As universities across the country were pressured to take a public position on Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, few were as tormented as Harvard.
Officials at the first school said nothing when a pro-Palestinian student group wrote an open letter saying Israel was “entirely responsible” for the violence. Harvard followed up with a letter to the university community acknowledging “feelings of fear, sadness, anger and more.” After an outcry, Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a more forceful statement condemning Hamas for “terrorist atrocities” while urging people to use words that “enlighten, not inflame.”
Difficult and divisive questions about how universities should respond when student protests cross the line into threatening, disruptive and harmful behavior came to the fore at Harvard last week, as Dr. Gay faced calls to resign after her appearance widely criticized in Congress. committee looking into campus anti-Semitism. When asked whether threatening Jews with genocide would violate the school’s code of conduct, he demurred.
On Tuesday, Harvard’s governing body said it stood firmly behind Dr. Gay, offering her a unanimous sign of support after several days of silence and intense public pressure. Under fire from some of the university’s big financial backers, prominent Jewish alumni and lawmakers, the board deliberated late Monday night before issuing a statement of support.
“As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership at Harvard University,” said the statement, signed by board members in addition to Dr. Gay. “Our extensive discussions confirm our belief that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and address the very serious social issues we face.”
The statement supporting Dr. Gay also emphasized that the university will have zero tolerance for student protests that disrupt class. Violent protests, including those targeting conservative speakers in recent years, have become a growing focus of donors, alumni and politicians who say elite colleges have become too inhospitable to ideological diversity.
“We stand for open speech and academic freedom,” the Harvard company said in a statement. “And we are united in our strong belief that calls for violence against our students and disruption of the classroom experience will not be tolerated.”
Last week’s congressional hearing focused the nation’s attention on how colleges are struggling to deal with the raw emotions and division on their campuses since the Oct. 7 attack. The legalistic and compensatory responses to questions about anti-Semitism from three college presidents—Dr. Gay, M. Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — led to calls for all three to resign.
Only Ms Magill, who apologized for her testimony but faced intense pressure to resign, has resigned. MIT issued a statement of support for Dr. Kornbluth.
“It’s hard to say whether anything good could come out of this hearing,” said Greg Lukyanoff, president of the Foundation for Civil Rights and Expression, which focuses on free speech issues at universities. “But I think it brought home to people that something is wrong on these campuses.”
He added, “I think this could be a wake-up call to make us think about what we want higher education to look like in the future.”
In interviews, Harvard alumni, students and faculty said they hoped the board’s decision to release Dr. Gay, the school’s first black president, would allow the university community to move on after a particularly tumultuous time.
A Harvard spokesman declined to answer questions about the board’s decision to retain Dr. Gay. A request for an interview with Dr. Gay went unanswered, and no board members responded to requests for comment.
Laurence H. Tribe, emeritus professor of law at Harvard, had criticized the performance of Dr. Gay in congressional hearing as ‘hesitant, formulaic and strangely evasive’. But she joined hundreds of other faculty members in signing a petition calling for Dr. Gay to keep her job, saying it was dangerous for universities to be bullied into making decisions about who to hire and who to fire.
“I think building bridges is preferable to blowing them up,” Mr. Tribe said Tuesday after the board announced its decision to retain Dr. Gay as chairman.
“I very much hope that the university can move forward and I wish her success,” said Rabbi David Wolfe, who resigned from Harvard’s advisory committee on anti-Semitism after Dr. Gay’s congressional testimony, which he called inadequate.
Critics of Dr. Gay expressed dismay at the board’s decision.
“This is a moral failure of Harvard leadership and higher education leadership at the highest levels,” said Representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who led the most aggressive questioning of Dr. Gay during a hearing on Capitol Hill last week.
Edo Berger, professor of astronomy, said the council’s statement failed to explain why Dr Gay should stay on. “It may have been difficult to make a decision because of external pressures,” he said. “But to me, that’s the mark of leadership.”
Dr. Berger added that he was not sure that reconciliation was possible. “I don’t know that that closes the case,” he said. “The various pressures will not subside.”
