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Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra stood by the decision to dismiss the director and associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies last week at a Tuesday FAS meeting.

The dismissals — which the directors have told their colleagues were because of the center’s programming on Palestine — were condemned by some faculty and students as infringing on academic freedom, including at a protest outside University Hall during Tuesday’s meeting.

“I am confident that this was the right decision,” Hoekstra said. “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’s response — addressed to a Faculty Room so packed that at least 20 professors were left standing — left some attendees incredulous. Government professor Ryan D. Enos said he was not convinced that the dismissals weren’t an attempt to appease the Trump administration before officials pull Harvard’s funding.

He said the timing of the CMES dismissals, which came within days of a University announcement that it was severing its ties with Birzeit University in the West Bank, was “a coincidence that’s really hard to believe.”

The questioning — which, at one point, left Hoekstra grasping for an appropriate answer — came days after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 fended off a similar query at a meeting of department chairs on Thursday.

History chair Sidney Chalhoub said at the meeting that Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 told chairs that he did not know details about the dismissals.

“I don’t know what to say about the President’s claim that he does not know the details of a serious attack on academic freedom carried out by his own administration,” Chalhoub told the room. “Since President Garber seems to have deflected responsibility to the lower echelons of his administration, then I now address the question to Dean Hoekstra.”

Hoekstra said she took issue with the characterization of the dismissals and that she valued strong management abilities and intellectual diversity at centers.

“As I’ve repeatedly said, for me, academic freedom is a red line. It is a necessary condition for the work we do at this University,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have standards and rigor, and it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have conversations about how to best enable different perspectives.”

The comment drew scattered sighs of exasperation from across the room.

Walter Johnson, a professor of History and of African and African American Studies, said he thought Hoekstra could not logically defend the dismissals while also advocating for academic freedom.

“I cannot for the life of me understand the earlier statement that combines a defense of the dismissal of two principled colleagues with a commitment to academic freedom,” Johnson said.

The CMES shakeup has caused an outpouring of outrage from students and faculty. Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors slammed the move in a statement Monday as infringing on academic freedom.

And on Tuesday, roughly 300 demonstrators rallied against the shakeup at CMES and the HDS initiative — protesting just feet from the entrance to University Hall. Inside, as Chalhoub and his colleagues pressed Hoekstra to explain the dismissals, chants of “Free Palestine” filtered into the room.

Anxiety at Harvard has only grown in recent days after the Trump administration announced Monday that it would review nearly $9 billion in multi-year federal grants and $255 million in contracts.

“It seems like Harvard is doing exactly what is demanded by our critics, and almost exactly what was demanded by the Trump administration of Columbia,” Enos said.

He added that at the faculty meeting in January, Hoekstra said that Harvard would defend universities against attacks on democracy by turning to its “core values.” He asked Tuesday how the dismissals at centers could be consistent with the values Hoekstra had invoked two months prior.

“The first thing that I’d like to say is that it is difficult,” Hoekstra began, before asking the room for a moment. She paused to look down at her notes.

“It’s difficult to answer your question without being able to share a lot of the details which I’m not comfortable doing when it relates to academic leadership,” she continued. “This puts us in an awkward position because I have different information than you.”

After repeating that academic freedom was a “red line” for her, Hoesktra attempted to conclude the question period, saying she was committed to finding more time to discuss the issues.

But Enos introduced a motion to extend the question period. The motion passed, and the questions kept coming.

​​—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.