CJFS-B Letter to Harvard Leaders on Antisemitism and Islamophobia Task Force Reports

 

June 23, 2025

 

Dear President Garber, Harvard administrators, and members of Harvard task forces,

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Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff – Boston Area (CJFS-B) takes note of Harvard’s decision to reopen negotiations with the Trump administration.

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Those negotiations are framed by the Trump administration’s groundless allegations of institutionalized antisemitism. The accusations have been used to suppress academic freedom and create a climate of fear at Harvard and throughout the US, particularly among Arab and Muslim community members and those who support Palestinian rights. 

To advance its agenda, the White House has leveled unprecedented legal and financial attacks against Harvard, its international students, and universities in general. Harvard rightly rejected the administration’s initial extreme demands and mounted a robust legal defense of its independence. 

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Yet the two recently released Harvard task force reports—one on Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias, and the other on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias—make clear that the actions of the Trump administration are not the only cause of the crisis in our academic community. Harvard’s own voluntary cooperation with the weaponization of antisemitism allegations has also taken a significant toll.

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As the university now moves toward a negotiated settlement, its resistance to President Trump’s assault on its core values must continue. However, such resistance will only be effective if Harvard applies its defense of academic freedom consistently, and opposes the cynical use of “antisemitism” and “viewpoint diversity” to control and police research and evidence-based discourse on Israel-Palestine. 

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We call on Harvard to protect the rights of free expression and the safety of all its students, not only in the current negotiations with the Trump administration, but also in applying its existing policies fairly and taking care to preserve the integrity of vital academic programs.

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The two Task Force reports provide a baseline for the recently-disclosed negotiations with the administration. Our reading of those documents produces the following insights:

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1. The Final Report of the Presidential Task Force on Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias paints a bleak picture of fear, harassment and repression on campus. Of Harvard’s Muslim community members, 47% do not feel physically safe on campus, and 58% feel their well-being is not supported. These numbers far exceed those of other religious groups, including Jews. 

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The reasons are made clear in the report: Muslim and Arab students–especially those who express support for Palestinian rights–are subject to selective and disproportionate enforcement of conduct rules, doxxing, and targeted harassment campaigns. Doxxing and other forms of vigilantism against Muslim and Arab students create real dangers for their targets, including death and rape threats, abduction by immigration authorities, and denial of future career opportunities. 

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The report also describes physical and verbal attacks against those who wear dress that signifies Muslim identity or Palestinian sympathies. Although the report describes Harvard’s responses to these abuses as deeply inadequate, its substantive recommendations do not propose meaningful corrective action. 

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The vagueness of the Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias report’s recommendations stands in stark contrast to those of the Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report, suggesting that Harvard only wishes to address a small subset of community concerns, not including those of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community members. That position must not be sustained in negotiations with the Trump administration.

 

At the same time, the university has contravened the Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias report’s recommendation to “protect its faculty, teaching staff, and various centers and initiatives to pursue their research and teaching without fear of being targeted” (p. 91) by canceling relevant programming and dismissing staff at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative; and most recently the Religion and Public Life program. These actions have created a climate of fear and censorship that is harmful to members of Harvard’s community and antithetical to the university’s professed values. 

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Since discipline of pro-Palestinian students and intervention in the above-mentioned programs were publicly demanded by influential Harvard alumni, there is a reasonable concern that those alumni exerted an inappropriate influence on the university’s punitive response. 

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2. We are alarmed by a distorted representation of “antisemitism” that pervades the Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report, and that appears to threaten significant harm towards Arabs, Muslims, and those who support Palestine. The report’s authors apparently accept all reported incidents—including protests against Israel’s killing of Palestinians and destruction of Gaza—as examples of bias. By relying on an opt-in survey, the report’s methodology leaves the findings open to voluntary response bias, in particular toward the views of active participants in pro-Israel campus Jewish groups, who are in fact a minority of Jews on campus.

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Whatever the cause, every recent instance of alleged antisemitism cited in this report involves criticism of Israel, an outcome prefigured by the conflation of Judaism and support for Israel in the Task Force’s mandate. This false equation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has led to “a pervasive climate in which the very existence of being a Palestinian is framed as an attack” (Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias report, p. 36). It also gives undue weight to a questionable legal claim that anti-Zionism creates a “racially hostile” environment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

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Meanwhile, the report of the Task Force on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias makes clear that the university has failed to consider the needs of its entire Jewish community. It observes that, while Zionist Jewish students feel shunned by anti-Zionists, many Jewish students who identify as anti-Zionist report being “targeted and harassed by Harvard students and faculty for my political views” (p. 248) and that “the main source of hostile behavior against them was other Jewish students” (p. 138).  Yet not one of the report’s substantive recommendations addresses this finding. Anti-Zionist perspectives articulated by Jewish (including Israeli) scholars and students are dismissed as “non-mainstream” (p. 165), giving the disturbing impression that the university is adjudicating which perspectives are legitimately “Jewish.” The sidelining of anti-Zionist Jewish perspectives erases the diversity of Jewish thought on Israel, and impedes the goal of combating actual antisemitism.

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3. We are troubled by repeated calls in the Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias report for “viewpoint diversity”—a vague term regularly deployed by President Trump and others in right-wing attacks on universities. Engaging with diverse viewpoints is surely an important part of the academic experience, but these reports make it clear that Harvard is not fully committed to protecting the diversity of views that already exist on its campus. Without robust protections for freedom of expression and protest, these calls for “viewpoint diversity” come across as an attempt to mandate inclusion of pro-Israel perspectives, and give false legitimacy to the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.

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CJFS-B calls upon Harvard to defend its intellectual integrity in negotiations with the Trump administration in the following ways:

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• Protect the plurality of views on campus, including within Jewish communities, on issues pertaining to Israel and Palestine. The administration’s bad-faith framing of “viewpoint diversity” must be rejected.

• Protect freedom of speech and protest. Harvard must reject calls to penalize those who follow the ancient precept to “not stand by the shedding of your fellow’s blood” (Leviticus 19:16)

• Take serious and concrete responses to ensure the safety of all community members in the face of Islamophobia and anti-Arab hate, including doxxing and online harassment. 

• Publicly acknowledge the disproportionate targeting and harassment faced by Arab and Muslim community members and put specific processes into place to address these harms.

• Reverse inappropriate measures that have been taken to interfere in scholarly autonomy at Harvard’s academic programs and centers which conduct scholarship on Israel and Palestine. These programs include the Center for Middle Eastern Studies; the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative; the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights; and Religion and Public Life at Harvard Divinity School.

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Criticism of Israel, its government and policies, the ideology of Zionism, or US military or diplomatic support for Israel does not constitute antisemitism or any other form of bias. We call on Harvard to uphold this truth in current negotiations with the U.S. government. Any formal resolution that ignores it, and fails to protect the political and scholarly expression of all members of the campus community, would violate Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.

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Sincerely,

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Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff – Boston Area

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