Harvard students say it’s time to focus on their well-being
‘We simply want to feel safe attending classes, getting involved in student groups, and interacting with classmates around campus.’
TALIA WYSCHOGROD,
Jewish student at Harvard Law School
Several Jewish, Muslim, and pro-Palestinian Harvard students in recent days said that the intense focus on Claudine Gay’s leadership at the university, stoked by conservative activists and lawmakers, has overshadowed the school’s inability or unwillingness to protect them from inside and outside harassment. Now that Gay has resigned, they hope the administration will shift away from the maelstrom over her remarks and academic work, and toward what they say should be among the school’s most important responsibilities: their well-being.
Sanaa Kahloon, a third-year student from Kentucky who is Muslim, said she was doxxed for participating in pro-Palestinian organizing on campus, part of what she describes as a culture at Harvard to discourage free speech in support of Palestine, and was disappointed by Gay’s response to the doxxing, but also by her departure. In October, an out-of-state conservative group drove trucks through Harvard Square emblazoned with pictures of students, including Kahloon, linked to a controversial statement on the Oct. 7 attack, labeling them with the words “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
“I’m sad that the Harvard Corporation has bent to the pressure of external right-wing actors and removed Claudine Gay from her position before she could have potentially shown the improvements we wanted,” she said. “My hope was never for her resignation, my hope was always for her to be better, for her to protect students better, for her to learn from us and listen to us.”
Some Jewish students have also felt unprotected, they said.
Talia Wyschogrod, a Jewish student at Harvard Law School, said the last semester was “an incredibly painful and tense time for many Jewish students at Harvard Law, especially for visibly Jewish students.”
“We simply want to feel safe attending classes, getting involved in student
groups, and interacting with classmates around campus,” she said. “We hope that the leadership of the school will engage with the student body directly and work with us to make this a hospitable place to be.”
Alex Bernat, a junior, called Gay’s departure a “step in the right direction” and said he’s hopeful Dr. Alan Garber, who is serving as interim president of the university and is also Jewish, will help “break up the ideological homogeny at Harvard.”
“I think [Garber] has a good sense of how antisemitism exists on campus, being involved in the Jewish community,” he said. “I’m hoping he leverages that in addressing lack of intellectual diversity as well as beginning to educate and . . . fix the antisemitism that has become so pervasive.”
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Gay faced a torrent of criticism for her response to the incursion, reports of resurgent campus antisemitism, her testimony at a December congressional hearing, and accusations of plagiarism. On Tuesday, Gay, the first Black president of the institution, ultimately resigned.
Gay also faced internal critiques that she has not done enough to help students who have been harassed for expressing pro-Palestinian views.
The outgoing president of Harvard Hillel, Jacob Miller, said he wants the university to clarify its policies on free speech and enforce them fairly, including disciplining students who violate school policy.
“Students are posting very hateful messages on social media about Jews controlling the media,” Miller, a junior, said. “The fact that Harvard has insufficiently responded to this is shameful.”
Miller also wants an antisemitism advisory group created by Gay in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,200 people to be given more power.
Violet Barron, a Jewish sophomore, said she has felt safe on campus and has been frustrated by attempts to characterize students’ criticism of Israel’s attacks in Gaza and support for Palestinians as antisemitic. Barron said she has seen her friends in pro-Palestinian groups directly threatened by doxxing and wishes the university would do more to protect them.
“An antisemitism advisory group has been formed, but there’s no institutional support for combating Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism,” Barron said.
Barron wants to see university leadership include Jewish students who don’t support Israel in its antisemitism advisory group.
“They should consider how a broad sector of Jewish students are feeling,” she said.
Mahmoud Al-Thabata, a freshman from Orlando who has loved ones in Gaza and the West Bank, called Gay’s response to the doxxing of students “inadequate” and said he hopes the school will better prioritize the safety of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students and be more transparent.
“The same institutional racism that harmed Palestinian students on campus is the same force that contributed to the racist vitriol and misogynoir that President Gay wrongly suffered from,” he said. “Her resignation sets a dangerous precedent that Harvard’s white supremacist roots and the corporation’s interests will always be paramount over students’ interests.”
Tala Alfoqaha, a Palestinian American student at Harvard Law School, said some students lost job offers for supporting Palestine, and, in the end, Gay was “just another casualty of these forces.”
“I say this all as someone who has met with Gay over her failure to protect Palestinian students: she actively harmed us, and she was forced to resign for not harming us more,” said Alfoqaha, who is Muslim. “It’s unfortunate that during her tenure, she never stopped trying to align with the racist forces that ultimately got her fired rather than stand in solidarity with her students facing the same brand of repression and harassment.”
Some students questioned why the campus happenings at Harvard have received so much attention from lawmakers and the media, while Israel’s retaliatory war has killed more than 20,000 people in Gaza.
“This news about one college is taking the place of other far more important conversations that needs to be happening,” Barron said.
Gay’s resignation, Alfoqaha said, “is a product of a manufactured controversy that serves as a distraction from the US’s funding of a massively unpopular assault on Palestinian life.”