5 Members of Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group Threatened to Resign, House Committee Says
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce released a 42-page report Thursday morning that detailed an internal battle between former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the antisemitism advisory group she established in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The report, released as part of the committee’s investigation into Harvard, revealed that five of the advisory group’s eight members threatened to resign en masse less than 10 days after Gay announced the group’s formation.
“The goals and steps outlined in the document are meaningful recommendations that would have had a substantial impact on Harvard’s antisemitism problem had they been implemented,” the report stated. “Unfortunately, Harvard’s leaders failed to follow the roadmap drawn for them by their own chosen experts.”
Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton criticized the committee’s report as “an incomplete and inaccurate view of Harvard’s overall efforts to combat antisemitism last fall and in the months since.”
“It is disappointing to see selective excerpts from internal documents, shared in good faith, released in this manner,” Newton wrote. “Harvard has demonstrated its focus and commitment and attentiveness to combating antisemitism, and these efforts are reflected in the many voluminous submissions to the committee.”
The report relied heavily on submissions to the committee from the University, which included the previously unreleased recommendations from Gay’s advisory group, and a transcribed interview with Dara Horn ’99, a member of the group.
While the committee’s report comes more than four months after Gay’s resignation, interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 emerged relatively unscathed. While Horn expressed frustration with the formation of Garber’s task forces to combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias, the committee report almost entirely focused on Gay and her response to the advisory group’s recommendations.
Gay did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
The resignation warning, sent on Nov. 5, included a series of ultimatums from the five members who demanded that Gay publicly condemn certain slogans chanted by pro-Palestine student protesters, ban masked protests on campus, and launch a confidential investigation into the Harvard Medical School’s dean of students for allegedly not confronting antisemitism at an event he attended.
The threat, alongside the series of demands, prompted Gay and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 to call an emergency meeting with the advisory group on Nov. 6, in which Gay sought to persuade the group to not resign en masse.
“Areas of common ground have come attached with an ultimatum, one that if interpreted literally leaves me with 24 hours and puts me and the University in a terrible position,” Gay told the group, according to a transcription of the meeting published in the committee’s report.
“You serving is to be helpful, and you’re trying to be helpful; resigning en masse if you don’t get these things in 48 hours would be explosive, and would make things even more volatile and unsafe,” she added.
Gay, however, made clear concessions to the group following the emergency meeting.
Just three days after the emergency meeting, Gay sent a University-wide email that explicitly condemned the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” by pro-Palestine protesters and announced the University would implement antisemitism training and education for Harvard affiliates.
Members of the group were also frustrated that the scope of their responsibilities remained vague, weeks into the formation of the task force. At the Nov. 6 meeting, Gay told the group she apologized for “not giving you my time that you deserved” and for “thrusting” the advisory group into the roles “before they were defined, staffed, and supported,” according to the meeting minutes.
Horn said that the advisory group soon began to hear from many Jewish students reporting instances of antisemitism, but lacked clear direction from Gay and the administration.
The advisory group reported that there were Jewish students who said they were afraid to eat in Harvard dining halls, followed home and harassed, and at least one who had been spat on for wearing a yarmulke.
Some of the report’s harshest criticisms of the University stem from the Harvard administrators allegedly not implementing the advisory group’s recommendations.
Newton wrote that Harvard’s “community and campus are different today because of the actions we have taken, and continue to take, to combat hate and to promote and nurture civil dialogue and respectful engagement.”
“Harvard has and will continue to be unequivocal – in our words and actions – that antisemitism is not and will not be tolerated on our campus,” he added.
The advisory group’s recommendations included reevaluating the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and “investigating the potential influence of ‘dark money’ from Iran, Qatar and associates of terrorist groups on campus.”
A member of the advisory group was concerned that the organization American Muslims for Palestine – which they characterized as an entity “linked to terror finance” – funded the “PalTrek” that brought Harvard affiliates to visit the West Bank and “was involved” in the Arab Conference at Harvard in April.
Garber said that the Office of the General Counsel would look into the funding and the OGC later reported “no issues were identified.”
The committee did not specify how Congress will proceed with its investigation of antisemitism at Harvard and other college campuses, but the report indicated that the committee is not done with Harvard just yet.
“The Committee will continue investigating the activities happening on campus at Harvard and at other universities, including the responses by university administrations to recent unlawful campus encampments,” the committee wrote.
—Staff writer Emma H. Haidar can be reached at emma.haidar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @HaidarEmma.
—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at cam.kettles@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles.
Grad Student Union Files Unfair Labor Practice Charges Against Harvard Over Encampment Response
Harvard Graduate Students Union-United Auto Workers filed unfair labor practice charges against Harvard on Wednesday with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the University’s response to the pro-Palestine encampment in Harvard Yard violated the rights of student workers.
In an email sent to union members on Wednesday, the HGSU-UAW executive board accused Harvard of “discrimination” and “suppression of protected concerted activity.” The executive board wrote that by placing protesters on involuntary leaves — which are likely to be retracted now that the encampment has ended — the University left them without food and financial aid and put at least one union member at risk of deportation.
In the filing, HGSU-UAW also accused Harvard of surveillance. On Monday, Harvard University Police Department officers entered the encampment and took pictures of protestors.
“The way that we see it is any kind of disciplinary action leveled at student workers that implicates their ability to work and their employment at the University as a student worker is a labor issue,” HGSU President Bailey A. Plaman said.
Plaman alleged that Harvard also discriminated against workers by being “invested in the genocide in Gaza.”
“This discriminates against and creates a hostile work environment for Arab, Muslim, and especially Palestinian student workers,” Plaman said. “Student workers were disciplined for protesting these unfair and unsafe working conditions which we see as discrimination for exercising their right to protest which is protected by the NLRB, and discrimination for their political beliefs, which are protected by our contract with the University.”
Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that the University had communicated to the union its position that unfair labor practices had not taken place.
“We do not believe participating in the encampment occupation that occurred in Harvard Yard is related to student worker working conditions and as such is not a protected activity under the NLRA or the parties’ collective bargaining agreement,” Newton wrote.
The involuntary leave notices, which were first delivered to students on Friday and Saturday morning, came just days before all students — except those granted additional housing through Commencement — were required to be moved out of their Harvard campus housing for the summer.
Still, HGSU-UAW alleged that “involuntary leave directly impacts current and future employment.”
Involuntary leave operates parallel to any action taken by Harvard’s Administrative Boards — the primary disciplinary bodies of each of the University’s schools. More than 60 students have been called before their respective Ad Boards, and interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 announced that the pending cases would be expedited with “precedents of leniency for similar actions in the past.”
HGSU-UAW leadership claimed that Harvard violated workers’ Weingarten rights by denying students access to union representation during Administrative Board proceedings. According to the NLRB, Weingarten rights are “employees’ right to request their representatives” in investigatory meetings.
Over the past year, HGSU-UAW has consistently organized around the war in Israel and Gaza.
In November, the union endorsed national union statements in support of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement. In March, HGSU-UAW’s general membership voted to endorse a letter circulated by the union’s BDS caucus that called on Harvard to “conduct an inquiry into investments in companies and ties with institutions profiting from the ongoing attacks in Gaza, to disclose these ties publicly, and to divest from them immediately.”
In a statement to The Crimson last week, the HGSU-UAW Executive Board wrote, “We consider any organizing by student workers around these resolutions an exercise of concerted activity and mutual aid, which is federally protected by the National Labor Relations Act.”
—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.