Alan Garber, President, Harvard University
Marla Frederick, Dean, Divinity School - Harvard University
January 10, 2025
Dear President Garber & Dean Frederick,
I write this letter as a Harvard alumnus and former Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
While the event described below happened long before we were part of the Harvard community, I feel I need to share it with you before I begin the principal focus of my letter.
On October 27, 1967, just a few months after the Six Day War, Martin Luther King Jr. had dinner with a group of Harvard students. Professor Seymour Martin Lipset was present and recalled how one of the students criticized Zionists. King was incensed, saying “Don’t talk like that!” - and continued by adding: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!”
King’s lesson has evidently not been embraced by the Harvard Divinity School. As such, I write this letter in regard to a five-year long pattern of discriminatory behavior in the Divinity School’s Public Life Program and its prestigious Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship Program. There is a well-documented history of the Fellowship Program’s predisposition to promote and support a biased and narrowly politicized stance that would – if challenged through litigation - likely be deemed to constitute a violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The demonstrably antizionist, and discriminatory values that the Followship Program promotes are neither inclusive nor balanced. The program’s values as evidenced in the fellowship choices it makes are without a doubt contrary to the Religion and Public Life Programs core value of “promoting a sophisticated, contextualized understanding of religion in relationship to structural injustice to help us better envision new approaches to peacebuilding”, and its goal of “enabling a focus on root causes, while simultaneously challenging the simplistic demonization of those in positions of privilege and the valorization of those who are marginalized.” The choices it has consistently made are also contrary to King’s message to Harvard students as well as to Harvard’s humanist values. If one critically and without prejudice reviews the five-year historical record of who Harvard has awarded a Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship to, along with their pre-award scholarly work, and their record of post-award work, It becomes demonstrably clear that fellowships have only been awarded to scholars whose work was, is, and continues to be narrowly and vehemently focused on the delegitimization of Israel and Zionism. It is collectively, a body of work whose collective purpose has been the reframing of Israel as an illegitimate colonialist entity. The Fellows’ have collectively and individually sought to undo Israel as a sovereign Jewish State. The Divinity School’s valorization and sponsorship of this stance via the Fellowship Program could be deemed as creating a hostile and discriminatory learning environment on campus for two Harvard cohorts; Jewish American students and Israeli students. As such, it may constitute an example of Harvard University failing to meet its federally mandated responsibility of upholding and applying Title VI protections for its Jewish American students and its Israeli students.
As you know, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs that receive federal funds. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that Title VI applies to discrimination on the basis of Jewish ethnicity or ancestry in guidance issued in 2004 (see Kenneth L. Marcus, Dear Colleague Letter (Sep. 13, 2004), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/religious-rights2004.html). In 2017, OCR reminded us that “Title VI protects all students, including Jewish students, from discrimination based on race, color, and national origin (including language and actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics). Schools must take immediate and appropriate action to respond to complaints of discrimination, including harassment or bullying based on race, color, or national origin.”(See OCR, Combating Discrimination Against Jewish Students, U.S Dept. of Educ. (2017), https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/jewish-factsheet-201701.pdf.)
Earlier, OCR clarified that unlawful harassment need not include intent to harm, be directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents (see Russlynn Ali, Dear Colleague Letter (Oct. 26, 2010),
https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-201010.html).
Historically and legally, Judaism is understood to be both a faith and an ethnicity. Jews share not only religious traditions, but also a deep historical sense of Jewish peoplehood. The Jewish people’s history, theology, and culture are deeply intertwined with the Land of Israel. For many Harvard students (inclusive of Jewish students and Israeli students), expressing support for the Jewish homeland is a sincere and deeply felt expression of the Jewish people’s shared ancestral, religious, and ethnic identification with the Land of Israel.
