The Ivy League school diluted the punishment for anti-Israel activists who broke campus rules

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Tents and signs fill Harvard Yard in the pro-Palestinian encampment at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 5, 2024.
Harvard’s decision on Tuesday to reverse the suspensions of five students for participating in the illegal anti-Israel encampments earlier this year on the Cambridge, Mass., campus was met with “disappointment” by two leaders of Harvard’s Jewish community.
“I’m disappointed in this action. I’ve heard the phrase ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ but it seems in this case that no good deed goes unreversed,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School who stepped down from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee after a short stint, told Jewish Insider. “Punishment is a lesson — reversing it is a permission.”
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Chabad on Harvard’s campus, said the reversal was “revealing and deeply disturbing.” Zarchi added that it’s “sadly clear” the move will embolden anti-Israel demonstrators.
That may have already taken place, judging by a joint Instagram post from the Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine and the African and African American Resistance Organization. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that student intifada will always prevail,” the groups wrote on Wednesday.
The suspensions and other disciplinary charges — which included the withholding of degrees for 13 seniors because of their involvement in the encampment — were initially announced in late May ahead of graduation. Hundreds of students and faculty members walked out of Harvard’s commencement ceremony in solidarity with the punished students.
According to the Harvard Crimson, the university informed students on Tuesday of their updated disciplinary charges, which saw the suspensions downgraded to probations of varying lengths and came as a result of the Faculty Council’s criticism of how the Harvard College Administrative Board dealt with the cases.
The most severe probation charge will last for just one semester, a drastic change from the initial punishments that required at least one student to withdraw from Harvard for three semesters. Some students who were initially placed on probation in May also had the length of their probations shortened.
A Harvard spokesperson told JI that the university does not comment on individual disciplinary cases. According to the policy outlined in the Harvard College Student Handbook, students in the disciplinary process who seek to challenge the outcome have two options: “reconsideration,” which is adjudicated by the administrative board and is for new and relevant information that was not initially made available; or “appeals,” which is adjudicated by the Faculty Council.
According to the handbook, “appeals” is for situations where the Administrative Board or Honor Council made a procedural error that may impact the disciplinary decision or when the punishment was determined to be inconsistent or inappropriate compared to past sanctions.
Wolpe, along with other Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni, expressed disappointment to JI last month as well, when a six-page set of preliminary recommendations released by the university task force focused on combating antisemitism at the school fell short of their expectations.
The preliminary suggestions were divided into six areas: clarify Harvard’s values; act against discrimination, bullying, harassment and hate; improve disciplinary processes; implement education and training; foster constructive dialogue; and support Jewish life on campus

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People walk through Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 12, 2023.
A six-page set of preliminary recommendations released on Wednesday by a Harvard University task force focused on combating antisemitism at the school falls short of expectations set by Jewish faculty, alumni and a member of the school’s previous antisemitism advisory group who spoke to Jewish Insider shortly after the document’s release.
The recommendations in Wednesday’s report included ones that could immediately be put into action, such as marking pork products in dining facilities and creating a webpage on the school’s site to provide information on Jewish holidays for university community members. The report also urged the implementation of two long-term actions: “the administration should institute anti-harassment training for all students” and for teaching fellows, “antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias need to be included in training for these essential employees.”
The suggestions, which interim President Alan Garber is expected to review, were divided into six areas: clarify Harvard’s values; act against discrimination, bullying, harassment and hate; improve disciplinary processes; implement education and training; foster constructive dialogue; and support Jewish life on campus.
The document lacks “comments about hiring faculty, interim and full-time, about rethinking DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and ensuring sanctions against those who have called for violence,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a former member of a separate antisemitism advisory group that the elite university formed last year amid an academic year marked by strife for Jewish students, told JI.
Wolpe added that the recommendations are missing “[affirmation that Zionism is a] legitimate and even praiseworthy ideal.”
Harvard Jewish leaders and alumni echoed Wolpe’s dissatisfaction with the preliminary recommendations.
“None of this addresses the pervasive and systemic nature of antisemitism … I’m incredibly disappointed and frustrated,” Shabbos Kestenbaum, who graduated in the spring with a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, told JI. Kestenbaum called the report “a slap in the face.”
“There’s nothing in here about the hiring and firing of faculty members, nothing in here about examining the pernicious and dangerous role that diversity, equity and inclusion has played in antisemitism, there are no recommendations or even a mention of security at Harvard Chabad and Hillel,” Kestenbaum, who in March spoke to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the antisemitism he experienced on Harvard’s campus, said. “Of the more concrete policy recommendations, those were just obvious and had been stated months ago by students themselves and by Congress,” he said.
