The biggest takeaways from Harvard’s task force reports on campus antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias

As its legal battle over critical federal money plays out in court, two Harvard University task forces have released a pair of long-awaited internal reports: one on how antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias are handled on campus, and another on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. Harvard President Alan Garber announced the task force reports in a letter to the campus community that began with an apology, calling the 2023-24 academic year “disappointing and painful.” The reports released Tuesday afternoon included accounts of both Jewish and Muslim students juggling profound grief over the deaths of loved ones in Gaza and Israel, coupled with fear for their safety and deep feelings of alienation and academic censorship on campus. They include several broad recommendations and policy changes for Harvard’s programs, admissions and academic programs. “Some students reported being pushed by their peers to the periphery of campus life because of who they are or what they believe, eroding our shared sense of community in the process,” Garber wrote in his letter. Still, a “message that did not emerge clearly” from the lengthy task force reports seems to be that these are “largely problems of the prior academic year,” Garber told Harvard alumni Wednesday during a moderated online conversation. “They have not gone away, but what I have heard close to universally is that things are better this year.” Harvard has put in place measures to protect speech and support constructive dialogue, Garber said, “and I like to think we are seeing early signs of success. They are not complete, but they are getting underway, and I think we’re seeing progress.” The reports’ release arrived amid a battle between the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university and the White House: Earlier this month, the federal government’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism froze over $2 billion in federal funding to the Ivy League institution. Harvard sued the Trump administration over the freeze last week. “The sanctions that the government chose to impose against us — having to do with cutting off federal support at Harvard — those are not sanctions that will particularly aid us in the fight against antisemitism,” Garber told alumni on Wednesday’s call, noting he had spent that morning on Capitol Hill discussing the federal funding crisis and why even the school’s $53.2 billion endowment cannot protect key research projects from the White House’s freeze. Harvard is committed to complying with the law and addressing antisemitism, but cutting federal research money “is not the way to achieve it,” Garber said. “What is at stake here goes far beyond Harvard. It is an assault on higher education.” Both Jewish and Muslim students reported feeling uncomfortable and alienated on campus Each task force sought to understand the experiences of Harvard students, faculty, and staff through a series of listening sessions, held primarily in March and April 2024, followed by a university-wide survey that found Muslim and Arab students, as well as Jewish and Israeli students, often felt uncomfortable and alienated on campus, before and after the October 7 attacks on Israel. The survey, which received about 2,300 responses from students, faculty, and staff, was conducted by both task forces from May to August 2024 across Harvard’s schools. Among the Jewish students that participated in the survey, 67% reported feeling discomfort expressing their opinions with others at Harvard, compared with 80% of Muslim students, according to the reports on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias. An overwhelming 92% of Muslims surveyed at the university said they believed they were likely to face academic or professional repercussions for expressing their opinions, according to the report on anti-Muslim bias. Meanwhile, 61% of Jewish respondents felt they would face academic or professional repercussions for expressing their opinions, according to the report on antisemitism. Across nearly every area of concern, Jewish students reported greater levels of discomfort and alienation than Christian, atheist and agnostic students, but lower levels than their Muslim peers, according to the antisemitism report. Members of both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities expressed concern over doxxing: the university’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias found pro-Palestinian students’ faces and private information were plastered on box trucks and their information was published online, often labeling them as antisemites or terrorists. One faculty member told the task force a doxxed student had received death and rape threats after their face and phone number were put on a “doxxing truck” and shared online. Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias revealed similar incidents among Jewish students supporting the anti-Zionist movement on campus. “My roommate was doxxed, our apartment was doxxed,” one Jewish graduate student told the task force. “The most frustrating thing is that students have been weaponizing antisemitism to accuse people of acting out Judaism in a way they don’t like. I’m not antisemitic because I’m doing Judaism differently, and that’s how it’s been seen.” Antisemitism permeated Harvard and surged after October 7, report finds The university’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias narrated a rise in antisemitism that surged after the October 7 attacks: some Jewish and Israeli students said they felt a need to hide their identity and reported being bullied and excluded on campus. The report found that Jewish students had “faced bias, suspicion, intimidation, alienation, shunning, contempt, and sometimes effective exclusion from various curricular and co-curricular parts of the University and its community — clear examples of antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias.” Some Jewish students told the task force they had turned down admission offers at Harvard schools, while others completing PhDs said they pivoted to the