As a result, for many of Harvard’s Jewish students and Israeli students, Zionism is as integral to their identity as observing the Jewish Sabbath or maintaining a kosher diet is for others. Of course, not all Jews observe the Sabbath or keep kosher, but those who do clearly are expressing important components of their Jewish identity. Similarly, not all Jews are Zionists. But for many Jews, including Harvard’s cohort of Jewish students and Israeli students, identifying with and expressing support for the Jewish homeland is also a sincere and deeply felt expression of their Jewish ethnic identity. Harassing, marginalizing, demonizing, and excluding these Jewish students on the basis of the Zionist component of their Jewish identity is just as unlawful and discriminatory as attacking a Jewish student for observing the Sabbath or keeping kosher.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act protects Harvard’s Jewish students against harassment and discrimination on the basis of their shared ethnic and ancestral identity. Indeed, guidance issued by OCR and the Department of Justice in 2004, 2010, and 2017 clarified that Title VI covers discrimination against Jews on the basis of their “actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” According to Presidential Executive Order 13899, which has been incorporated into OCR’s current policy guidance, Title VI must be enforced “against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI.”
There is no doubt that the rise of anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist activism on Harvard’s campus has drawn national and very public attention over the past few years. I need not recite the list of challenges, or examples of past administration’s failures to recognize, and respond to antisemitism on campus. However, when one looks critically and objectively at the current state of the Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life Program and the five year history of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship Program, it is patently clear that through these programs, Harvard has been and remains actively bestowing the university’s valuable imprimatur and respected endorsement to biased, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, discriminatory, and intimidating rhetoric.
In short, since 2019, Harvard -through the Fellowship Program - has openly and without reservation rewarded, enabled, and given legitimacy to “scholars” who have been engaged in anti-Semitic, Anti-Zionist and thus discriminatory and racist rhetoric as defined by the IHRA Definition which was incorporated into U.S. law in Presidential Executive Order 13899, and which directs Education Institutions to use the IHRA definition and its examples in evaluating allegations of anti-Semitism in federally funded programs.
Historical Facts of the Divinity School’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship Program:
· The Fellowship is open to all scholars in the field, and since 2019 there have been a total of 23 Fellows accepted into this selective cohort. Yet, the supermajority, if not every fellow has been an Anti-Zionist activist who made the liberation of Palestine and/or the negation of Israel as a sovereign Jewish State the focus of their work.
· The majority of fellows have come directly from Gaza or the West Bank.
· No scholar with a critical focus on another country, conflict, or religion has ever been accepted as a Fellow. Nothing on China, Myanmar, Yemen, Sudan, Darfur, Iran, India, or the many other countries suffering ethnic conflicts. Only Israel.
Below is a partial list of the Harvard Fellows, their public statements, their biographies, and their own descriptions of their scholarly work.
· Fellow Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian (2023-24 Fellow) already had a very public, long and well documented history of engaging in antisemitic and antizionist rhetoric when she was invited to become a Harvard Fellow. As such, she could have only been selected precisely for that rhetoric, and in recognition of her activism that often amounted to hate speech, and which resulted in her own university suspending her.
“It is time to abolish Zionism. It can’t continue, its criminal. Only by abolishing Zionism can we continue… They will use any lie. It started with babies, they continued with rape, and they will continue with a million other lies. We stopped believing them. I hope the world stops believing them.”
Before being awarded her Harvard Fellowship, Kevorkian had been suspended by her own university for “incitement and creating division”.
Her home university noted that her suspension was “necessary to ensure a safe and a conducive environment for our students on campus.” Shockingly, this didn’t give Harvard any pause. Instead, she was enthusiastically invited to join the Harvard community and to share her scholarship with the legitimacy of a newly proffered Harvard platform.
· Fellow Noura Erakat (2021-22 Fellow) used her Harvard fellowship to further develop and legitimize her antisemitic and antizionist rhetoric. Since becoming a Harvard Fellow, her work has become fully consistent with hate speech as defined by Title VI and the IHRA.