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, said that the recommendations are “glaringly missing what is exposed and visible for all to see.”
On X, Zarchi cited several examples, noting that the school “still employs deans and faculty who brazenly and defiantly violate university code of conduct and incite students to do the same” and “Harvard maintains an official academic relationship with Birzeit University. Besides the fact that I don’t believe there’s a university in Israel that Harvard has a similar relationship with, this particular institution’s student government (among other entities there) supports Hamas. This makes the relationship not only immoral but likely illegal.”
The list of recommendations, which resulted from dozens of listening sessions, according to the task force, primarily featured suggestions that focus on short-term actionable items rather than long-term structural changes. The group said it would release a list of long-term measures in the fall, which could include “a detailed analysis of how Harvard got into its current crisis of community and lay out proposals to transform our University culture for the better over the medium- and long-term.”
Kestenbaum emphasized that the antisemitism task force “was not elected and does not speak for Jewish students.” The task force came under scrutiny immediately after it was formed in January for naming professor Derek Penslar, a historian and the director of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, as co-chair. Penslar’s appointment drew the ire of Jewish communal leaders and prominent figures at Harvard over comments he made earlier this year minimizing concerns over antisemitism at Harvard, and for past statements he has made about Israel, including signing a letter in August that accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and of implementing “a regime of apartheid” against Palestinians. Penslar stepped down as co-chair in February.
The task force — aimed at cracking down on the antisemitism that has dramatically increased on the Ivy League campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel — was established on the heels of an antisemitism advisory group created by then-President Claudine Gay in November. The advisory group featured prominent outside members, including writer Dara Horn and Wolpe, who stepped down after Gay’s widely criticized Capitol Hill testimony in December.
Also on Wednesday, the committee formed to support Harvard’s Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities released a nine-page set of preliminary recommendations to combat Islamophobia on campus.
Sam Lessin said he believes in a robust free speech culture inside the classroom, but a crackdown on anti-Jewish harassment on campus

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Sam Lessin
Before last year, tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist Sam Lessin thought of himself as only slightly more engaged with Harvard than the average Cambridge graduate. In his 20s, he had served as an alumni interviewer; since then, he’s helped raise money from fellow graduates in the class of 2005.
But Harvard was not his identity — Lessin didn’t make a habit of flying across the country to Harvard football games, nor was the former Facebook executive a major donor to the university, even after he likely made a windfall when Facebook went public.
That changed last fall, after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in Israel spurred a rise in antisemitism on American campuses, including at Harvard, and set off a ripple effect of bad decisions that would mire the Ivy League university in scandal and months of brutal headlines. Lessin stepped off the sidelines.
In late December, Lessin announced a long-shot write-in bid to be a candidate to serve on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the university’s second-highest governing body. He came just a few hundred votes short of qualifying for a spot on the ballot, winning more support than any of the other outside candidates that had not been approved by the Harvard Alumni Association.
“It actually was very invigorating in that you just do see this huge mass of alums coming out of the woodwork who do want change, and I’m optimistic that there can be change,” Lessin told Jewish Insider in an interview last week, in which he pledged to remain involved with university affairs ahead of another board campaign next year.
He attributed his loss, despite winning the backing of some big names like former Harvard President Larry Summers, to Harvard’s difficult-to-use website, technical problems for alumni who voted and simply running out of time.
The mounting controversies at Harvard in recent months — including student protesters disrupting classes and common spaces on campus, former President Claudine Gay’s disastrous Capitol Hill testimony and the resulting leadership vacuum — can be traced, in Lessin’s estimation, to “mission creep” at Harvard. He thinks his alma mater has shifted from an institution whose raison d’etre is academic excellence to a place that has tried to accommodate too many goals, and to make itself too many things to too many different people.
“You need to get the president and the [Harvard] Corporation to reaffirm that very clearly the school is an academic school and academic excellence is the only goal,” Lessin said. “It’s not that and six other goals.”
He decried a yes-man culture among Harvard’s lay leaders, many of whom are large donors or prominent Harvard boosters, who have governed the school with an utter lack of transparency even as the world’s attention has turned to Cambridge in recent months.
“That can work when things are easy,” said Lessin. “When things are hard, those are not necessarily the right voices to be leading. The reason is simple, which is, they have so much political liability, and they have very little willingness to push back.”