private industry because they perceived academia as being unfriendly to Jewish people. The report recommended an overhaul of how students report antisemitic behavior on campus, faculty training on the issue and curriculum changes. More classes on the Israel-Palestinian conflict should be included in the school’s curriculum, the task force noted, suggesting that all intro courses on the topic should be co-taught from a Palestinian or Israeli “perspective.” Promoting a “culture of pluralism” on campus could create a safer environment for Jewish students while “recognizing the diversity of identities and ideologies on campus,” the task force said. The task force also recommended Harvard prohibit face masks during on-campus demonstrations and urged the university to “take appropriate action” against unrecognized student organizations that “piggyback” on recognized student groups. Muslim and Arab community members report feeling abandoned and silenced Muslim, Arab and Palestinian faculty and students at Harvard overwhelmingly reported feeling “abandoned and “actively silenced” as they voiced concerns over the mounting death toll and unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza, according to the report from the task force on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. “Many participants reported feeling a profound sense of erasure – that they, and the cause they feel strongly about, were silenced,” the task force wrote. This perception was fueled by the university’s initial response to the October 7 attacks in Israel, the report said, during which administrators sent emails that did not mention the reciprocal attacks on Gaza. Some participants also felt their grief and fear were met by “indifference” from university leadership, according to the report. Arab, Muslim and Palestinian university members reported being “actively suppressed and repressed” if they vocalized their concerns, the report said. Many viewed student protests and encampments as being punished with disciplinary measures of “unprecedented severity,” including Harvard’s decision to withhold the degrees of 13 graduating seniors who had participated in an encampment. Several people also expressed concern over academic freedom, noting faculty appeared to “self-censor” references to Palestinian topics in their teaching and syllabi out of concern for their tenure or other professional repercussions. Palestinian and pro-Palestinian faculty told the task force they felt unsupported and unsafe, the report said, noting some felt they were not being protected if they were “unfairly or maliciously targeted” by people both on and off campus. The task force recommended immediate steps to increase physical safety of Harvard’s community members, including safe transportation options and increasing awareness of a 24-hour safety hotline. It also advised the university to publicly denounce doxxing and recognize the severity of the problem by compiling resources and expert advice for community members who are victims of doxxing. The report suggested creating a program that invites university members to host conversations on different viewpoints and respectful disagreement or designating “free speech spaces.” The task force also advised the university to develop clearer policies about on-campus protests, which includes ensuring that counter-protesters are subject to the same rules as protesters. The background and history behind Harvard’s task forces The issue of antisemitism is at the heart of the Trump administration’s $2 billion funding freeze at Harvard and cited as a key reason behind it. The White House is also scrutinizing dozens of other US colleges over purported antisemitism, as well as their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, their rules for campus protests and whom they admit and employ. While the Anti-Defamation League and Harvard’s Hillel chapter have expressed appreciation for the administration’s focus on antisemitism, they have decried funding cuts as overreach with the potential to harm Jewish students. The Anti-Defamation League’s CEO said the organization commended “the clear-eyed and brutally honest assessment” of the Harvard antisemitism task force in a statement Wednesday. “Jews deserve equal treatment on campus, nothing more and nothing less. And yet we hope that the federal government will appreciate the importance of this report and recognize results as they are achieved so that it can reinstitute federal funding and resume the provision of other services that have been halted,” Jonathan Greenblatt wrote. Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told CNN in a statement Tuesday that “This report makes two things clear: Jewish and Israeli students have been the victims of a social, political, and intellectual campaign of delegitimization and stigmatization supported and enacted by many members of Harvard’s student body and faculty.” “President Garber is committed to addressing the deeper causes of this intolerable state of affairs and not merely their headline-grabbing manifestations over the past nineteen months,” Rubenstein wrote. Garber launched the two presidential task forces in January 2024 with the goal of determining how the university was failing to combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias, and what could be done to further dispel tension between on-campus communities. In June, the two groups issued preliminary reports with a message: Harvard needs to do more work to promote diversity in education and multiple perspectives on campus. The university received a failing grade from the Anti-Defamation League last year, which released a report assessing how US colleges combat antisemitism and protect Jewish students. In an updated report published in March, Harvard received a C, moving up two grades from an F the year before. Ivy League peers the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell University each received a C, up from a D. Columbia University remained at a D. In January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order focused on combating antisemitism at US colleges, heightening the pressure on administrators to crack down on campuses. CNN’s Nicki Brown contributed to this report.