{shortcode-9ddba9aecce3b3433b74189be8bee7721fc361d0}
Former Birzeit University President Beshara Doumani criticized Harvard’s decision to cut ties with the Palestinian university as an act of political appeasement after speaking at the History Department’s Palestinian History event on Friday.
“I think that’s a loss for Harvard and for Birzeit, but also it’s a loss for a larger idea that there’s a kind of demonization of entire populations,” Doumani said. He added that he did not know Harvard had severed ties until an interview with The Crimson.
The Harvard School of Public Health had a partnership with Birzeit University’s school of public health for more than a decade, but ties were cut in late March after an internal review. Birzeit University is located in the West Bank, and Doumani served as Birzeit’s president from 2021 to August 2023.
Doumani said he supposed Harvard’s decision to cut ties with Birzeit was to “assuage people they think they need to assuage.”
Harvard School of Public Health Dean Andrea A. Baccarelli announced the partnership’s end less than a week before the Trump administration unveiled a plan to review nearly $9 billion in federal grants as part of an investigation into the University’s response to antisemitism. The decision was quickly rebuked by several faculty members as a preemptive capitulation to demands from the White House.
Harvard’s relationship with the Palestinian university had come under significant scrutiny from public officials and alumni in the months prior to its end. 28 House Republicans and former University President Lawrence H. Summers condemned the partnership over the summer.
Doumani said Harvard was neglecting its relationships with the academic world outside of the U.S. by severing ties with Birzeit.
“There’s an enormous amount of knowledge production going on outside the United States that one should not cut themselves off from,” he said.
A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Friday’s event attracted dozens of attendees to Sever Hall, and featured panelists on Palestinian History, including Doumani, History Department Chair Sidney Chalhoub, and Harvard History PhD candidate Omar K. Abdel-Ghaffar, also a student at Harvard Law School.
In his keynote address, Doumani expressed optimism that the current “retrenchment” on Palestinian studies at universities will soon end.
“We’re in an age of retrenchment right now,” Doumani said. “It’s not just happening in the United States, and so it will pass.”
The event was organized by the History Department after encampment protesters made a series of demands to the Harvard administration that included programming on Palestinian history, according to Chalhoub.
In his speech on Friday, Chalhoub said that Harvard needs Palestinian history alongside Jewish history and other historical fields.
“Harvard cannot afford not to have an education on this subject,” Chalhoub added in an interview after the event.
Chalhoub also said that the event demonstrated that Harvard scholars could speak on any subject, despite University officials’ concerns over academic freedom and free speech.
“This is probably the last subject the University would want us to be talking about at this moment,” he said.
The History Department’s “New Approaches to Palestinian History” event was the last organized by former directors of the Center for Middle East Studies, Cemal Kafadar and Rosie Bsheer, before they were removed from their leadership two weeks ago. Kafadar had been on leave prior to his removal.
CMES had also come under fire for allegations of biased programing and an extreme focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra defended the decision at an FAS meeting on April 1, but declined to explain the removal.
“With this understanding of the types of considerations that drive these decisions, I am confident that this was the right decision. While I appreciate that the external environment makes a decision like this one especially hard, it should never prevent us from addressing the needs of our academic units,” Hoekstra told faculty, adding that they had begun searching for the next center director.
In an interview after the event, Chalhoub slammed Harvard for their decision to remove the CMES leadership, saying the decision crossed a “red line” and that its speed raised due process concerns.
“The administration should have no interference in this type of decision,” Chalhoub said.
“They should never vet programming,” he added.
—Staff writer Caroline G. Hennigan can be reached at caroline.hennigan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cghennigan.
—Staff writer Bradford D. Kimball can be reached at bradford.kimball@thecrimson.com.