Lessin described himself as a moderate seeking to avoid the culture wars in which Harvard has become entangled, a position that he viewed in contrast to Harvard’s loudest critic: hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
“I believe strongly that there should be free speech in the classroom towards the goal of academic excellence. If people want to make a civil argument about why rape and murder is OK, inside of the classroom — from my personal perspective, I think that’s fair game,” Lessin said. “That is the thing I think is nuanced about this, and I might not agree with every Jew about.”
“I worry that he’s politicizing this even more, in certain ways, putting forward right-wing voices against left-wing voices. I’m much more of a centrist, is the way I would approach it,” said Lessin. Instead, he earned the endorsement of another billionaire who studied at Harvard — Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. (As a Harvard dropout, Zuckerberg was not able to vote for Lessin.)
Harvard, like other prestigious universities, has over the past decade made a concerted effort to increase diversity in its student body. Lessin said the way the university has emphasized diversity has in turn led to “factionalism” rather than “academic excellence.”
“If you’re looking at the admissions essays, ‘What makes you diverse, and then what do you intend to do with that, like, your Harvard education to help the world?’” Lessin asked. “It became very, very tribal, in terms of people saying, ‘I’m here as the token X,’ or ‘I’m here to represent my community Y,’ and it’s not to learn and be part of society and help people integrate into the melting pot of society. Instead it’s like, ‘I’m here to defend that group.’”
The goal of the university, then, should be to get back to promoting academics as the school’s top goal, including absolute freedom of expression in an academic setting, as Lessin sees it. He extends that thinking even to the most abhorrent anti-Israel rhetoric Harvard has seen since Oct. 7.
“I believe strongly that there should be free speech in the classroom towards the goal of academic excellence. If people want to make a civil argument about why rape and murder is OK, inside of the classroom — from my personal perspective, I think that’s fair game,” he said. “That is the thing I think is nuanced about this, and I might not agree with every Jew about.”
But what happens outside of the classroom is another story. This is where he thinks Harvard has a responsibility to act much more strongly against antisemitic student protests, which he views as “more of a symptom than a root cause.” The answer is not “treating it as a one-off,” but rather, according to Lessin, revamping the way Harvard thinks about freedom of expression.
“Sam’s emergence as someone who wants to help correct and change the narrative and to restore the dignity of Harvard, and help elevate the discussion and challenge the status quo that that allowed for this rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on the campus couldn’t have come at a more important moment,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told JI.
“What you say in the Boston Common is a different situation. If you want to have protests there, that is a space for free speech. Private property at a private university with a purely academic mission is actually a place you don’t have free speech for the sake of free speech,” said Lessin. “Any speech to shut down other people, or to keep them from participating in academic endeavors, or to block academics, is completely unacceptable on private property.” Policies, he continued, must be “enforced and strengthened” so protests in Harvard Yard cannot disrupt people walking to class.
“It’s private property, full stop,” Lessin said. During his six-week campaign for a seat on the board, he engaged alumni across the world, including among Harvard’s Jewish community; during college Lessin occasionally attended Hillel or Chabad Shabbat dinners, but was not a regular at either.
“Sam’s emergence as someone who wants to help correct and change the narrative and to restore the dignity of Harvard, and help elevate the discussion and challenge the status quo that that allowed for this rise of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on the campus couldn’t have come at a more important moment,” Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told JI.
Jewish alumni and donors are exerting influence on campus affairs in new ways. One group of Jewish alumni lowered their annual donations to $1, to send a message that they care about the university but disagree with its actions in recent months. Other big-name donors have ceased giving entirely. Zarchi, who has worked at Harvard for more than two decades, has never seen this level of engagement from Harvard alumni.
“I don’t expect that to decline,” he said. “For larger purposes, even beyond their care for Harvard, they want to stay engaged because of the outsized influence that Harvard has in the public conversation.”
Harvard’s president announced the school will be investigating how anti-Jewish material got reposted online by a pro-Palestinian faculty group

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Harvard Yard during finals week, December 13, 2023 in Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard University, under scrutiny for its inaction against antisemitism on campus, took a tough stance this week against pro-Palestinian student and faculty groups for distributing “deeply offensive antisemitic tropes” posted to social media.
The groups had posted an image containing a cartoon from 1967 of a puppeteer whose hand is marked by a dollar sign inside a Star of David, lynching two men who appear to be Muhammad Ali and former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Harvard announced that it will be launching an investigation into how the antisemitic material got posted, and who was responsible for promoting the hateful material. “The University will review the situation to better understand who was responsible for the posting and to determine what further steps are warranted,” Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said in a statement on Tuesday.
