{shortcode-3b08cbb9f5aa30501986e2398bbba2336c8c1c13}

Until recently, Harvard had a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank — only ending the program amid apparent pressure from the Trump administration. Harvard even co-sponsored a public health course there.

But Harvard should never have sponsored any program that sent students or affiliates to Birzeit. The scandal isn’t that Harvard kowtowed to Trump: It’s that Harvard needed the frequently amoral Trump administration to make it do the right thing.

Why is Birzeit controversial? It’s an excellent university, but it’s also one where Hamas-affiliated representatives regularly win student elections with thousands of votes. Birzeit is also a campus where crowds of students wave Hamas flags, hold rallies dressed in Hamas paraphernalia, and make speeches with portraits of terrorists in the background.

As if that weren’t enough, the Middle East Media Research Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, reported youth of multiple political factions — not just Hamas supporters — have paraded with mock explosives, rockets, and guns on Birzeit’s campus. Birzeit even tried to ban military-style student activities in 2019 to no avail: Protestors actually shut down the university in 2022 when the administration prevented Hamas from marching with mock weapons.

Of course, then, many Jews would fear participating in any programming at Birzeit — regardless of whether it had Harvard’s name attached. My mother was Black. She was born in 1951. You couldn’t have dragged her onto a campus where a student chapter of the Ku Klux Klan controlled student government and held rallies attracting hundreds in their white hoods. I bet most of us think that’s entirely reasonable.

It’s also entirely reasonable that many Jews at Harvard wouldn’t go near Birzeit. But Harvard must make its programs available to all students regardless of their ethnicity or ancestry. It can’t ask Jewish students to choose between risking their safety or sitting out while their non-Jewish peers participate — that’s discrimination, plain and simple.

The vitriol at Birzeit targets Jews, not just Zionists. Hamas’s founding charter is predicated on the idea that “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews).” The charter emphasizes that “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.”

In a video posted on the Ramallah Post’s Facebook page and independently translated by several interpreters, a youth at Birzeit proclaims to a crowd: “On the day of war, we disciplined the Jews, in the battlefields we speak with bullets, and with our boots we trample the Jews.”

The Hamas-affiliated student party has won elections at Birzeit repeatedly in recent years. Its main competitor is the affiliate of Fatah, whose leader claims that the Nazis only killed Jews because of their “usury, money, and so on.” Photos obtained by MEMRI display another student faction performing a salute eerily similar to that of the Nazis.

Clearly, Birzeit’s campus is openly hostile to Jews.

But Hamas’s election win in 2022 didn’t stop Birzeit’s then-president from proclaiming that the university was “proud of the participation of all spectra of Palestinian national action in these elections.”

These aren’t mere student protestors: At Birzeit, candidates represent political parties,

turnout is huge, and the big issue is national politics. Groups like the Hamas Islamist Bloc are official offshoots of their respective national parties, and have been said to provide their student groups with material support.

Because Palestinian governments won’t hold parliamentary elections, these student polls are a reliable measure of support. So Hamas uses these polls to consolidate its presence in the West Bank. The group has even based its claim for seats in the Palestine Liberation Organization on student election results. Lest one suspect “Israeli propaganda,” these facts come from Al-Jazeera, Reuters, a Carnegie Endowment journal, and the chair of Birzeit’s Palestine Studies program.

In 2013, a solitary Jewish-American student published a series of “Letters from Birzeit” in an anti-Zionist journal. She praised Birzeit but admitted people on its campus often did not differentiate between Israelis and Jews and that she felt uncomfortable identifying herself as ethnically Jewish.

Such incidents are not isolated. As early as 2014, pro-Palestine journalist and former Harvard fellow Amira Hass reported she was ejected from a conference at Birzeit because she is an Israeli Jew. She was told her leaving was for her own “safety” should students protest her presence.

Would you be comfortable admitting you were a Jew at Birzeit? How can microaggressions create a hostile learning environment, but not mock rockets, explosives, and guns?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be complicated, but Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit is simple: No Harvard program should have ever taken place at such a hotbed of ethnic prejudice and intimidation.

Harvard should never have discriminated against Jewish students by sponsoring programs at Birzeit — now Trump is using our own failures against us. Harvard might want to “stay strong” against Trump, but that isn’t a reason to keep failing.

Amanda Schwoerke is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.