Statement from Harvard FSJP about the Harvard Task Forces Recommendations
July 19, 2024
As an organization of people with a diversity of faiths and ethnicities, including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim members, the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine stands against antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and racism and discrimination more broadly. We therefore welcome the dedicated work of the Presidential Task Forces on Combating Antisemitism and Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias.
The commitment of both task forces to protecting students, faculty, and staff from bullying and harassment is admirable. The preliminary results of their efforts speak to the importance of preserving a diverse and inclusive university community, in which we can engage in vital debates, particularly regarding policies in which our own institution is financially invested and historically and politically implicated.
We see a great deal of productive overlap in the recommendations of the two Task Forces. The need for greater community interaction, debate, and the need for education on the potential harms of doxxing and social media bias is clear in both. More space for prayer, more kosher food options, more time for religious holidays, and more promotion of religious literacy are also much-needed interventions.
We echo the call by task force members to reaffirm the University’s commitment to free expression and open debate. Such a reaffirmation is particularly important because the University has repeatedly shifted its policies to curtail speech that defends of Palestinian lives.
We call for the University to uphold scholarly freedom to scrutinize and address human rights violations without fear of censorship. This is essential to create the community described in the University-Wide Statement on Rules and Responsibilities, one “characterized by free expression, free inquiry, intellectual honesty, respect for the dignity of others, and openness to constructive change.”
In the spirit of constructive change, we wish to highlight a concern that is central to thoughtful and equitable discourse regarding Israel/Palestine. Conflating criticism of Israeli government policies with antisemitism obfuscates Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestine and genocide against Palestinians by silencing dissent.
As our organization’s Jewish members have observed, conflating criticism of Israeli state policies with antisemitism also harms Jews, by treating Jewish people, including Israeli Jews, as a monolith. This is a form of stereotyping that makes it more difficult to prevent and refute actual bias and discrimination against Jewish people.
Critiquing the policies of nation-states is not prejudice against groups or individuals. The University has previously recognized the distinction between the material or political support for governments and ethnic or religious discrimination or bias when Harvard Management Company appropriately divested from Chinese, Russian and Sudanese holdings in compliance with its own Anti-Genocide policies.
We urge Harvard to universally apply its policies universally – rather than devaluing Palestinian lives through discriminatory implementation of its disciplinary and investment policies. Finally, we urge Harvard to foster inclusivity by recognizing that its community includes Palestinians and Jewish people (and many others) with diverse opinions on Israeli state policies.
We welcome the ongoing work of the task forces and urge the University to create a campus environment that fosters academic freedom and open debate, and is rooted in equity, dignity, and justice for all.