Unpacking the House Report on Antisemitism at Harvard and Who to Watch

THE BIG IDEA: Here’s Who to Really Watch: Harvard’s Committee to Review the Review Committee

Yesterday, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce released its Republican Staff Report, “Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed,” led by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. We shared key takeaways in an email to subscribers yesterday afternoon, which is recapped at the end of today’s newsletter.

“The Ad Boards are the problem.” That’s how then-Provost Alan Garber described Harvard’s disciplinary boards at a November 2023 Harvard Corporation meeting. A year later, issues remain—and a new FAS professor-led review could add to the problem.

Each Harvard school has an Administrative Board (“Ad Board”) for discipline, composed of faculty and staff. Until this year, the College Ad Board had no tenured faculty members besides Dean Rakesh Khurana. The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GSAS) Ad Board had half tenured faculty. FAS students can appeal Ad Board decisions to either the Ad Board or the FAS Faculty Council.

Last spring, FAS faculty attempted to overturn Ad Board sanctions on encampment protesters through two votes: first, to add around 13 sanctioned seniors back to the graduation list (which the Corporation blocked), and second, an FAS Faculty Council vote that ultimately forced an overturn of students sanctions, beyond only the seniors, despite disagreement from the Ad Board. The Corporation then decided to confer degrees for 11 of the seniors.

These events have left everyone frustrated with the process, setting the stage for a contentious faculty-led review of the College and GSAS Ad Boards announced this week before the release of the congressional report. The “Ad Hoc Committee to Review the Administrative Boards of Harvard College and GSAS” includes professors Ann Blair (chair), Edo Berger, Suzannah Clark, Anne Shreffler, Dan Smail, John Wakeley, and College Admissions Director Joy St. John.

The committee’s stance isn’t the easiest to predict: Berger signed a letter urging the university to enforce rules and end the spring’s encampment, while Shreffler signed a letter condemning Ad Board actions against encampment protesters as “unprecedented, disproportionate, and arbitrary.” This week, The Crimson said the committee “seems likelier to respond to concerns from professors in Cambridge than politicians in Washington.”

Addressing disciplinary issues, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker told the congressional committee, “it starts with who you put on the ad boards and their attitude about accountability.” But perhaps, it actually starts with who you put on the committee to review them…

1636 FORUM EVENT WITH SAM LESSIN AND LARRY SUMMERS:

On November 12 at 7 p.m. ET, 1636 Forum founder Sam Lessin (AB ‘05) and Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers (PhD ‘82) will discuss the state of Harvard and path forward on a Zoom webinar. Register here and submit questions here.

FYIs:

Garber Rejects HOOP Proposal To Review Endowment for Ties to Human Rights Violations

• President Alan Garber rejected Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine’s proposal for a “human rights investment policy statement” and endowment audit. Garber stated Harvard "will not use its endowment funds to endorse a contested view on a complex issue that deeply divides our community.”

• Garber noted that despite the proposal’s broader framing, “in practice it does not differ substantially from prior demands: the proposal declares that Israel is engaged in both apartheid and genocide, that its territorial holdings are illegal, and that Harvard Management Company should undertake a process to reduce its investment exposure accordingly.”

Professors Appeal Post-Protest Library Ban, Students Hold Another “Study-In”

• Martha Whitehead, head of Harvard Libraries, said that 18 of the approximately 25 professors temporarily banned from Widener Library for a faculty “study-in” protest have appealed their suspensions. Professors from HBS, HLS, and FAS participated in the protest, with the appeals disputing that their actions constituted a “demonstration” or “protest.”

• At the time, HLS professor Andrew Crespo (AB ‘05, JD ‘08) and HBS professor Reshmaan Hussam published a Crimson op-ed, “Will Harvard Punish Its Professors for Reading in the Library?” Last week, the 1636 Forum published its State of HBS report on related topics.

• On Tuesday, over 70 students held another “study-in” at Widener to protest Garber’s rejection of HOOP’s proposal to review endowment investments for human rights ties.

• Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine reported that HLS students involved in last week’s 60-person “study-in” at Langdell Library were also temporarily banned.

• “Study-in” protests have become popular at Harvard this semester. Whitehead defended the student and faculty suspensions in her essay, “Libraries are places for inquiry and learning.”

Harvard Launches Fund for Student Projects To Build Bridges Across Differences

• On Monday, President Alan Garber announced the President’s Building Bridges Fund, which offers $5,000 grants for student projects aimed at: “building relationships between affinity groups whose interests and views on important issues might diverge; investing in intellectual excellence; acting against discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate; and fostering constructive dialogue on campus about interfaith issues, intercultural issues, or some combination of the two.”

• The fund emerged from the preliminary recommendations of the Presidential Task Forces on Antisemitism and Islamophobia.

• Grant applications opened Monday and will close on January 6, 2025.

