Republican Lawmakers Chastise Harvard University for ‘Weak’ Proposal Addressing Antisemitism

A group of US Republican lawmakers, led by Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Tim Walberg (R-MI), implored interim Harvard University president Alan Garber to implement policies on antisemitism that have teeth, arguing in a letter sent on Monday that those proposed recently by a faculty committee are insufficient.

Last month, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism issued a report comprising “preliminary recommendations” for addressing antisemitism on the campus. Harvard has been ravaged by numerous pro-Hamas demonstrators, some of whom have, according to reports, bullied and harassed Jewish supporters of Israel and stormed the campus calling for a genocide of Jews in Israel.

The report was denounced by Jewish community leaders as incomprehensive and flaccid for not including concrete proposals for protecting Jewish students, as well as faculty, from bigotry.

“The preliminary recommendations reaffirm what has been known for months,” said the lawmakers’ letter to Garber, which was first shared by Jewish Insider. “Harvard has a serious problem with antisemitism on its campus, including ‘derision and exclusion’ of Israeli students, discrimination and harassment of students by faculty and teaching fellows, and political litmus tests in extracurricular student life. While the preliminary recommendations rightly call for substantive discipline and public condemnation in response to this hateful conduct, they fail to offer real solutions for doing so.”

The letter added that Harvard has already received recommendations for combating antisemitism from a previously formed Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG), a group of faculty whose efforts were allegedly hindered by administrators who cared more about what its convening did for the Harvard’s public relations than any good it could accomplish for Jewish students or the university at large.

“Prominent members of Harvard’s Jewish community have expressed criticism and dissatisfaction with the recommendations, which are weaker, less detailed, and less comprehensive than the meaningful recommendations presented by Harvard’s [AAG] in December 2023 despite having more than six months to build upon them. Harvard should recognize the insufficiency of its efforts to date, publicly adopt the AAG’s existing recommendations, and announce concrete steps to implement them in advance of the fall semester.”

The lawmakers argued that “instead of offering a tangible plan to address antisemitism at Harvard, the task force’s most specific and actionable recommendations are to organize public talks on respectful dialogue and religious relations, increase the availability of hot kosher meals, and to circulate guidance about accommodating Jewish religious observance and a calendar of Jewish holidays.”

The letter came amid suspicion that Harvard has resolved to change nothing about the culture that led to its being beset by numerous scandals — including the outing of its first Black president as a serial plagiarist — which have sullied its reputation and, in addition to prompting a slew of lawsuits and federal investigations, raised concerns about the state of all of elite higher education.

Earlier this month, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, erasing the good will it had regained from the public by appearing to embrace an approach to discipline that would deter future unruly behavior as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate incidents.

Per the Crimson, “The most severe probation charge will last for just one semester, a remarkable change from the initial punishments which required at least one student to withdraw from the college for three semesters. Some students who were initially placed on probation in late May also had the length of their probations reduced.”

For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — that protesters had set up on campus, creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.

In a public statement, Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated. However, Harvard, as well as the organization responsible for the encampment, Harvard out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached to end the demonstration, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters.

Unrepentant, HOOP celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.

“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”

In some quarters, Harvard’s alleged indifference to the civil rights abuses to which Jewish students have been subjected is viewed as reflecting the attitudes of the campus leaders’ far-left politics.

On Wednesday, Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is suing Harvard for the actions it allegedly failed to take to protect Jewish students, spoke at the Republican National Convention, which convened this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to confirm — for the third time in eight years — the nomination of Donald Trump as its candidate for President of the United States.

“I came to Harvard to study religion, the foundation of Western Civilization. What I found was not theology but contempt for it,” Kestenbaum said. “My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism. Too often, students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American, and that is antisemitic.”

He continued, “Although I once voted for Bernie Sanders, I now recognize that the far left has not only abandoned the Jewish people but the American people. The Democratic Party, the party I registered to vote for the day I turned 18, has become ideologically poisoned, and it is this poison, it is this corruption, that is affecting far too many young American students. Let’s be clear: the far left’s antisemitic extremism has no virtue, and the radicalism on our campus and our streets has no moral legitimacy.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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