Harvard’s response has led some Jewish leaders who have criticized campus leadership’s handling of antisemitism to applaud the college’s swift response to the most recent incident, with Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi calling it the school’s first “moment that looks appropriate.”
Harvard’s crackdown comes as the Israel-Hamas war has put a spotlight on the university, leading the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to open an investigation into the school’s record on antisemitism.
“As regards to [this one post, Harvard administration is] taking steps,” said Rabbi David Wolpe, who in December, citing the school’s antisemitism problem, stepped down as one of eight members on Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee. The committee was formed at the end of October, before an official task force launched, as the school faced fierce criticism over its response to Oct. 7.
“What this will mean longer term, I don’t know,” Wolpe told Jewish Insider, adding that he remains “hopeful but very, very cautious.”
“I know some people were unhappy I stepped down, but I don’t see any action that suggests that had I stayed the world would be better,” said Wolpe, the Anti-Defamation League’s rabbinic fellow. “I think that we still have serious problems and the onus is not on the task force, the onus is on the administration. The most the task force can do is try to get Harvard’s administration to take steps… it’s going to take fundamental changes and we’ll see whether there’s any willingness to actually undertake those.”
Wolpe declined to comment further on the task force, which is not yet up and running.
Zarchi said the school’s response in the current instance is “a very welcome step and an absolute necessity for the university to be able to function with any dignity and legitimacy.”
“We’re witnessing Jew hate in its ugliest form,” Zarchi, who said in December of then-Harvard President Claudine Gay: We in the Jewish community are longing for a day that we can refer to the president and all of Harvard as ours.”
Zarchi told JI that the administration’s response to the antisemitic post was cheered by Jewish students. He pointed to a Chabad event on Tuesday night with 150 undergraduate students in which many expressed relief that the incident was being investigated.
“We finally have a moment that looks appropriate and is responsive. I sense in the students how much it meant to them to hear a voice saying the obvious in condemning the hateful conspiracies against Jews,” Zarchi said.
Most concerning about the original posting, Zarchi said, was that “faculty were behind the Jew hatred and conspiracies, and have been for some time, and it’s gone unaddressed.”
“People saw a cartoon, it went public and made a lot of noise so we got a response but this didn’t just begin, it’s been going on for some time. Faculty have been writing and speaking on campus publicly in this manner,” Zarchi said.
While the post originated from two student organizations — Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organization — most of the initial criticism was directed at a Harvard faculty and staff of the pro-Palestine group that reposted the image in an Instagram story, the Harvard Crimson reported.
Garber, who took over for Gay after she resigned amid widely criticized statements about the university’s handling of antisemitism, strongly condemned the antisemitic image on Tuesday.
“While the groups associated with the posting or sharing of the cartoon have since sought to distance themselves from it in various ways, the damage remains, and our condemnation stands,” Garber said in a statement. “The members of the [Harvard] Corporation join me in unequivocally condemning the posting and sharing of the cartoon in question.”
Meanwhile, Walter Johnson, the Harvard professor who guided the groups Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, stepped down on Tuesday from his faculty adviser role after the groups were widely condemned for posting the antisemitic image on Sunday.
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which on Feb. 16 opened an investigation into Harvard over antisemitism on campus, also condemned Harvard faculty involvement in the original post. “This repugnant antisemitism should have no place in our society, much less on Harvard’s faculty,” the committee tweeted.
Jason Newton, a Harvard spokesperson, told JI that “the university is aware of social media posts today containing deeply offensive antisemitic tropes and messages from organizations whose membership includes Harvard affiliates. Such despicable messages have no place in the Harvard community. We condemn these posts in the strongest possible terms.”
Newton continued, “This matter is being reviewed by the university and is being referred to the Harvard College Administrative Board, which is responsible for the application and enforcement of undergraduate academic regulations and social conduct.” Newton declined to comment further on the investigation.
Zarchi added that while “the message was certainly on target, the question that still remains is what actions will follow from this.”
“But yes,” he said, “this was the right statement.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay stepped down on Tuesday after scrutiny of her handling of antisemitism on campus and amid allegations of plagiarism in her academic work. She didn’t acknowledge either

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Claudine Gay speaks to the crowd after being named Harvard University's next president.
Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned on Tuesday, following months of scrutiny of her handling of antisemitism on campus and amid allegations of plagiarism in her academic work.
In December, the university’s governing body pledged its support for Gay. But in long statements emailed to the Harvard community on Tuesday, neither Gay nor the Harvard Corporation explained what had changed over the university’s winter break, and why she was now leaving her post. Their messages did not mention the explosion of antisemitic incidents at Harvard since Oct. 7 under Gay’s leadership.
