A group of Harvard professors have responded university president’s anti-freedom of speech actions by a letter.
Below is the letter;
Dear President Gay:
As Harvard faculty, we have been astonished by the pressure from donors, alumni, and even some on this campus to silence faculty, students, and staff critical of the actions of the State of Israel. It is important to acknowledge the patronizing tone and format of much of the criticism you have received as well as the outright racism contained in some of it.
We were nevertheless profoundly dismayed by your November 9 message entitled “Combating Antisemitism.” The University’s commitment to intellectual freedom and open dialogue seems to be giving way to something else entirely: a model of education in which the meaning of terms once eligible for interpretation is prescribed from above by a committee whose work was, on Tuesday, described to the faculty as only beginning.
There should surely be limits to what is speakable, even in a university. Saying things that are plainly untrue – denying the Holocaust, for example – merits condemnation. Derogating other members of the community in racist, xenophobic, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic language merits condemnation.
There must, however, be room on a university campus for debate about the actions of states, including of the State of Israel. It cannot be ruled as ipso facto antisemitic to question the actions of this particular ethno-nationalist government any more than it would be ipso facto racist to question the actions of Robert Mugabe’s ethno-nationalist government in Zimbabwe. Nor can arguments that characterize Israel as an “apartheid” state or its recent actions as “ethnic cleansing” or even “genocide” be considered automatically antisemitic, regardless of whether one concurs with such arguments. The University’s recently-announced “Discrimination and Bullying Policies and Procedures,” it is useful to remember, includes “political belief” (and thus presumably its expression) as a protected category.
It is understandable that in the shadow of the twentieth-century history of Europe, Palestine, and Israel, as well as the attacks of October 7 and the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza, you would want to remind members of our community that their words have meaning. And yet, at a moment when an affiliate of the University has with apparent impunity stood in the yard and accused students of supporting terrorism, your delineation of the limits of acceptable expression on our campus is dangerously one-sided.
Similarly, the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” has a long and complicated history. Its interpretation deserves, and is receiving, sustained and ongoing inquiry and debate. Singling it out as necessarily implying removalism or even eliminationism – when over a million Palestinians have been forced from their homes and over ten thousand civilians, including four thousand children, have been slain in Gaza, actions which the Holocaust historian Omer Bartov suggests in the New York Times may amount to a “crime against humanity” being executed with “genocidal intent” – is imprudent as a matter of university policy and badly misjudged as an act of moral leadership.
We call on you to present a balanced commitment to the support of intellectual freedom at Harvard by taking the following steps:
- Resisting calls to suspend and/or decertify the Palestine Solidarity Committee in retaliation for its public statements and advocacy, and resisting calls to set aside the University’s normal disciplinary procedures to prematurely sanction students and employees because of concerns raised about their political activity absent specific allegations of wrongdoing (and those already thusly sanctioned must be reinstated pending a procedurally sound investigation);
- Directing the President’s Advisory Group on Antisemitism to explain its definition of antisemitism to the University community, as requested at the FAS faculty meeting of November 7, before recommending any policies touching upon the freedom of thought and expression on our campus;
- Explicitly and specifically affirming the University’s commitment to the freedom of thought, inquiry, and expression in light of the extraordinary pressure being brought to bear upon critics of the State of Israel and advocates of the Palestinian people, and indicating that there can be no tolerance for a “Palestine exception” to free speech;
- Creating an advisory group on Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism (as suggested at the FAS faculty meeting of November 7).
Sincerely,
- Walter Johnson, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Kirsten Weld, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Vijay Iyer, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Deidre Lynch, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Nikolas Bowie, Harvard Law School
- Diane Moore, Harvard Divinity School
- Namwali Serpell, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Harvard Kennedy School
- Sidney Chalhoub, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Christopher Hasty, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Salma Abu Ayyash, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Jesse B. Bump, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Ryan D. Doerfler, Harvard Law School
- Atalia Omer, Harvard Divinity School
- Bram Wispelwey, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School
- Sara Roy, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Neel Mukherjee, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Margareta Matache, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Soham Patel, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- John Womack, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Musa Syeed, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Jacinda Tran, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Vincent Brown, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Adhy Kim, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Richard Thomas, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Lara Jirmanus, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Altaf Saadi, Harvard Medical School
- Hibah Osman, Harvard Medical School
- Lisa Thompson, Harvard School of Dental Medicine
- Khameer Kidia, Harvard Medical School
- Mary T Bassett, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Sawsan Abdulrahim, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Cemal Kafadar, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Lauren Kaminsky, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Amy Hollywood, Harvard Divinity School
- Malak Rafla, Harvard Medical School
- Bassima Abdallah, Harvard Medical School
- Alejandra Caraballo, Harvard Law School
- Eleanor Craig, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Matylda Figlerowicz, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Adam Haber, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
- Tara K. Menon, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Arunabh Ghosh, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Joel Suarez, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Karameh Kuemmerle, Harvard Medical School
- Sam Marks, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Rosie Bsheer, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Nader Uthman, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Glenda Carpio, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Adaner Usmani, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Paulina Alberto, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Sarah Darghouth, Harvard Medical School
- Alisa Khan, Harvard Medical School
- Patricia Stoeck, Harvard Medical School
- Hajirah Saeex, Harvard Medical School
- Sherar Andalcio, Harvard Medical School
- Diana L. Eck, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Gordon Schiff, Harvard Medical School
- Mahmoud Abu Hazeem, Harvard Medical School
- Rania El Fekih, Harvard Medical School
- Hicham Skali, Harvard Medical School
- Ramona Dvorak, Harvard Medical School
- Kamal Itani, Harvard Medical School
- Haytham Kaafarani, Harvard Medical School
- Ousmane Kane, Harvard Divinity School
- David U. Himmelstein, Harvard Medical School
- Joycelyn Ronda, Harvard Medical School
- Christian Williams, Harvard Law School
- Steffie Woodhandler, Harvard Medical School
- Ju Yon Kim, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- M. Amin Arnaout, Harvard Medical School
- Autumn Allen, Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Avik Chatterjee, Harvard Medical School
- Farhana Sharmeen, Harvard Medical School
- Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School
- Aisha James, Harvard Medical School
- Corey Hardin, Harvard Medical School
- Caroline Light, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Karen Huang, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- George Aumoithe, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Michelle Morse, Harvard Medical School
- Sadeq Rahimi, Harvard Medical School
- Sugata Bose, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Lorenzo Bondioli, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Michael Bronski, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- David Kennedy, Harvard Law School
- Christina Villarreal, Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Hilary Rantisi, Harvard Divinity School
- Kassem Safa, Harvard Medical School
- Huma Farid, Harvard Medical School
- Bernhard Nickel, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Amanda Raffoul, Harvard Medical School
- Martha Ann Selby, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
- Marshall Ganz, Harvard Kennedy School
