After October 7, Harvard leaders debated how to respond publicly. Read emails

Harvard’s Oct. 7 response will have far-reaching implications for the Cambridge- and Boston-based institution. In January Claudine Gay, Harvard’s first black president has resigned after her brief tenure was marred by controversies surrounding Israel’s war with Hamas, anti-Semitism on campus, and allegations of plagiarism in her academic papers. A few months later, Harvard said his administration would no longer make official announcements about public affairs unless they directly related to the “core function of the university.”

And two Harvard reports released over the summer found that anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian prejudice had increased on campus since the war began.

The new report, released by the Republican-led Education and Workforce Committee, was part of a year-long investigation by House Republicans into anti-Semitism on college campuses.

It offers a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the elite Ivy League school’s administration as academics jockeyed over how the school should respond to recent events in the Middle East.

Here are five takeaways from the report:

What to expose?

In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, Harvard officials questioned whether the school should condemn Hamas’ rampage, according to the report.

Early drafts of the school’s Oct. 9 statement included language that directly condemned Hamas, documents obtained by the committee show. But that phrase was ultimately rejected by a group of Harvard officials who prepared the school’s response in the case.

Gay chief of staff Cathy O’Dair once asked, “Can we get a letter and not say unequivocally that we condemn it?”

According to the report, Mark Goodhart, Harvard’s chief administrative officer, called the question of whether to condemn the Hamas killings a “key outstanding issue” facing the group. He noted that the failure to condemn Hamas is likely to be criticized given former President Lawrence Bekov’s loud condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

O’Dair, meanwhile, believes any statement condemning Hamas “must be coupled with a statement about what it sees as the ‘complex and ‘deeply divisive” nature of the issue,” according to the report.

The “violence” debate

Harvard deans also debated whether to include the word “violent” in a Harvard statement after Oct. 7, according to the report. Harvard Medical School Dean George K. Daley asked that the characterization of the Hamas attack as “violent” be removed because the phrase “highlights Hamas’s violence” and assigns “blame.”

Sarah M. Whiting, dean of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, called Daly’s proposal “a very good catch,” the report said. Other deans disagreed, including Harvard Kennedy School Dean Doug Elmendorf. In an email to Harvard administrators, he wrote, “I believe the violence of Hamas deserves to be singled out, and I believe that word is a rather minor way to do so given the nature of the attack.”

Gay eventually decided to remove the language with the approval of then-Chancellor Alan Garber, who would succeed Gay as Harvard’s president. In a text message, Gaye asked Garber if he “could live with removing the word ‘violent,'” saying she would do well to “get to yes,” according to the report.

Garber responded, “Yeah, I don’t like it, but I can live with the change. To be honest, I’m more concerned about his logic than the change in wording.”

Consequences of “From the River to the Sea”

The report also claims that Gay and Garber asked Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow at the Harvard Corporation, not to call the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” a phrase often chanted at pro-Palestinian rallies, anti-Semitic. According to the report, Gay feared that this would create an expectation that Harvard would have to impose discipline for its use.

On October 22, Pritzker asked Gay about Harvard’s response to the display of the phrase at the October 18 “die in” conference.

In an email to Gay and O’Dair, Pritzker called it a “clearly anti-Semitic sign calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and Jews” and asked Gay to help her “understand and explain how we handled the situation and our position.” to such signs on campus.” In an email, Pritzker said alumni asked her “why we would tolerate this and not signs calling for lynching by the KKK.”

Gay responded that she had limited bandwidth and could not do justice to the question, referring it to Garber and Goodhart. Garber, for his part, cautioned Pritzker against calling “from the river to the sea” anti-Semitic because it is “not as simple as some of our friends would have us believe.”

The report noted that Garber acknowledged that “the genocidal connotation when used by Hamas supporters seems pretty clear to me,” but argued that “that is not the same as saying that there is a consensus that the phrase itself is always anti-Semitic “.

Pritzker responded: “I have to admit that it seems very anti-Semitic to me, especially since it is being used by the anti-Israel terrorist groups Hamas and the PFLP. SO I’m trying to understand why it’s not hate speech, why it’s acceptable on our campus, and why we don’t condemn it.”

Another objection

According to the report, Harvard Law School’s then-dean John Manning, who is now chancellor, objected to wording in the school’s Oct. 9 draft statement about the impact of the Hamas hostage-taking on the school community.

An earlier draft included the following wording: “For many at Harvard, violence hits too close to home. Some members of our community have lost family members and friends; some have not been able to contact their loved ones, and others fear that their loved ones may have been taken hostage.”

In an email to Harvard officials, Manning said, “I would omit the hostage phrase from the second sentence of the second paragraph because it risks giving the impression throughout the sentence that we are also not reaching out to those who are worried about loved ones. those who may suffer during the escalation of the conflict.”

Others agreed, according to the report. For example, Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, wrote: “I agree that the phrase referring to the hostage-taking should be removed: it is important to focus on the broader impact of the attack on Israel and Gaza, as well as the distress in the Harvard community.”

The language was eventually removed.

A broken heart, but for whom?

The school’s statement on Oct. 9 expressed grief over “the ongoing war in Israel and Gaza.” This phrase also caused controversy.

In an email, Harvard Business School Dean Srikanth Datar recommended removing the language, citing discussions that day with “colleagues, students and alumni,” but Gay and several Harvard deans rejected his suggestion, according to the report.

Gay supported its retention: “We will keep the reference to the ongoing war in the first sentence. It will be important that we clearly identify the catalyst (ie the Hamas attack), but I agree with others who have weighed in that it is also important to recognize how the conflict has evolved over the past 72 hours.”

This report uses material from The New York Times.

---

Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.