Jewish community members met the news with skepticism — some tentatively hopeful that her resignation would bring about change in the university’s much-criticized response to antisemitism, and others pessimistic that a change in leadership will root out the deeper problems facing Jewish students and faculty at the Ivy League university.
“The problems at Harvard have been years, if not decades, in the making,” Jeremy Burton, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, told Jewish Insider on Tuesday. “Whatever your opinion about Gay’s decision to step aside and how that came about, we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we pretend that this in any way moves us closer to resolving the root problems with the campus environment at Harvard.”
Harvard has faced widespread scrutiny for its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. The university did not address the terrorist attack for more than two days, at which point a letter authored by dozens of student groups blaming the bloodshed on Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians had gone viral.
The day after the attack, Gay spoke with Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi to express her condolences and offer sympathy for the campus Jewish community. But she told Zarchi she did not plan to release a statement.
“This was after the student groups came out with their message,” Zarchi told JI on Tuesday. “She said to me that she doesn’t think she’s going to say anything, [that] she’s going to rely on the deans. She had a lot of faith in the deans.”
Soon after, the dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education sent an email blaming both “Hamas and the Israeli government” for everyone killed in the attack.
The next day, Gay sent her first statement addressing the situation in the Middle East and responding to rising reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia. She sent two more that week alone. Ever since, the school has been locked in a cycle of reactionary damage control.
“Claudine Gay tacitly encouraged those who sought to spread hate at Harvard, where many Jews no longer feel safe to study, identify and fully participate in the Harvard community,” the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance, which has thousands of members, said in a statement Tuesday.
The slow response and equivocation of Gay and other Harvard administrators were particularly jarring, Jewish community members argue, given how quickly Harvard has responded to other global events like the war in Ukraine and the anti-racism movement that emerged after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
“It created a culture that we don’t remain silent when we experience or witness the slightest form of discrimination,” said Zarchi. “That’s a beautiful culture to inculcate in students. But then there’s a double culture in which, when it comes to matters of the Jewish community, there’s nothing being said.”
The tipping point for Gay may have been allegations of plagiarism in Gay’s academic work, dating back to her graduate thesis, that emerged in recent weeks. Those accusations followed a disastrous performance on Capitol Hill in which Gay refused to say definitively that calling for the genocide of Jews violates the school’s code of conduct.
“It can be, depending on the context,” she said at the December congressional hearing.
Gay later walked the testimony back, telling the Harvard Crimson that she got caught up in a combative hearing and “failed to convey what is my truth,” which is “that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”
In her Tuesday email announcing her resignation, Gay said “it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign so that our community can navigate this moment of extraordinary challenge with a focus on the institution rather than any individual.” But she argued that she had been unfairly maligned in recent weeks.
“It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor—two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am—and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” Gay said.
In November, Gay announced in a speech at Harvard Hillel that the university was forming a group to advise administrators on how to combat antisemitism on campus. One person familiar with the group’s proceedings told JI on Tuesday that the group has met once or twice a week for the past two months. But Gay did not consult with the group, which included several university administrators, author Dara Horn and Harvard Divinity School visiting scholar Rabbi David Wolpe, before she testified on Capitol Hill. Wolpe resigned from the group after Gay’s appearance.
Despite the frequent meetings of the advisory group, the university has not announced any new actions against antisemitism. The person familiar with the group’s work said there are no future plans to meet, and that its members have not been told what the university’s next actions on antisemitism will be — if any.
Jacob Miller, a junior at Harvard and the former student president of Harvard Hillel, said something at the school needs to change to make Jewish students feel at home. But it’s not clear if that will happen.
“There does need to be a change in the culture, and I don’t know if this is a part of that, or if this is just Harvard trying to evade the negative press that it’s receiving,” Miller, who was an editorial fellow at Jewish Insider from 2021-2022, said. “It remains to be seen exactly how the school reflects its commitment to protecting Jewish students. It’s too early to tell.”
Jewish students have begged Harvard’s administration to do more to fight antisemitism and to enforce the school’s code of conduct, such as by taking disciplinary action against students who have disrupted classes with pro-intifada chants.
Jewish donors aren’t convinced that the change in leadership is reason enough for them to rethink their decision to withhold donations from Harvard.
Yossi Sagol, an Israeli businessman who attended Harvard Business School, told JI’s sister publication eJewishPhilanthropy in October that he was considering withholding a donation to Harvard. A spokesperson for Sagol Holdings told JI on Tuesday that Sagol “is waiting to see the actions of the university, and will not have a decision until then.” A separate group of Jewish alumni decided last month to lower their donations to just $1 to signal their dissatisfaction.
