mask or other disguise “with intent to obstruct the due execution of the
law, or to intimidate, hinder or interrupt an officer or other person in the lawful performance of his duty, or in the exercise of
his rights under the constitution or laws of the commonwealth, whether such intent is effected or not”(133). Despite the
concerns about “hundreds” of masked protestors on campus and the illegality of wearing a mask while intending, for
example, to intimidate, Harvard’s leaders have not taken steps to prevent masked protestors from harassing and
intimidating Jewish students and evading accountability in their violations of university rules.
32
The need to address masked protest on campus
(130)
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 33 of 43
134. Letter, supra note 2.
135. LIVE UPDATES: Pro-Palestine Protesters Begin Encampment in Harvard Yard, HARV. CRIMSON (Apr. 25, 2024),
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/4/25/harvard-yard-protest-palestine/; Sally Edwards & Asher Montgomery, Police Say Harvard Affiliates
Likely Cut Johnston Gate Lock During Saturday Protest, HARV. CRIMSON (May 13, 2024), https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/5/13/breached-
lock-protest-harvard-police/.
136. Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK), TWITTER (Apr. 26, 2024, 2:38 PM), https://twitter.com/shabbosk/status/1783928682794430922?s=46.
137. Id.
138. Id.
139. Id.
140. Letter from Numerous Harv. Faculty and Staff to Alan Garber, Interim President, Harv. University & John Manning, Interim Provost, Harv.
University (May 9, 2024), https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pM17l1yKeO3zob6IY_GbgfBHEFTTDVPc5fw9JMnGMY0/edit.
141. Joyce E. Kim & Jo B. Lemann, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine Ends Harvard Yard Encampment, HARV. CRIMSON (May 14, 2024, 10:06 AM),
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/5/14/harvard-encampment-ends/.
33
Faced with an unprecedented explosion of virulent antisemitism on its campus, Harvard’s leaders assembled a group of
carefully chosen advisors to guide their response and in then-President Gay’s words “help lead us forward” and “develop a
robust strategy for confronting antisemitism on campus”(134). The documents and information obtained by the
Committee’s investigation make clear that the AAG provided significant recommendations to Gay, Garber, and other leaders
that could have had a real impact in combating antisemitism at the University and restoring a safer environment for Jewish
students. However, Harvard’s leaders failed to implement these recommendations.
The consequences of Harvard’s leaders’ continued failure to implement a strong response to antisemitism and violations of
the University’s rules are evident in the chaos that has erupted at the University in recent weeks. On April 24, students
established an unlawful encampment in Harvard Yard, which caused significant disruptions of University life and became a
hotbed for antisemitic incidents and even criminal conduct, including breaking the lock to a University gate(135). A sign
proclaimed the encampment a “liberated zone” and demanded individuals obtain permission to enter(136). On May 6, 2024,
Holocaust Remembrance Day, an encampment spokeswoman proclaimed, “the student Intifada has engulfed the entire
country” and threatened to make each day “more costly than the last” and that “campuses will become ungovernable”(137).
A poster in the encampment depicted Garber, who is Jewish, as a demon with horns and a tail, a well-known antisemitic
trope(138). A display of 1,200 American and Israeli flags placed to honor the victims of the October 7 attack was vandalized
multiple times(139).
CONCLUSION
On May 9, 2024, a group of more than 180 Harvard faculty and staff sent an open letter to Interim President Garber calling
for the encampment to be removed “swiftly and as peacefully as possible” and stating that conduct rules “must be applied
rigorously and fairly,” that the “administration must not make concessions to protesters that would have not been granted
had they followed the rules,” and that “there can be no academic freedom in an atmosphere of lawlessness”(140).
Rather than clearing the encampment and holding encampment members responsible for their misconduct, on May 14,
2024, Harvard’s leaders announced an agreement making concessions to the students responsible for the encampment in
exchange for its disbandment. Harvard’s leaders agreed to terms including reinstating at least 22 students from involuntary
leaves of absence; recommending leniency and expediting disciplinary proceedings for more than 60 students facing
conduct charges for involvement in the encampment; granting a meeting with members of Harvard’s governing boards on
divestment; and granting a meeting with Garber and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi Hoekstra to discuss the Israel-
Hamas war, in which the protestors plan to raise their demand of a “center for Palestine studies”(141).
Case 1:24-cv-10092-RGS Document 63-2 Filed 05/28/24 Page 34 of 43
34
As Harvard and many other universities across the country confront crises on their campuses, the AAG’s recommendations
offer a potential agenda for how to address antisemitism in a serious manner, rather than capitulating to antisemitic rule
breakers. The cost of Harvard’s failure to do so has proven significant.
This initial investigative update is only the first in a series of releases of the Committee’s findings from its investigations
into rampant antisemitism on campus. The Committee will continue investigating the activities happening on campus at
Harvard and at other universities, including the responses by university administrations to recent unlawful campus
encampments. The Committee’s investigation has also been expanded into a House-wide effort, and it has been joined in
its investigations by five other congressional committees to date.
Harvard’s agreement follows other cases in which universities have conceded to encampment demands including
Northwestern University; Brown University; Rutgers University; Evergreen State College; University of California, Riverside;
Johns Hopkins University; and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. These agreements reward students for flagrantly
violating university rules and disrupting university life, and demonstrate a tolerance for antisemitic harassment, violence,
intimidation, and hostile environments that is inconsistent with the Title VI obligations upon which universities’ federal
funding is contingent.
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION & THE WORKFORCE
These concessions came in the wake of particularly troubling conduct by encampment members. The day prior to the
agreement’s announcement, the Harvard Crimson reported that “Harvard affiliates used bolt cutters to cut a lock securing
Johnston Gate [a main University gate] in an attempt to allow roughly 150 protesters access to Harvard Yard”(142).
142. Supra, Edwards & Montgomery, note 134.
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APPENDICES
35
APPENDIX 1
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APPENDIX 2
39
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APPENDIX 3
41
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42
COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION & THE WORKFORCE
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