FAS Faculty Grew More Skeptical of Systemic Antisemitism as DOJ Pressed Its Case

Faculty grew more skeptical this year that antisemitism is systemic at Harvard, even as the federal government made that charge the centerpiece of its case against the University, according to The Crimson’s annual Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey.

More than three-quarters of respondents — 77 percent, up from 63 percent last year — “somewhat” or “strongly” disagreed that there is systemic antisemitism at Harvard. Agreement fell from 21 percent to 12 percent since last year.

Antisemitism allegations formed the bedrock of the Trump administration’s 2025 attempts to strip Harvard of its federal funding and ability to enroll international students. The battle escalated in March, when the Department of Justice sued the University, alleging it remained “deliberately indifferent” to antisemitic and anti-Israeli conduct on campus.

U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns dismissed the suit in August, finding that the incidents the government cited were “too isolated and episodic” to show an ongoing violation of civil rights law. The Justice Department has since appealed the decision.

Harvard’s legal battles came alongside campus-wide efforts aimed at combating bias. Faculty dissatisfaction with Harvard’s own efforts to fight antisemitism dipped this year: 14 percent said they were dissatisfied, down from 18 percent last year. Satisfaction held steady, with 49 percent “very” or “somewhat” satisfied — the same share as last year.

Views on the University’s efforts to combat anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias were largely unchanged from last year.

The Crimson’s survey was open from April 29 to May 22 to more than 1,400 tenure- and non-tenure-track faculty pulled from the school’s public masthead across the FAS’ three academic divisions. The Crimson received 463 responses, 292 complete and 171 partially complete. The survey closed nearly three months before Stearns’ ruling.

This is the third in a series of articles on the survey. Earlier articles detailed faculty opinions on Harvard governance, FAS budget cuts, and viewpoint diversity.

Antisemitism and Anti-Arab Bias

The DOJ’s March lawsuit doubled down on last year’s criticisms, arguing that Harvard violated federal civil rights law by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students from discrimination.

But as the case moves to appeal, Harvard’s leaders have worked to show federal officials and campus critics that they are taking the issue seriously. In April 2025, twin presidential task forces on combating antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination released sweeping reports on bias against Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates.

Those reports said Harvard would instruct deans to examine review processes for courses and to review admissions policies to assess candidates’ openness to interacting with different perspectives.

Since then, the University has established new partnerships with Israeli universities, consolidated its Title IX and Title VI compliance efforts under a single office, and pressed ahead on “viewpoint diversity” in its faculty body — moves some Harvard critics lauded as steps in the right direction.

The same actions, alongside leadership changes at centers and programs with Israel-Palestine programming and the decision to let a research partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank lapse, have also been sharply condemned as attempts to placate the federal government.

But the changes do not appear to have shifted how faculty judge Harvard’s efforts to combat antisemitism: roughly half of surveyed faculty expressed satisfaction with the efforts, in line with last year’s results.

Faculty opinions of the University’s efforts to combat anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias on campus also stayed relatively consistent with last year’s results. Thirty-one percent of respondents said they were “somewhat” or “very” satisfied with the University’s efforts, and the same share said they were “somewhat” or “very” dissatisfied. A plurality of respondents, 37 percent, did not lean in either direction.

Roughly 40 percent of this year’s respondents disagreed that there is systemic anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, or anti-Palestinian bias at Harvard, up from 35 percent last year. Forty-four percent of faculty agreed that form of bias was present, a small dip from 46 percent last year.

The Justice Department suit has drawn criticism from Jewish faculty members. More than 100 Jewish affiliates from across the University signed an open letter in the spring, arguing that the lawsuit “cynically exploits concerns about antisemitism” to attack higher education.

But not all faculty agreed with that perspective. A July response to the first letter, which garnered 170 signatories, criticized it for failing to mention the existence of antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on campus.

“We understand why colleagues question the merits and motives of the Title VI lawsuit,” they wrote. “But one should not turn a blind eye to the fact that many Jewish and Israeli students have suffered harassment and discrimination over the last few years, degrading their Harvard experience.”

The second letter’s signatories came largely from Harvard Medical School, whose faculty are not included in The Crimson’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey.

The survey also showed that those who believed there was either systemic antisemitic or anti-Muslim bias on campus were less likely to believe there was systemic bias against the other group.

Among faculty who “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that antisemitism is systemic at Harvard, 24 percent also said anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, or anti-Palestinian bias is systemic, compared with 44 percent of all respondents. And 87 percent of those who agreed that anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, or anti-Palestinian bias is systemic disagreed that antisemitism is, compared with 77 percent of respondents overall.

Faculty remained broadly split on whether Harvard should divest from Israeli companies, a consistent demand from faculty and student activists in recent years. Thirty-eight percent of faculty agreed that the University should divest, 37 percent disagreed, and 25 percent said they neither agreed nor disagreed.

Last year, a 41 percent plurality of respondents opposed any move to divest — a reversal from the 2024 survey, when the same share backed divestment.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.