Harvard announced that university provost and chief academic officer Alan Garber, an economist and physician, will serve as interim president.
“The provost has a very close relationship with the Jewish community,” said Miller, who added that Garber occasionally attended Jewish prayer services at Harvard Hillel. “He’s very friendly and attentive to the issue of antisemitism on campus.”
eJewishPhilanthropy news reporter Haley Cohen contributed to this report.
Obama privately lobbied on Harvard President Claudine Gay’s behalf as she faces growing scrutiny

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Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker speaks at the Semafor World Economic Summit on April 12, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Even as Harvard continues to stand behind its embattled president, Claudine Gay, amid mounting backlash over her handling of campus antisemitism and new accusations of plagiarism, Penny Pritzker, who helms the university’s highest governing body, has so far remained conspicuously silent, drawing fresh scrutiny to her role atop the administration.
Pritzker, the billionaire Chicago hotel scion and former Obama administration official, was elected senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation last year, months after she had donated $100 million to the university. In her new position, she personally led the search committee that named Gay as president last December, praising her in an announcement at the time as “a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence.”
Notwithstanding her initial enthusiasm, Pritzker has in recent weeks avoided personally defending the newly installed president, who has faced calls to resign, instead joining a statement signed by the 11 members of Harvard’s top board, which has been criticized for a lack of transparency.
In their unanimous decision to back Gay last week, the board members affirmed their “confidence” in the university president, dismissing the plagiarism charges and accepting her apology for widely criticized comments at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism earlier this month, where she equivocated on whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.
Before the Harvard Corporation had released its statement, however, Pritzker had dodged repeated questions from a reporter for the school’s student newspaper on whether she would ask the president to step down, even as Gay had claimed to have her support.
A spokesperson for Harvard said in an email to Jewish Insider on Thursday afternoon that she “is not available for an interview at this time and we have no further comment to provide.” Pritzker did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Pritzker’s limited public engagement has fueled skepticism of whether she performed due diligence in the vetting process that led to Gay’s appointment, which detractors now see as flawed, citing a snowballing plagiarism scandal as well as top donors who have continued to join a growing revolt over the president’s response to rising antisemitism amid the Israel-Hamas war.
“This is a full-blown corporate governance crisis for Harvard University and the fellows of the Harvard Corporation,” Benjamin Badejo, an MBA candidate at Tel Aviv University who studied at Harvard Law School and is a vocal critic of Gay and Pritzker, said in a recent email to JI, “and raises questions about the fellows’ ability to carry out their professional responsibilities.”
Despite mounting pressure for Pritzker to address the controversy now embroiling Gay’s brief tenure, close watchers of the administration allege that she has continued to keep a low profile because she has nearly as much at stake in the ongoing ordeal as the president she herself recruited. “What I hear is she has no intention of going down with the ship,” one Harvard insider, speaking anonymously to discuss a sensitive topic, said of Pritzker’s motivations for remaining silent.
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, Pritzker, 64, had reportedly voiced misgivings over the university’s delay in responding to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, which had fueled an outcry from leading donors who felt the university should firmly rebuke a letter signed by a coalition of student groups that blamed Israel for the massacre.
In a private phone call with the billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin days after the attack, Pritzker expressed agreement with his demand that Harvard release a statement standing with Israel, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times two months ago. (A source familiar with the call told JI that the Times anecdote was “broadly accurate.”)
The university’s initial efforts to address the violence, however, were ultimately derided by donors, alumni and students who felt that Gay’s statements had equivocated over the attacks.

To some observers, Pritzker’s silence amid the fallout has been particularly glaring because she has long been regarded as a staunch supporter of Israel. The 64-year-old Jewish entrepreneur and philanthropist from Chicago, whose brother, J.B., is the governor of Illinois, was one of Barack Obama’s earliest and most important financial backers, and has been credited with persuading Jewish and pro-Israel donors to support his first presidential campaign, despite skepticism over his approach to Middle East policy.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Obama, a Harvard graduate, had privately lobbied on Gay’s behalf as she faced pressure to resign in the wake of her disastrous appearance before the congressional hearing on antisemitism. “It sounded like people were being asked to close ranks to keep the broader administration stable — including its composition,” the source, who was informed of Obama’s outreach and asked to speak anonymously to discuss a confidential matter, told JI on Tuesday.
Obama’s office did not respond to a request for comment from JI.