“Any shock in response to this multi-scalar attack [by Hamas] reflects an expectation that those Palestinians die quietly and a complicity in their strangulation.” Oct 7, 2023
“Any condemnation of [Hamas] violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation. #Palestine #Gaza #Decolonize.” Oct 7, 2023
“Zionism is racism & a form of racial discrimination…Land back, Right of Return.” Sept 11, 2023
“Secular or religious Zionism is fascism…#ApartheidIsrael.” April 18,2023
· Fellow Matti Milstein (2021-22 Fellow) uses his abundant talent skill as a photographer to present a particular viewpoint of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. https://matimilstein.com He is of course, as an artist and as a photojournalist, he is entitled to present a subjective view of what he sees through his lens. But if one is intellectually honestly, one must recognize that Millstein’s work is in the service of a pro-Palestine, Antizionist postion and that his work is neither impartial, nuanced or balanced in his treatment of a complex and nuanced conflict. A perfect choice for a Harvard Fellow as his work comes from and is in support of a politics of Antizionism.
· Fellow Brant Rosen (2021-22 Fellow) is in fact Jewish and leads a religious congregation. Brant is the founder of Tzedek Chicago, which happens to surprisingly be a non-Zionist Jewish congregation, His stated focus is on creating solidarity with the oppressed, including Palestinians. He sought to use his time as a Harvard Fellow to create a new idiom for Jewish liturgy reflecting values of liberation, the prophetic imperative to speak truth to power, and a diaspora-based vision that views the entire world (in lieu of Israel as a Jewish State) as the Jewish homeland.
· Fellow Taurean Webb (2021-22 Fellow) sought to use his Fellowship platform as a mechanism to assist in bringing U.S. African American Christian communities into the movement for a just peace in Israel-Palestine through relationship-building, cross-cultural immersive learning, theological reflection, youth engagement and collective action. However, this was never meant to be an ecumenical and nonsectarian “uniting”. Webb’s fellowship year was spent producing an integrative art exhibition that united the work of Black and Palestinian artists. Webb’s goal was to travel his exhibit across the East Coast and Midwest. Noticeably absent in his “uniting” project were works of Jewish and Israeli artists. Webb used his Harvard Fellowship to bring together U.S. Black artists with Palestinian artists and with great intentionality he excluded “the other” Jewish, Israeli and Zionist artists from this so-called relationship-building project. Webb’s project – supported by Harvard - was an exercise in exclusion. An exclusion based on religion and race.
· Tom Mehager (2019-20 Fellow) Mehager – in his own words - used his Harvard fellowship to formulate, jointly with Zochrot, a curriculum focused on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. He employed the lens of settler colonialism. The curriculum he developed “centralize(d) an analysis of Ashkenazi privileges. Offered in three bilingual options, the courses are a tool for teachers, moderators, and activists to transform public narratives. In short, Mr. Mehager was enabled and funded by Harvard to create an Anti-Zionist curriculum that depicts Ashkenazy Jews as being colonialists who have no rights to be citizens of the Jewish State which is itself an illegitimate colonial occupier. Such curricula – funded by Harvard - would by definition be in violation of Title VI and discriminatory as per the 1964 Civil Rights Act and as further outlined in Presidential Executive Order 13899.
The above biographies are just a small sample of the Harvard Fellow’s illustrious creative work and scholarship. One can easily produce a summary that would expose similarly one-sided, racist and biased positions for almost every one of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellow’s. Alas, time is short.
It is painfully clear that any objective, unbiased and neutral review of the scholarly work and public statements of Harvard’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellows would reveal that the vast majority of them trafficked in discriminatory racist and biased propaganda before, during and after their fellowships at Harvard and did so with impunity and the valuable imprimatur of Harvard University. Further, it is inconceivable to imagine that the Religion and Public Life Program’s faculty and administrators and the Divinity School Dean were not and are unaware of this culture of institutional bias, discrimination, and intimidation. In fact, the Fellowship Program has been so openly and publicly trafficking in, sponsoring and promoting bias, discrimination, and intimidation under the false protective shields afforded to scholarship and creative activity that is amounts to a total abdication of Harvard’s duty to protect academic freedom. If Harvard can’t distinguish and disentangle racism and hate from scholarship and creative work then the academy is in big trouble.
