OPINION:
Last week, 100 faculty members at Harvard signed a letter demanding that Harvard President Claudine Gray allow members of the University to continue engaging in antisemitism. The faculty letter was incredibly sad and remarkably ignorant. It revealed an ugly side of the Harvard community that does not care about its Jewish members and a group of otherwise intelligent people who seem to have no grasp of either the law or the facts when it comes to dealing with Jews or the Jewish State.
Over the last month, Harvard has (rightly) received an enormous amount of criticism for its failure to quickly condemn Hamas and stand against the rampant antisemitism displayed by a number of student groups on campus. On Nov. 9, Ms. Gray published a statement outlining a new commitment to combating antisemitism and explaining (correctly) that you can combat antisemitism while still being committed to free speech. At least 100 faculty members were appalled by these assertions. In their letter, they demanded the ability to, among other things, use antisemitic phrases, spread demonstrably false blood libels, and pretend that they don’t know what antisemitism means — without being criticized for doing so. The contents of the letter are not only morally but also legally and factually wrong.
First, the law: Under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Harvard has an affirmative obligation to ensure that everyone, including Jewish students, has a harassment-free educational environment to learn in. Every year, the University signs a commitment to uphold the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ Title VI standards, which includes using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism when dealing with allegations of, and formulating policies to protect Jewish students from, anti-Jewish hate.
The IHRA definition, which was formulated by a network of experts across various disciplines over a period of years and was tested and refined for over a decade before it was officially adopted by a plenary of 31 states, including the United States, makes it clear that while “criticism of Israel criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic” there are some forms of anti-Zionism that do cross the line into antisemitism. For example — spreading lies about the Jewish state in a clear effort to demonize, delegitimize, and apply a double standard to the Jewish state, as well as efforts to dehumanize murdered Jewish babies, are all forms of antisemitism that should rightfully be called out. That answers their questions of ‘what does antisemitism even mean?’ The same thing it meant when you signed your Title VI commitment and took that money.
Think about it – if, in order to defend your statements, you need to pretend you don’t know what the word antisemitism means, maybe you are the problem.
Now the facts: You can argue about whether you think that Israel should or should not be doing X or Y in this way, but there is no evidence, factually, that Israel is committing war crimes. It does not matter how it feels, and it does not matter what political bodies like the U.N. say. There are elements to these laws, and those elements have not been met. Any productive debate has to start with an acceptance of the facts; that war is hell and civilian deaths are tragic, but that does not make them unlawful. Nor is this in any way unique to Israel or Gaza; United Nations experts say roughly 90% of war-time casualties in urban settings are civilians, and even according to Hamas’ numbers from previous wars, Israel’s ratio is much lower.
Laws matter, and Israel’s responses are demonstrably proportionate (the relevant legal standard) even if they are asymmetrical (not a legal standard). Israel does mitigate civilian casualties and always has. Definitions matter; facts are facts, and the charge that Israel is committing genocide is baseless, absurd, and overtly antisemitic.
The faculty signatories are also furious President Gray condemned the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a Hamas slogan widely recognized as an antisemitic genocidal call to violence. The faculty letter jumps on this to say that the slogan “has a long and complicated history,” which makes it okay.
Out of curiosity, how many of these ‘scholars’ think it is okay for powerful men to make sexist comments if they don’t intend for them to be considered offensive? That’s right, none. Some will argue that there are other ways that phrase can be interpreted, and that may be true- but there are tons of words and phrases that at one point may have been innocuous and that have developed clear and well-known racist connotations. Do any of these scholars contend that those words are still acceptable? Of course not.
Each and every faculty member who signed that letter should ask themselves this question: If there was another chant that was readily understood by many to at least sometimes be calling for the wholesale slaughter of any other minority group, would anyone have the audacity to say it is fine as long as that is not how it was intended? Dream on.
The faculty letter then takes a prejudice pivot so common that it has its own academic name: The Livingstone Formulation, in which someone who calls out antisemitism is immediately accused of trying to silence others. You can support Palestinian rights and criticize Israel without being antisemitic. And if you cannot, then you are not just a Palestinian supporter; you are also an antisemite.
Letters like this one defend dangerous rhetoric, normalize antisemitism and make life dangerous for Jews. Multiple studies have shown that this kind of dangerous rhetoric leads directly to violence, and Harvard stands as its own test case, with at least one violent antisemitic assault this month.
Ms. Gray fulfilled her basic moral and legal obligation to call out antisemitism. Nobody was silenced, and the school used its own free speech to respond. Hate speech is protected, but that does not mean that we should not call it what it is. No one seems to be concerned that calling racist speech racist or sexist speech sexist will somehow offend the racists and the sexists. This is not about Jewish exceptionalism; it has always and only been about Jewish equality. Shame on each and every faculty member who continues to deny that Jewish people matter.
• Mark Goldfeder is a former law professor and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. @markgoldfeder on X.
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