On Harvard’s Next Steps to Address Antisemitism

Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,

I hope my words find each of you well.

Yesterday, Harvard University’s task force on antisemitism delivered its initial short-term recommendations. In parallel, this morning Harvard Hillel submitted an end-of-year letter to President Garber offering a set of partially overlapping short-term proposals for the university to address antisemitism, disciplinary processes, and intellectual culture. We hope that, in addition to the taskforce’s recommendations, President Garber will publicly accept Hillel’s recommendations and act quickly and energetically to implement them.

I have received multiple inquiries about the significance of the task force’s recommendations, and want to share my sense of the place of these recommendations in the ongoing work of making Harvard a fit home for Jewish and Israeli students, and a thriving community of learning. First, it is important that we appreciate the significant effort Harvard’s antisemitism taskforce has dedicated to hearing from hundreds Jewish and Israeli students; to pointing out the immoral, anti-intellectual, and illegal discrimination against Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students; and to recommitting Harvard to the pursuit of truth and to the welfare of its Jewish community, alongside all its students.

The short-term recommendations unveiled yesterday are a step towards restoring Harvard to its mission and obligations. As short-term recommendations, they are limited in three significant ways:

1. They are merely recommendations. To make a real impact on life at Harvard, these recommendations must first be accepted by the University’s top leadership, then be implemented across a decentralized and divided university – a process must then be iterated over multiple rounds of evaluation, refinement, and enhancement in a sustained, multi-year manner.
2. The task force’s recommendations are incomplete, omitting feasible short-term changes that would materially improve the situation of Jewish students and the life of the university as a whole as soon as the coming fall term. These are detailed in the letter we delivered this morning to President Garber, and include requiring that those in teaching and student-support roles refrain from on-campus political activity that may undermine their ability to teach and mentor all Harvard students; publicly reporting on Title VI complaints as is already done for Title IX; proactively reaching out to Jewish high school seniors concerned about whether Harvard cares about and facilitates Jewish life; and taking on the costs of security for its Jewish students while they are at Hillel – among others.
3. By their own admission, these recommendations are short-term, and thus do not address the deep-seated and long-standing elements of the university’s culture and procedures that nurtured the intolerance that burst into view after October 7. From Harvard’s hosting of “academic” programs where opposition to Zionism is an entrenched orthodoxy and a requirement for employment; to the awarding of committee positions and deanships to professors whose vision of Harvard is not a liberal embrace of open-ended intellectual pursuit but a narrow band of activism; to an intellectual and social culture in which Harvard students do not consistently defend their ostracized peers or the principles of debate and curious inquiry; and especially to the admissions policies that have driven Harvard’s Jewish population to well below the levels of the mid-20th century’s anti-Jewish quotas. We hope that everyone remains clear-eyed that the best-case outcome for any set of short-term recommendations is an order of magnitude smaller than the soul-searching Harvard faces in the coming years. At stake is not only Harvard’s Jewish community, but its standing as the preeminent institution of higher learning in America, and around the world.

It is too early to tell what these recommendations mean for Harvard, its intellectual and moral climate, and its Jewish community. In one possible future, the University takes these recommendations up with alacrity; the task force follows up this fall with a full report equal to the breadth and depth of the causes of this past year’s eruption of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic hatred at Harvard, including long-term recommendations to address these problems at their roots; and the university in turn adopts and enacts those latter, yet-to-be-made recommendations. The result of these, and other, efforts would be that, some years from now, Harvard will have done right by its Jewish community, and by its mission. In this scenario, today would mark a small but significant step forward.

There is another possibility, which we must remain vigilant against: that one or more of the actions outlined above will be stymied, whether by administrative distraction or internal resistance, leaving the university in or near its intolerable status-quo. Should the coming years follow this sad course, today will be viewed as an insufficient step – a too-timid aspiration at best, a tiny fig-leaf at worst, and a missed opportunity to address the very real threats to Harvard’s Jewish community and to the university’s moral and intellectual stature.

It is critical that each of us keep in mind that the choice between these paths has not yet been made, and will depend on our collective commitment to the future of Harvard, to its Jewish community, and to one another. We hope that in the coming months and years, not only will these recommendations be taken up and the antisemitism taskforce issue a report equal to the  scale of the problem – but that the Jewish community will remain engaged, committed, and gracious. May we have the merit of guiding Harvard’s Jewish community through this difficult passage, and through our collective efforts lay the groundwork so that Jewish life will again flourish at Harvard, so that generations of Jewish students to come will enjoy the fullness of a Harvard education: a life-shaping and world-expanding encounter with vast ideas and inspiring friends and teachers, untainted by discrimination, harassment, or anti-Semitism.

Harvard Hillel will continue to support and advocate for Jewish students, next year and always. Thank you for being a vital part of this community: for your commitment through the trials of the past year, and into the future, whatever it may bring. This steely dedication, and love of Judaism and fellow Jews, is what has sustained our people through waves of adversity across a hundred generations, and it is what must guide us now and always.

Yours,

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director
Harvard Hillel