Garber Announces HLS Dean Search Faculty Advisory Committee

• Ten HLS professors serve on the advisory committee: Sabrineh Ardalan (JD ‘02), Christopher Bavitz, Jared Ellias, Richard Fallon Jr., Jeannie Suk Gersen (JD ‘02), University Professor Annette Gordon-Reed (JD ‘84), Elizabeth Papp Kamali (AB ‘97, JD ‘07), Stephen Sachs (AB ‘02), Laura Weinrib (AB ‘00, AM ‘00, JD ‘03), and Crystal Yang (AB ‘08, AM ‘08, JD ‘13, PhD ‘13).

• Three non-HLS professors serve on the advisory committee: Dean of HBS Srikant Datar, Dean of the Graduate School of Design Sarah Whiting, and HKS professor Meghan O’Sullivan, who also serves as the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

• Three committee members are part of the Council on Academic Freedom: Gersen, who is a CoAF cofounder, Sachs, and O’Sullivan. Ellias is co-chair of the Presidential Task Force on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias.

HKS Dean Pauses All New Faculty Searches

• At an internal meeting, new HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein (AM '01, PhD '03) announced a pause on new faculty searches for the 2024-2025 academic year. According to The Crimson, Weinstein aims to have faculty “prioritize teaching and research over hiring responsibilities” while he conducts stakeholder outreach and develops a strategic plan for the school.

• The hiring pause will not impact ongoing HKS faculty searches, per a Crimson source.

Yale Committee on Institutional Voice Releases Report

• New Yale President Maurie McInnis has accepted the report of the university’s Committee on Institutional Voice, which sets forth three “default principles”: (1) “leaders should refrain from issuing statements concerning matters of public, social, or political significance, except in rare cases,” (2) “it may be appropriate and, in some cases, necessary, for leaders to speak when matters’“directly implicate the university’s core mission, values, functions, or interests,’” (3) “it may be appropriate to express empathy on external matters of ‘transcendent importance to the community.’”

• At listening sessions leading up to the report, many undergraduates opposed institutional neutrality because “they would like Yale to issue a statement condemning Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza or supporting Palestinians.”

More News at Harvard:

• Wall Street Journal: “Harvard’s Antisemitism Problem” — by the WSJ Editorial Board

• Air Mail: “The Vocal Minority: What’s behind the growing popularity of Ivy League student Republican clubs?”

• Inside Higher Ed: “Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Must Leave Harvard After 8 Years. They’re Calling for That to End.”

• The Crimson: “Is the Next JD Vance Sitting in Your Philosophy Seminar?”

• The Crimson: “Palantir Co-Founder Calls Government ‘Dysfunctional’ at Harvard Republican Club Event”

• American Council on Trustees and Alumni (ACTA): “Pursue Truth: Never Fear, Never Waver” — speech by Harvard Economics professor Roland Fryer in accepting ACTA’s Hero of Intellectual Freedom award

• The Crimson: “Institutional Neutrality Has Gone Too Far” — op-ed by Isaac Mansell (AB ‘26)

• AEIdeas: “Widener Is Sacred and Neutral Ground” — op-ed by Sarah Lawrence Professor Samuel Abrams (AM ‘07, PhD ‘10)

More News Beyond Harvard:

• The Cornell Daily Sun: “Whose foot?” — op-ed on student free speech by interim Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff

• The Telegraph: “The prestigious campus that lays bare Kamala Harris’s double problem on Israel and Gaza” — on Stanford

• New York Times: “PEN America Leader to Leave Embattled Organization”

• Boston Globe: “My university can show legacy institutions how to build a truly diverse community of thought” — op-ed by Pano Kanelos, founding president of the University of Austin

• New York Times: “There Are Four Anti-Trump Pathways We Failed to Take. There Is a Fifth.” — op-ed by Harvard Government professor Steve Levitsky, member of the FAS Faculty Council

OTHER EVENTS:

• Virtual & Cambridge, MA — November 13 at 4 p.m. ET: As part of a program series on open dialogue about the Middle East, Harvard Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin will join HLS Professor Noah Feldman (AB '92), co-chair of the Institutional Voice Working Group, to discuss his new book To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People. Register here.

• Virtual — November 14 from 3-3:30 p.m. ET: Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Professor Meira Levinson will host a panel, “Teaching Students to Listen and Talk Across Differences,” as part of HGSE’s Education Now webinar series. Register here.

• Dallas, TX — November 18 from 12-1 p.m. ET: The Harvard Club of Dallas is hosting a patron-only discussion with Harvard University EVP Meredith Weenick (AB ‘90, MBA ‘02) to offer a “unique insiders view of the current affairs in the administration at Harvard.” The event is free and open only to Patron, Summa and John Harvard members. Register here.