As independent scholars, these Fellows are free to use their work to support militants and to minimize the legitimacy of “Zionist ideologies” and to question the existential rights of Jews to maintain a sovereign Jewish State. These scholars even have the right to ignore and even defend the cruel slaughter of 1,200 innocent non-combatants in Israel as some of the Harvard Fellows have in fact done. As a retired former Professor, I will defend their individual rights to express their views as strongly as I disagree with them.
However, the decision by Harvard to award the internationally prestigious platform of a Harvard Fellowship to this monolithic group of scholars, thus enabling the spread of a demonstrably narrow, biased and consistent antisemitic hate-filled message is incomprehensible, shocking and deeply saddening to me as someone who has been inextricably tied to Harvard most of my life. As a Jew and as an academic who believes in open and informed debate in the search for truth, I feel deeply betrayed by fact that Harvard deployed the Fellowship Program to promote the expression of one viewpoint while clearly suppressing another.
Harvard’s decision to give fellowships to, and support individuals who have individually and collectively demonized the Jewish State, and who have legitimized violence against innocent Jews and Israelis as a justifiable act towards achieving the Palestinian “right of return” is shocking but not without precedent. Antisemitism has a long and ugly history of trying to burrow into and camouflage itself as philosophical thought, as political discourse, as scholarship and even as science. And Harvard has never been immune to this. However, in 2025, the reputational and financial costs to Harvard of being at best a shield for such rhetoric and at worst an enabling platform for it, will be enormous. The GSD and Harvard have been removed from my will and tens of thousands of other alumni have done the same. Harvard as an institution seems to be a remarkably slow learner and a very poor student when it comes to identifying and correcting antisemitism, antizionism, racism, and intimidation against Jews. Sadly, a culture of discrimination against the Jewish People and the Jewish State has become deeply embedded in the Divinity School and is demonstrably self-evident in the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship Program.
For all of the above reasons, I hope that Harvard, and The School of Divinity immediately restructures the Fellowship Program so that it better reflects the words of Drew Faust, who wrote
“Universities must model a commitment to the notion that truth cannot simply be claimed, but must be established — established through reasoned argument, assessment, and even sometimes uncomfortable challenges that provide the foundation for truth. The legitimacy of universities’ claim to be sources and validators of fact depends on our willingness to actively and vigorously defend those facts.”
The Religion, Conflict, and Peace Fellowship Program’s trafficking in anti-Semitic propaganda is antithetical to the idea of Harvard as a locus of inclusive, balanced, nuanced and informed debate and knowledge production – full stop. It is also antithetical to the words of both Drew Faust and Dr. King.
Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers has also written on this matter, noting that the university’s obligation to protect its students from discrimination is “absolute”. Sadly, he also observed “a vast double standard regarding what constitutes prejudice.” He correctly noted, “There is hypersensitivity to prejudice against most minority groups but what might be called hyper-insensitivity to anti-Semitism … with very few exceptions, university leaders who are so quick to stand up against microaggressions against other groups (but) remain silent in the face of anti-Semitism.”
I implore you and your new administration to act swiftly to correct what is a very public record of poor decision-making at The Divinity School and its Religion and Public Life Program.
Sadly, based on my lack of belief in Harvard’s ability to learn and to self-correct, I will likely be filing a Title VI claim with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights against the Divinity School and the Religion and Public Life Program.
If you wish to assure me that Harvard will be taking swift and meaningful corrective action thereby avoiding a formal OCR complaint, or if you wish to discuss my concerns, please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
Adam Drisin (Harvard MDes)