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More than 30 Harvard affiliates delivered a box containing 452 discrimination complaints to Massachusetts Hall at a Monday rally, alleging that Harvard has fostered “pervasive bias against Muslims, Arabs and Palestinians.”
The group handed the complaints — detailing reports of a “hostile climate” on campus — to a University employee at Massachusetts Hall, which houses the office of President Alan M. Garber ’76. Organizers said the complaints, previously submitted to the University’s Office for Community Conduct, which is responsible for enforcing non-discrimination policies, had mostly been ignored.
“At best, we have received no response or a cold form email from Harvard administrators,” Lara Z. Jirmanus ’01, a faculty organizer and Harvard Medical School professor, wrote in a Monday press release.
A University spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Jirmanus said that the lack of adequate response to the complaints led her and her peers to organize the demonstration.
“We have decided to print the complaints and hand deliver them to the office of our president,” she said, adding that the complaints were also sent to the task force on antisemitism established by University President Alan M. Garber ’76 last spring.
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Both the antisemitism and anti-Arab bias task forces released their final reports two weeks ago on bias and discrimination against Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates. They reported that 92 percent of Muslim and 61 percent of Jewish respondents felt unsafe to speak their mind on campus.
The reports issued a series of recommendations to the University, asking Harvard to change its policies on campus protests, expand its teachings on Jewish, Palestinian, and Israeli history, and manage academic programming more directly to avoid one-sidedness.
Before delivering the complaints, five Harvard affiliates and members of the newly formed Harvard United for an Inclusive Campus — which describes itself as “an ad hoc coalition” of students, faculty, staff and alumni — criticized the two task force reports, claiming neither made real efforts towards addressing “systemic anti-Palestinian bias” in a press conference outside Mass. Hall.
“The University continues to uphold a double standard, which has been a central theme of task force reports on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian racism, which makes it clear to all of us who are not on Donald Trump’s list of favorites that we might be next,” Jirmanus said.
Avi S. Steinberg ’02, a Radcliffe writing fellow and the son of former Hillel executive director Bernie Steinberg, argued the task forces were a symbolic concession to the Trump administration and University donors rather than address real concerns of antisemitism on campus.
“Reports like this are not intended to protect us,” Steinberg said. “They’re intended to protect people in power. They’re intended to protect the Harvard Corporation. They’re intended to build alliances of convenience with cynical operators in Washington, D.C., and they are ultimately intended to protect one of the worst crimes imaginable.”
“This report is the centerpiece of Harvard’s current strategy, but it is nothing more than a piece of nakedly pro-Israel activism,” he added.
The Trump administration and the University are currently engaged in a legal dispute after a series of moves by the president to starve Harvard of its federal funding, which is currently completely frozen.
The administration had demanded an external audit of schools and programs that “reflect ideological capture” or “fuel antisemitic harassment” as conditions for receiving funding in an April 11 letter, which Harvard rebuked days later.
Multiple speakers at the press conference said they were not reassured by Garber’s announcement last month that the University would not comply with Trump’s demands, adding that silence in response to the complaints pointed to a disregard for their safety.
“Now, in the face of Trump, Harvard pretends that it is standing up, but you cannot stand up for freedom and silence members of your own community,” Irene Ameena, a Harvard Law School student, said.
—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.
—Staff writer Laurel M. Shugart can be reached at laurel.shugart@thecrimson.com. Follow them on X @laurelmshugart.
