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As the conflict between the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and Harvard University escalates, Hillel, the Jewish student chapter on campus, issued a statement on Friday condemning the president's actions.
Hillel claimed that the administration was more likely to harm Jews and Israelis on campus, both in among the student body and the faculty, than counter antisemitism.
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Pro-Palestinian protest at Harvard University last year, Donald Trump
(Photo: Boston Globe, GettyImages)
“We are compelled to speak out because these actions are being taken in the name of protecting us – Harvard Jewish students – from antisemitism,” the students wrote, according to The Harvard Crimson. “But this crackdown will not protect us. On the contrary, we know that funding cuts will harm the campus community we are part of and care about deeply,” Hillel wrote in an open letter signed by over 100 students.
“The current, escalating federal assault against Harvard – shuttering apolitical, life-saving research; targeting the university’s tax-exempt status; and threatening all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus – is neither focused nor measured, and stands to substantially harm the very Jewish students and scholars it purports to protect,” the letter said.
“This is a transparent move by the Trump administration to concentrate power and erode university independence under the offensive pretext of ‘protecting Jewish students,’” the letter read.
"We hope for the speedy restoration of productive, sober collaboration between Harvard and our government that safeguards the rights of Harvard's Jewish community, advances the university's scholarship, and secures the preeminence of American research and industry-three deeply worthy, widely supported, and mutually reinforcing causes."
Similar sentiments were expressed on other campuses by Israeli students who opposed what they described as a dangerous political use of the immigration system as a means to punish ideas, after the arrest of Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University claiming it constituted a dangerous precedence in the use of administrative orders to silence legitimate opposition to the war in Gaza and to American and Israeli foreign policies.
The students said that even those who felt personally harmed by the pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses could not support an affront to basic rights. They said Mahdawi was a prominent voice in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and not in confrontations and removing him would spread fear and destroy the hope for peace, adding that freedom of speech is not an exclusive right of citizens but a basic principle of any democracy.
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The criticism of the administration was followed by a report on the New York Times that the letter sent to Harvard University from the administration’s antisemitism task force earlier this month included unprecedented demands for changes to its hiring and admissions policies, an audit of views of diversity on campus, and reforms to the educational programs, was sent by mistake and without authority.
A senior member of the task force called Harvard soon after the letter was made public and claimed it was not coordinated with the proper authorities.
The letter sent by e-mail was signed by three senior members of the task force and received by the university as an official demand of the administration. But according to some sources, it was only a working draft meant to be reviewed by task force members.
The administration has not since walked back the content of the letter. On the contrary, it announced it was freezing 2.2 billion dollars in research funding and threatened Harvard's tax exemption status.