It is unclear if Pritzker, who served as Obama’s commerce secretary in his second term, spoke with the former president as the Harvard Corporation was deliberating over its decision to support Gay.
The former Obama official has been outspoken against Jewish persecution, recalling her family’s escape from Russian pogroms to the United States, where the Pritzkers eventually created the Hyatt hotel chain. In September, she was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as the U.S. special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery.
But as Gay has come under scrutiny in recent months, Pritzker has found herself in an increasingly uncomfortable position, albeit one familiar to many Jews in positions of power, said Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the founder and president of Harvard Chabad, who has been publicly critical of Gay’s remarks to the House committee.
While Zarchi clarified that he had not spoken with Pritzker, he speculated that she has been cautious in recent weeks because of what he described as a preemptively defensive posture he has observed among other Jewish leaders at Harvard. “Jews in power go to an extreme degree to show that they’re neutral, lest they be accused of showing favoritism,” he told JI last week. “It’s another reflection of the toxic culture in the academy that people can’t speak their conscience.”
Still, critics see other calculations at play. In his email to JI, Badejo, the Harvard Law School alumnus, claimed that Pritzker and her fellow board members on the Harvard Corporation “arguably have conflicts of interest regarding Gay’s continued tenure as president, as managing the public’s awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence” could potentially “impact their own continued tenures.”
The Harvard Corporation has continued to back Gay, the school’s first Black president, even amid mounting accusations of plagiarism that have cast doubt on the integrity of her academic writings. The board on Wednesday acknowledged some indiscretions in Gay’s scholarship, but said the improper citations, for which she has requested corrections, fell short of research misconduct.
Meanwhile, in a letter to Pritzker on Wednesday, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee, said she was launching an investigation into Harvard’s handling of what she described as “credible allegations of plagiarism” against the university’s president.
Alan Solow, a former national co-chair of Obama’s reelection campaign, said he had not discussed the current controversy with Pritzker, whom he has known for years, but added that he had faith in her leadership at a particularly challenging moment.
“She is a person of great integrity. She is thoughtful; she studies, asks excellent and probing questions and listens,” Solow, the former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a recent email to JI. “I hold her in the highest respect and have great confidence in her leadership and judgment based on my having worked on a variety of projects with her for more than 15 years.”
But a former high-profile fellow in the Harvard Institute of Politics, granted anonymity to speak candidly, questioned Pritzker’s decision to stand with Gay as misguided. “I wish I knew what motivated it because they will hemorrhage contributions,” the former fellow told JI. “She now needs to be fired and the board has to step down.”
On Thursday, Len Blavatnik, the billionaire investor whose family foundation has given at least $270 million to Harvard, reportedly became the latest major donor to pause contributions to the university over dissatisfaction with Gay’s recent handling of antisemitism.
“If Harvard has already lost a billion dollars in donations because of her testimony, her plagiarism and her unwillingness to truly back free speech,” the former fellow said, “the jury may still be out.”

Gabby Deutch
Harvard President Claudine Gay lights the menorah at Harvard Chabad's Hanukkah celebration
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we examine the possible consequences of New York’s redistricting and highlight the growing voices of dissent against Hamas in Gaza. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall.
The decisions by courts in New York and North Carolina to allow a more-partisan redrawing of their states’ congressional maps are a blow to the prospects of several of the most pro-Israel lawmakers in Congress — while dealing an additional blow to swing-district moderates who have worked across party lines in an increasingly partisan Washington, Jewish Insider Editor-in-Chief Josh Kraushaar writes.
We don’t know what the new New York maps will look like. An independent redistricting commission will have first crack at drawing new district lines, but if it fails to reach an agreement, the Democratic-controlled legislature would then get its shot. The commission’s deadline isn’t until next Feb. 28, creating a lengthy period of uncertainty.
One outcome is likely: Democrats will gain additional House seats, as new maps would endanger a slew of newly elected Republicans already representing districts President Joe Biden carried. Small tweaks to the lines in Long Island or the Hudson Valley could have an outsized impact. As many as six GOP-held House seats could be impacted, though Democratic operatives expect party leaders to advocate for smaller tweaks to the current map in order to avoid future lawsuits.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), a pro-Israel stalwart who eked out an upset against the powerful Democratic campaign committee chairman in 2022, has the most to lose. He narrowly won a district Biden carried by double digits in 2020. If redistricting moves parts of solidly Democratic Westchester County into his district, it would make it difficult for any Republican to compete. Lawler is expected to face former Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones, whose political base is in Westchester County.
