The most contentious debate at yesterday’s Faculty Meeting—the first of the academic year—did not center around an item that was on the agenda.

Instead, a meeting that was expected to be dominated by administrative logistics like handing out honorary degrees, announcing new appointments and opening up the planning session for this year’s curricular review was transformed into a weighty discussion on academic freedom and anti-Semitism.

During “Question Period,” the part of each Faculty meeting during which professors can direct questions to either the University president or the dean of the Faculty, Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn rose to express his concerns about President Lawrence H. Summers’ comments at Morning Prayers last month.

During those remarks, Summers cited calls for the University to divest from Israel as an example of recent developments on campus that are “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.”

Mendelsohn said he felt Summers’ remarks had threatened the University’s environment of free and open discussion.

“It seemed to me you might be leaving too much room for people to interpret it to mean that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic,” Mendelsohn said. He encouraged Summers to use the Faculty meeting—the only official forum for professors to discuss issues of this degree of significance—as an opportunity to “clarify” his views.

Summers, who received a copy of Mendelsohn’s remarks on Monday, thanked him for his remarks and echoed Mendelsohn’s commitment to academic freedom.

“I entirely share your view that...it is integral to a University community that the ability to have a debate on any intellectual question or any political question be protected,” Summers said. “My hopes would be, as a University, that we could be a place where a wide range of perspectives could be discussed freely.”

Summers said he had only intended to urge professors not to “seek to instrumentalize the University” for one particular perspective.

But Summers stood behind his remarks at Morning Prayers, saying that though he did not intend to accuse any member of the Harvard community of anti-Semitism, he did want to call attention to what he perceived to be a serious trend toward anti-Semitism.

Mendelsohn said he was prompted to speak at yesterday’s meeting by what he had perceived to be a degeneration in the openness of the discussion and debate on the Middle East.

“As more people talked to me, I had the sense that a polarization was occurring, and people were developing a fear of what would happen if they spoke out,” he said.

Mendelsohn’s comments brought three other professors to the floor to air their views.

Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diana L. Eck echoed Mendelsohn’s concerns about freedom of speech at the University, noting that, as co-master of Lowell House, she had seen students grow wary of freely discussing the Middle East for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.

Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature Ruth R. Wisse, on the other hand, lauded Summers for using his free speech to counter was she deemed harmful speech—namely, last year’s divestment petition.