Harvard Begins to Confront Its
Anti-Semitism Problem
A 300-page report makes for dismal reading.
Sophie Park / Bloomberg / Getty
May 5, 2025, 12:45 PM ET
Harvard’s anti-Semitism report has landed:
elaborately footnoted, abundant in statistics as well as anecdotes, earnest and
troubled in tone. It was composed entirely by current insiders at the
university—no alumni or, heaven forfend, faculty or deans from other
universities. And it offers more than 300 pages of dismal reading.
The report spends time—an inordinate amount of time,
according to some Harvard critics—parsing the definition of
anti-Semitism and its relationship to exterminationist hatred of Israel. By its
very length and carefully modulated tone, it sometimes seems to reflect an
academic wringing of hands rather than shocked wonder and volcanic fury at the
Jew hatred that has infected this great university.
The report nonetheless carefully documents a series of
appalling incidents, and the failure of university leadership to address
chronic and worsening Jew-baiting. It notes that the university leaders
remained mute when a commencement speaker resorted to anti-Jewish tropes. It
describes the silencing of Jewish students by their classmates, egregious
faculty support of anti-Israel protests at the expense of classroom neutrality
or even attendance, and sheer thuggishness aimed at Jewish students. It also documents
the collapse of a once-demanding disciplinary system, as various penalties for
misbehavior were reduced or rescinded wholesale in July 2024. It has a long
list of recommendations, including special training for students involved in
DEI efforts, more courses on Judaism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and
setting clearer expectations about civil discourse for new students.
Harvard President Alan Garber came to his position
suddenly, being appointed first as interim president, then to his current role
following the self-immolation of his predecessor,
Claudine Gay. That his presidency was accidental has not stopped Garber from
undertaking a number of sensible reforms, including standardizing and
centralizing disciplinary procedures at the university, canceling
identity-driven graduation events, ending Harvard’s political pronouncements,
and attempting to rescue the diversity piece of DEI by
focusing on community experience. He has been more than a safe pair of hands,
which is all to the good.
The fundamental problem, however, is that the roots of
Harvard’s Jew-baiting problem go far deeper than either the earnest
recommendations of the task force or the more robust actions of Harvard’s
president can address.
The widespread harassment of Jews reported at Harvard
reflects the attitudes of hundreds if not thousands of students, faculty, and
staff—that last group is an often underappreciated element in indulging or even
encouraging this behavior. It reflects the development of identity-driven
politics, for which responsibility lies outside the university as well as
within it. It has been fed by witch-hunting for “white privilege” (no matter
that there are plenty of Jews of color, as a walk down the streets of Tel Aviv
will show you). It flourishes in the bogus specializations that have hived off
from more traditional and all-embracing disciplines such as history,
literature, and anthropology. It has been nurtured in research centers whose
very existence is premised not on the quest for truth but on the pursuit of a
political or ideological agenda.
And it has been compounded by craven behavior at the top.
When the Harvard Corporation restored the degrees of 11 of the 13 students who
had been bounced for violating the university’s rules, it was cowardly. Neither
has the corporation acknowledged any culpability for its disastrous appointment
of Gay and the subsequent damage that did to the university’s reputation. With
the best will in the world, Garber can only begin to tackle problems that are
both deep-seated and not fully acknowledged in the task-force report. Still, as
Rabbi Tarfon said some 1,800 years ago, “You are not compelled to finish the
work, but neither are you permitted to desist from it.”
And the work will not be done by the Trump administration
either, which, as Charles Lane has put it, is framing a guilty man. The administration’s five-page letter of demands to the
university not only requires unconditional surrender but also promises the
equivalent of the occupation and MAGA-led reconstruction of a defeated country.
It insists on meritocracy—but then proposes to supervise faculty hiring and
teaching on the basis of ideological criteria. It would eliminate academic
freedom and put the university in a kind of receivership from which it would be
released only at the White House’s discretion. And in order to soften the
university up with a bit of backroom third degree, it is canceling contracts,
slashing indirect cost-recovery rates, and (if Donald Trump is to be believed)
trying to eliminate Harvard’s tax-exempt status.
One may be forgiven for thinking that the administration’s
avowedly radical concern about anti-Semitism is impure. An administration that
listens to the likes of Tucker Carlson is, at least, inconsistent on this
point. Rather, the Trump administration appears to have seized on this issue in
large part to batter universities, particularly the prominent ones.
Dara Horn: Why the most educated people in America fall for
antisemitic lies
The administration likes to talk about terror—whether as a
state to induce in bureaucrats or the “existential terror” that Christopher
Rufo, an admired voice, hopes to instill in universities. When you talk terror,
you are talking destruction, not reform; you are promoting large-scale
vandalism, not a better model. The administration has no vision for
universities beyond platitudes, and no realization that an attempt to impose
one will simply fail—or breed outward submission that will turn into vengefulness
when its moment passes. Hillsdale College and Liberty University, beware.
The deeper maladies behind Harvard’s Jew-baiting problem
will take many years to fix. Still, with some humility, some things can be done
now. Harvard might even learn from others: Vanderbilt in its intolerance for
physical obstruction, for example, or Chicago for its unabashedly firm rules on
speech.
Or consider admissions policy. In the 1920s, the
notoriously Jew-antipathetic president of Harvard, Lawrence Lowell, wanted to
reduce the percentage of Jewish students from the roughly 20 or 25 percent then
attending. He advocated a 15 percent quota, which was shot down by the
faculty. As of 2023, Jews made up about 10 percent of Harvard’s undergraduates. The
anti-Semitism report alludes delicately to “changing admissions practices” that
have perhaps privileged students looking for a platform, a network, and a
credential, and rewarded their jejune, self-reported high-school activism.
Harvard might consider looking instead for students keen on a genuine
education, rewarding open-minded curiosity rather than belligerent
self-righteousness.
There is much more work to be done. Harvard might, for
example, pare down its plethora of concentrations and centers that are driven
by political activism more than scholarly inquiry. It might make its
disciplinary system stick. Its leaders might give lots of short, unequivocal,
and ironclad declarations of what its principles are. It will be a long haul,
and one for serious people, of whom President Garber is plausibly one.
In the meantime, what should those who deplore both the
Jew-baiting and the Trumpian vandalism do? The answer lies in another Jewish
experience. In 1939, the Jewish community in Palestine, some half a million in
total, confronted both the British government’s white paper that restricted the
immigration of Jews trapped in the slaughterhouse of Europe and the war with
Nazi Germany. David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Jewish community, had a
simple response: “We must support the [British] army as though there were no
White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war.” A
courageous response, and one worth emulating.
About the Author
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Eliot Cohen is a contributing writer at The
Atlantic. He is a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins University, the
author of The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and
Fall, and co-host of the Shield of the Republic podcast.
