A program at Harvard Divinity Faculty is the newest casualty of the continuing tensions associated to the Israel-Hamas struggle, with the departure of two directors and the cancellation of a category on Israel-Palestine.
Diane L. Moore, the affiliate dean of the Faith and Public Life program on the Harvard Divinity Faculty, was scheduled to retire on the finish of the college 12 months in Could however departed all of the sudden in January. A spokesperson for the divinity college wouldn’t touch upon why she left early or whether or not she was fired. Moore couldn’t be reached for remark.
Then, earlier this month, the assistant dean for the Faith and Public Life program, Hussein Rashid, wrote to his college students that he too was resigning on the finish of the semester. Within the letter, Rashid, who’s a Muslim American, accused the college of tolerating racist and defamatory statements towards this system with out difficult or disputing them.
“Since I used to be a pupil right here a long time in the past, I’ve been aware of the anti-Muslim bias (amongst different racisms and discriminatory attitudes that exist right here),” Rashid wrote. “That bias has solely gotten worse and Harvard is just not an area the place I select to spend my time. I’ve no real interest in supporting an establishment of white supremacy that actively seeks to hurt me and mine.”
Rashid stated this system he helped administer was routinely vilified by Jewish teams on campus, together with the Jewish pupil group Hillel and the Chabad rabbi who’s a chaplain on campus. Directors by no means stepped in to defend this system, Rashid stated.
He cited for instance an Instagram submit by Harvard Chabad, led by Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, that stated: “There are quite a few Harvard educational facilities that primarily perform as Hamas or Palestinian embassies,” citing the Faith in Public Life heart “in its entirety,” and concluding, “it’s beautiful that there’s no name for a few of these facilities to be shut down or rebuilt in its entirety.”
Zarchi didn’t reply to a request for remark.
The Faith in Public Life program, which provides a certificates in faith and public life in addition to a grasp’s diploma in faith and public life, was created in 2020 to organize college students going into public coverage fields concerning the position of faith and the way it might reply to world conflicts world wide.
This system got here underneath intense criticism after 5 directors and one visiting professor in this system wrote in a publication days after the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel that folks ought to “problem single story narratives that justify vengeance and retaliation.”
“Begin with the rockets fired into Israel by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and never with the unlawful occupation of Palestinian land by Israel and the blockade of Gaza since 2007, and you’ve got a completely completely different story,” they wrote.“To acknowledge the context out of which this newest spate of violence arises is to not diminish the ache and struggling of Israeli and Palestinian victims,” they added.
In response to the publication and extra usually to the programs taught there, a number of Jewish organizations, together with Hillel and Chabad, accused this system of blaming Israel for the October 7 assault and justifying the actions of Hamas.
This system had been providing a category referred to as “Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Israel-Palestine.” That class, which included a two-week journey to Israel and the occupied West Financial institution, was alleged to be supplied this spring however was canceled.
Harvard was amongst a number of U.S. faculties with energetic pro-Palestinian pupil encampments final 12 months. Its former president, Claudine Homosexual, resigned after a congressional listening to the place she was unable to unequivocally say whether or not calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the college’s conduct coverage.
Final month, Harvard settled two lawsuits with Jewish teams that claimed the college had not taken applicable steps to maintain its campus from changing into a hostile setting for Jewish and Israeli college students within the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, assaults.
As a part of the settlement, Harvard additionally agreed to undertake the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when investigating complaints. The controversial definition, which critics say quashes dissent of Israel, provides amongst a number of examples of antisemitism the declare that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
On the day after the settlement was introduced, one other Harvard administrator, Jay Ulfelder, program director of the Nonviolent Motion Lab at Harvard Kennedy Faculty’s Ash Heart for Democratic Governance and Innovation, resigned.
In his letter of resignation, he blamed Harvard for “deepening repression of activism towards the genocide in Palestine” and stated the adoption of the IHRA antisemitism definition gave him the “ultimate push.”
“Harvard’s administration has responded to that activism by ignoring or rejecting college students’ calls for, punishing pupil protesters, and adopting guidelines and definitions that more and more prohibit political speech on the college, significantly however not solely round Israel and Palestine,” Ulfelder wrote.
This week, practically 200 Harvard college, college students, workers, and alumni submitted discrimination complaints to the college after its medical college canceled a panel that includes Gazan sufferers receiving care in Boston.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, govt director of Harvard Hillel, who had denounced pro-Palestinian protests and accused the college of furthering antisemitism towards Jewish college students, celebrated the resignations. In a letter to members of Harvard’s Jewish group titled “Elevating Our Sights,” he wrote, “Within the ten days following the settlement, three of probably the most vocal anti-Zionists have departed, or introduced their impending departure, from Harvard’s college.”
In an e mail, Rubenstein acknowledged he had earlier referred to this system on Faith in Public Life as having “a sort of entrenched anti-Zionist orthodoxy.” Throughout an August Zoom presentation with Harvard alumni and oldsters he had stated, “Zionist Jews are portrayed not simply negatively however actually, um, sort of inhumanly, uh, as evil.”
Harvard, Rashid stated, by no means challenged these statements.
“It grew to become a really permissive perspective to accuse us if we stated something that folks didn’t like,” Rashid added. “I stored asking for any individual to say one thing, they usually by no means did. I discover this an untenable scenario. I’ve to get out of an setting that’s actively and instantly dangerous to me.” —Faith Information Service
