According to separate reports, Harvard University students and staff have experienced anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as a result of the deeply polarized environment at one of the nation’s top universities.
Following the formation of separate task forces to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments last year amid campus protests over Israel’s war on Gaza, reports were released on Tuesday.
Additionally, Trump claims that Harvard’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in funding for the university was prompted by widespread anti-Semitism on campus. The president’s administration also is at odds with Trump.
According to Harvard President Alan Garber, members of the Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist communities reported hiding “overt markers of their identities to avoid confrontation,” while Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community members described feeling “judged, misrepresented, and silenced.”
According to Garber, “particularly when given the anonymity and distance that social media offers,” the reported willingness of some students to treat one another with disdain rather than sympathy, and to be critical and ostracized.
Some students reported that their peers were pushing them away from campus life because of who they are or what they believe, thereby eroding our sense of community.
In its report, the task force on preventing anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias claimed bias had been “fomented, practiced, and tolerated” at Harvard and more broadly in academia.
According to the task force, 39 percent of Jewish students said they felt at home at the university, while 26 percent of them said they felt unsafe online.
According to the task force, nearly 60% of Jewish students said they had “discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias” because of their opinions, and only 25% of them believed there was no “academic or professional penalty” for expressing their opinions.
The task force quoted an unnamed Israeli Arab student who claimed, “get used to social discrimination” from their first day on campus, one of the other instances of bias in the report.
“People refusing to speak with you.” not even attempting to be nice. Some people act nice and end the conversation when they learn that they are Israeli, and then never speak to [me] again,” the student was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
Similar to the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian biases that the task force identified on campus, describing a “deep-seated sense of fear” among students and a “uncertainty, abandonment, threat, and isolation” state.
According to the task force, “Muslim women who wear the hijab and pro-Palestinian students who wear keffiyehs spoke about being subjected to verbal harassment, being called “terrorists,” and even being spat upon.”
The topic of doxxing was “particularly highlighted as a significant concern that affects both current career prospects and physical safety,” it continued, referring to the practice of sharing a person’s personal or identifiable information online.
Nearly half of the Muslim students and staff surveyed felt physically unsafe on campus, and 92 percent of them felt they would face professional or academic sanctions for speaking out about their political views.
An unnamed student was quoted as saying, “As Muslims students we have been living in constant fear.”
I can’t help but think Harvard would have done more to stop it if there had been antisemitic trucks flying over campus and planes flying over with antisemitic slogans. “There have been trucks driving around campus for months, displaying the faces of Muslim students.
Both task forces put forth a number of suggestions for addressing bias on campus, including expanding access to legal services to combat doxxing and placing a premium on students who support open inquiry.
According to Garber, the university will make additional efforts to make sure it is a place where “ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirit of seeking truth” and “mutual respect is the norm.”