• Virtual — November 25 at 4 p.m. ET: As part of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute's program series on open dialogue about the Middle East, Yale Law School professor Aslı Ü. Bâli, president of the Middle East Studies Association, will join HKS Professor Asim Ijaz Khwaja (PhD '01), co-chair of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias, to discuss modern Arab and Muslim identities in the context of universities, local communities, and global events. Register here.

FROM YESTERDAY: 1636 Forum’s Key Takeaways from “Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed”

This afternoon, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce released its Republican Staff Report, “Antisemitism on College Campuses Exposed,” led by Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. The 325-page report includes internal emails, texts, and other exchanges between officials at Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Northwestern, and UCLA.

Here’s what you should know about Harvard:

Students who occupied University Hall and disrupted classes faced no formal discipline due to lenient Ad Boards and activist faculty. In her interview with the House Committee, Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker pointed to a group of 60 FAS faculty out of 800+ who voted to override the Ad Board and reinstate degrees for 13 graduating seniors who had participated in the encampment (p. 110). Harvard’s Ad Boards, which handle disciplinary actions, were described as “the problem” by then-Provost Alan Garber in a Harvard Corporation meeting on November 6, 2023, after meeting notes show Pritzker mentioned, “John Manning said that they had issues with their ad boards. They won’t punish anyone. If you can make a plea to them, they will let you off” (p. 107).

The report also revealed nine students who occupied University Hall and five who disrupted classes with bullhorns and chants of “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” in November 2023 received no formal sanctions (p. 71).

This masks some complexity regarding the encampment: the College Ad Board, which had no tenured faculty representation for the past three academic years until now, initially upheld encampment sanctions but was overruled by the FAS Faculty Council due to inconsistent punishment across Harvard schools (p. 70).

Professors described the FAS Dean’s leadership as “weak,” “disorganized,” and “incredibly poor.” Focusing only on radical faculty ignores the bigger picture. Accountability starts at the top with FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra, who led the spring faculty meeting on whether to overrule the Ad Board’s decision to defer the degrees of 13 seniors who participated in the Yard encampment. As Economics Professor Jason Furman put it in a text message, Hopi ran the meeting “incredibly poorly…while saying almost nothing and coming off as clueless” (p. 111). Another professor wrote to faculty peers, “They should not have had to decide, because the FAS Dean had good reasons to rule out the Monday vote. A weak, disorganized FAS Dean portends more trouble to come” (p. 112).

Harvard Graduate School of Education praised student participation in the encampment and suggested “moral equivalence” in its statements following October 7th. A day after the October 7th attacks, then-HGSE Dean Bridget Terry Long released a statement “express[ing] my concerns in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Israel and the Gaza strip where it has been reported that more than 1,100 people have been killed and hundreds more wounded by the actions taken by Hamas and the Israeli government.” According to the congressional report, then-Provost Alan Garber expressed concern over statements “suggesting moral equivalence” like HGSE’s (p. 41).

When five HGSE students joined the Yard encampment in the spring, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) found they’d broken university policies but refused to sanction them. Instead, the HGSE report said it “affirm[ed] the importance of [these students’] participation in civic activities and encourage[d] [them] to continue engaging in meaningful discourse” (p. 71). This decision influenced the FAS Faculty Council’s overturn of other student sanctions.

Pritzker told the House Committee that inconsistent discipline is “unacceptable”—a stance she expressed last year, yet the issue remains unaddressed.

Harvard's leaders struggled to align even on calling Hamas's October 7th attack “violent.” HMS Dean Daley opposed the term as “assigning blame” (p. 40). When then-President Gay asked if then-Provost Garber would accept this change to get Daley's support, Garber agreed reluctantly while noting, “Frankly I’m more disturbed by his logic than the wording change.” This was one of many basic language disputes and hints at deeper challenges in standardizing cross-school policies like discipline.

While Penny Pritzker told the House Committee in August 2024 that “one of the challenges is we’ve had uneven enforcement of the rules…the Corporation finds that unacceptable,” she voiced this issue in a Corporation meeting nearly a year ago and oversaw the expedited presidential search appointing Claudine Gay (p. 108).

When alumni raise concerns, Harvard leadership takes notice. After an alum asked Penny Pritzker about Harvard’s inconsistency in handling slogans deemed antisemitic vs. ones “calling for Lynchings by the KKK,” she wrote to then-President Claudine Gay to discuss the issue (p. 42). Alumni engagement matters; it’s a way to help keep Harvard accountable and on course.

Join Larry Summers and Sam Lessin in conversation about the State of Harvard on November 12.

On Tuesday, November 12 from 7-8 p.m. ET, Larry Summers and Sam Lessin will discuss the state of Harvard — register here and submit questions beforehand here.

This is a work-in-progress newsletter, so we appreciate any and all feedback & if you have links / blurbs for next week's edition, please let us know!
The 1636 Forum Team