Several high-profile incidents of student protests in recent times have added to the tension on campus. The student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, reported Monday that four students face disciplinary action for their participation in pro-Palestinian protests last month, including two who used bullhorns as they chased students out of classrooms chanting, “From the river to the sea, the Palestine will be free.” Many Jews find the phrase offensive, saying it implies that the state of Israel should be eliminated.
While the Harvard company was unequivocal in its support of Dr.
“So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of the brutal terrorist attack by Hamas, and the University’s initial statement should have been a direct, immediate and unequivocal condemnation,” the board’s statement said.
Dr. Gay has faced criticism on other fronts as well. Harvard acknowledged Tuesday that after accusations of plagiarism related to three articles by Dr. Gay, the university conducted a review and determined that he had not violated the university’s standards for “research misconduct.” But the Harvard firm said its investigation “revealed some instances of underreporting,” adding that Dr. Gay would request “four corrections to two articles to insert references and quotations omitted from the original publications.”
Like many other elite universities, Harvard has struggled to strike a balance between giving students the freedom to express their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and disciplining those who cross the line and threaten or intimidate anyone.
In the days since her Dec. 5 appearance before a House committee, donors, alumni and students have stepped up a pressure campaign to oust Dr. Gay, while her supporters have rallied to try to save her work. About 700 Harvard faculty members, and hundreds more alumni, defended her in several open letters.
One of the letters, from members of the Black faculty, called the attacks on the president “peaceful and politically motivated.” The letter, which was written and signed by some of Harvard’s most prominent professors, said Dr. Gay “should have the opportunity to serve out her tenure to demonstrate her vision for Harvard.” A group of more than 1,000 Black alumni also defended her in an open letter, writing: “While the current issues are complex, her commitment to fighting anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism has never wavered.”
One of the most outspoken critics of Dr. Gay, William A. Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard graduate, said in an interview earlier this week that he should resign for the good of the school. “I don’t see a scenario where it will survive in the long term, or even in the interim,” he said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ackman declined to comment on the board’s decision to retain her.
Some professors on campus praised the board’s decision, but said deeper issues remain. “I think the statement was meant to condemn Islamophobia and reject any notion that teaching about racism is akin to promoting anti-Semitism,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Over the past two months, Dr Gay has raised the concerns of Jews who felt her initial response to the Hamas attack was lacking.
On October 27, at a Shabbat dinner at Harvard Hillel, she announced the formation of an advisory group to help her “develop a robust strategy to address anti-Semitism on campus.” And he condemned the phrase “from the river to the sea”.
“Jewish students have shared with us terrible accounts of feeling isolated and targeted,” he said. “This shakes me to my core – as an educator, as a mother, as a person. Harvard should be a place where everyone feels safe and seen. It’s the right thing to do.”
But despite these efforts, her appearance in Washington shook her presidency.
During the hearing, Ms. Stefanik peppered the presidents with questions that, on Saturday, led to Ms. Magill’s resignation from Penn.
“At Harvard,” Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, “does calling for the genocide of the Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment? Yes or No?”
Dr. Gay replied, “It might be, depending on the context.” Pressed by Ms Stefanik, Dr Gay added minutes later: “Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it turns into behavior that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, is actionable behaviour, and we do take action.”
Ms. Stefanik tried again: “Well, the answer is yes, calling for the genocide of the Jews violates Harvard’s code of ethics, right?”
Dr. Gay replied, “Again, it depends on the context.”
Dr. Gay moved to limit the fallout by apologizing in an interview published Friday in The Crimson.
Although one of the immediate concerns of Dr. Gay would be healing the wounds on campus, the controversy he was embroiled in has higher stakes.
Sujay Jaswa, a Harvard Business School graduate who founded technology portfolio company WndrCo, said the situation at Harvard underscored broader concerns he had about higher education.
“I think the testimony, basically, revealed to everybody that these universities are run by people who believe things that are very different from society at large,” he said. “And I think that’s why you see so much revulsion.”
The report was made by Alan Blinder, Mable Chan, Rob Copeland, Lauren Hirsch, Sarah Mervos and Vimal Patel.
