Harvard College Jewish Alumni Association’s Open Letter to President Claudine Gay and Dean of Harvard College Rakesh Khurana
We, the undersigned students and alumni, represent a growing organization of over a thousand Jewish alumni of Harvard College, other Harvard University programs and numerous non-Jewish alumni friends.
Jewish alumni are not a monolith, nor do we pretend to be. We embrace diverse political views, espouse different opinions about the state of Israeli politics, and hold diverse lived experiences. We are stronger for our differences. And we stand shoulder to shoulder, indivisibly united, in our commitment to ensuring the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students on campus and to championing a democratic and pluralist university culture that has no tolerance for hateful and violent discourse.
On October 7th, Hamas terrorists invaded the state of Israel with thousands of rocket strikes, through ground invasions, and with paratroopers. Hamas terrorists massacred concertgoers with machine gunfire and grenades, slaughtered children, burned people alive, raped women, and took hundreds of Israeli citizens and dozens of American citizens hostage, many of them children. Over a thousand Jewish people were murdered that day, the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. We have seen the footage of people fleeing for their lives as they are gunned down, the bloodstained homes, the machine-gun riddled cars, the limbs of those massacred. These images capture violence beyond what the mind can comprehend.
These horrific events were met with acclaim by over thirty Harvard student groups, who called the intentional slaughter of civilians “justified” and claimed that Israel was “solely responsible.” This deluded romanticization of violence has been matched by calls for more violence and the obliteration of the state of Israel “by any means necessary.”
This—while Jewish students mourned the murder of their own family and friends, and the whole conscientious world reeled at the scale of the horror.
And during this time, the University remained silent. In the absence of any official pronouncement to the contrary, these letters conveyed the implicit approval of a silent administration. It was incumbent on the administration to speak out swiftly against terrorism, especially when it has spoken clearly and forcefully on many recent geopolitical and political events.
It is one thing to champion the rights of Palestinians and to vociferously express concern for the safety of civilians, particularly children, in Gaza, as many members of this alumni group have always done and will continue to do. It is quite another to trade in the crude language of “resistance” to justify the grotesque bullying and intimidation of Jewish students on campus and to exalt ideologies of violence and brutality that run counter to the idea of democracy itself.
We never thought that, at Harvard College, we would have to argue the point that terrorism against civilians demands immediate and unequivocal condemnation. We never thought we would have to argue for recognition of our own humanity.
It meant a great deal to us that President Gay came to Hillel and Chabad, that she took time to meet with Jewish students and to assure them that Harvard “has their back.”
And in that spirit, we are calling on the University to meet its commitment to protecting all its students, not just those that shout the loudest or blare the most polarizing rhetoric.
The Executive Committee, on behalf of the Harvard College Jewish Alumni Association, is requesting:
- A meeting, in person, with the alumni leadership to discuss concrete plans to ensure the protection of Jewish students on campus. Even before the current wave of antisemitism on campus, there had been a steady uptick in reported incidents of harassment, including physical assaults, verbal abuse, and graffiti of Hillel and other Jewish spaces.
- An immediate plan and robust commitment by the College and University to curb the dissemination of hate speech and to limit the disruptiveness of rallies so that they do not interfere with students’ abilities to participate in their classes, to enter into their own dorms, and to move peacefully through the campus. In particular, we ask for the addition of religion as a targeted category for harassment in the College Handbook, and the codification of calls for violence targeting civilians as outside of acceptable behavior for FAS students or faculty.
- The adoption by the University of the definition of “antisemitism” articulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
- The creation of a commission to study the roots of antisemitism on campus by investigating whether aspects of the university curriculum, the DEI framework, faculty training (or the lack thereof), and certain campus events perpetuate unreflective narratives about Jewish people and the state of Israel.
- The formal recognition of the Harvard College Jewish Alumni as a College/University sanctioned special interest group (SIG).
- A broad-based effort to encourage a pluralist culture of good faith debate, critical thinking, and moral reasoning, where Harvard students, who may be tomorrow’s leaders, can learn to express their opinions and test their thoughts on the campus marketplace of ideas, without resorting to violent discourse.
Those days are behind us. With broad support from the greater alumni community, we will advocate for the liberal values that this University is supposed to champion, for the protection of students against antisemitic abuse, through all the civil approaches at our disposal.
We thank you for your consideration, for your work to create a more inclusive community, and we look forward to speaking soon.
Sincerely yours,
The Harvard College Jewish Alumni Association
Friends and Allies of the HCJAA