The two other GOP lawmakers with a lot to lose are: Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) and Brandon Williams (R-NY). Molinaro already lost a high-profile special election in 2022 (to Rep. Pat Ryan), and only won by two points in his subsequent bid. Williams could see his toss-up district become a shade bluer if mapmakers draw the left-wing college town of Ithaca into his district.
Republicans are cautiously optimistic about their prospects in Long Island, even with less-favorable district lines. The region has turned more conservative, amid widespread dissatisfaction over crime, immigration and the hard left’s anti-Israel posturing. But the redistricting decision could impact how aggressively Republicans compete for former Rep. George Santos’ swing seat in the upcoming special election, if the seat won’t be in existence much longer.
The new lines in New York will also affect Democratic primary positioning. Left-wing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) is facing a serious primary threat from moderate Westchester County Executive George Latimer. But if a new district ends up taking in less of Latimer’s Westchester County base, it would dramatically change the dynamic of the race. (Alternatively, if the district took in less of the Bronx, it’s possible Bowman would try to run in a different district.)
The New York Times reported on this added bit of intrigue: The Democratic chairman of the redistricting commission is Latimer’s deputy and “has a longstanding interest in succeeding him as county leader,” according to the paper.
All told, the biggest impact of the new lines is that there will be fewer competitive districts and even less incentives for moderation. And with Lawler one of the most vulnerable lawmakers, a leading pro-Israel voice’s political future is on the line.
We’ve already seen the consequences of a deeply partisan Republican gerrymander in North Carolina, eliminating nearly all of the competitive districts in the state.
Already Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), the former chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, announced her retirement as a result of the new lines. Other reliable pro-Israel Democrats in the delegation, such as Reps. Wiley Nickel (D-NC) and Jeff Jackson (D-NC), aren’t expected to return to Congress in 2025.
At a time when pro-Israel advocates need as many Democratic allies as they can muster, the departure of these lawmakers will tilt the party caucus in a more leftward direction.
Winning at all costs has become a phenomenon for both Democrats and Republicans, to the point where partisans have successfully appealed redrawing district maps off the normal 10-year cycle. The losers of this no-holds-barred version of politics are the moderates that pro-Israel supporters so often rely on.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) hosted her annual Hanukkah party on Capitol Hill yesterday, joined by more than 15 House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), as well as a slew of Hill staffers and Jewish community leaders. JI Capitol Hill reporter Marc Rod reports.
The families of multiple hostages and a survivor of the Nova festival massacre called on those assembled to keep the pressure on and continue advocating for the safe return of all hostages, as well as recounted their and their families’ horrific experiences.
“It’s incredibly important that we not allow the world to move on, and that we make sure that we continue to bring individual attention to these human beings’ captivity,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Let us not forget that the story of Hanukkah is all about finding light, even when it may appear scarce. And we must remember that there are always blessings, even in the midst of darkness.”
growing dissent
Voices against Hamas growing louder as war in Gaza continues

Perhaps it was the recent chaotic images of Hamas terrorists using sticks to beat back desperate civilians at a Gaza hospital, or the short clips circulating of armed terrorists trying to make off with vital aid meant for starving children that first prompted some residents of Gaza to speak out against their leaders. Whatever the reasons, after 68 days of a war that has changed – and even destroyed – the lives of many of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, a growing number of ordinary civilians in the Palestinian enclave, analysts suggest, are beginning to show their anger against Hamas – the brutal regime that has dominated their world for the past 16 years and which on Oct. 7 unleashed an unforgiving war in their territory, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports.
Slowly but surely: “It’s a silent and gradual revolution that is spreading and brewing among displaced and suffering civilians in Gaza who hold Hamas, the nihilistic criminal enterprise that has governed Gaza since 2007, responsible for their annihilation, suffering, misery and displacement,” Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, an American political analyst originally from Gaza, told JI in a recent interview.
Online accusations: Alkhatib, who has been posting daily video clips on X, formerly Twitter, added: “I see dozens of videos, messages, comments, outbursts and outcries daily by Gazans who are detesting Hamas, challenging its propaganda, condemning the consequences of its actions.” He said many are accusing the militant Islamist group “of hiding themselves underground while civilians are being obliterated above ground.”
Removing a barrier: Khaled Abu Toameh, a Palestinian Affairs analyst, told JI, “The deeper the Israeli army pushes into the Gaza Strip, the more we are likely to see people speaking out against Hamas. “We’ve seen it increase in the last few days, especially on social media,” he said. “There’s a feeling that the barrier of fear has been shattered and that Hamas has been weakened as a result of the military offensive.”