It is no coincidence that I wrote this article overlooking Lowell House, one of Harvard’s 12 undergraduate residential houses. The namesake of the House, former Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, was adamant that the university I later attended impose a quota on the number of Jews gaining admission.
The approved Jewish quota and continued systematic discrimination of Jewish people on behalf of Harvard allowed other forms of racism and prejudice to go unchecked, such as the growing exclusion of Asian Americans from academia.
Recently, I appeared on a panel alongside Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr. During the discussion, which pertained to illiberalism within American institutions of higher learning, Alveda reminded me of a powerful adage from her uncle: we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
At Harvard University, I would have been lucky to have simply been met with silence.
The land of Israel is central to my religious identity. It is the direction I face when praying three times a day, the source of nearly all biblical commandments and Jewish rituals, and the birthplace and namesake of my People. I was raised as an Orthodox Jew: the primacy of living in that Land, something Jews have been doing uninterrupted for 3,000 years, was manifest in almost all areas of our daily lives.
Israel is also where I lived for three years.
Residing in the Old City of Jerusalem as a student in Yeshiva, I was within walking distance of the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the Western Wall. Contrary to the stereotypes peddled at Harvard Divinity School, my Jewish Day Schools, Yeshivas, and community actively and consistently challenged us to explore co-existence, dialogue, and mutual understanding with Muslims, especially our Palestinian neighbors.
It was in this spirit of religious and academic probing that I decided to apply to Harvard Divinity School.
Although I knew I would be the only Orthodox Jew in the entire program, I believed it offered an ideal environment to explore different religious perspectives and expand my intellectual limits.
As such, I took classes that ran counter to my worldview. Learning from Professors and peers in courses such as “Settler Colonialism in Israel/Palestine” at the Divinity School and “Law, Human Rights, and Social Justice in Israel-Palestine” at the Law School, I was genuinely curious about and open to the divergent viewpoints necessary to propagate a proper educational experience. Moreover, I attended numerous Jews for (Palestine) Liberation events and often participated in the Harvard Divinity School Muslims' weekly Halaqa gatherings.
However, such toleration at Harvard University was never reciprocal.
While much-deserved outrage has been expressed toward the morally reprehensible and intellectually bankrupt statement signed by 34 student groups at Harvard—a statement that blamed Jews for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—perhaps what was most nefarious was the individual responses of my fellow classmates.
On the night of October 7th, my classmates at the Divinity School, a school with the stated mission of developing ethically and religiously grounded thought leaders, watched the images of Jewish babies crying as they were hoarded onto motorcycles and sent into Gaza, of Jewish women bleeding from their private areas, and of burnt bodies in wrecked cars. And they decided to celebrate the massacre in real-time.
In the Harvard Divinity School WhatsApp group, a student posted an image titled “Long live the resistance: victory is ours.” It was responded to with numerous “likes” and heart emojis. Other students took to the group chat to encourage others to attend rallies and marches in support of Palestinian resistance.
Although I was frantically spending that night locating loved ones in Israel, I can count on one hand the number of students or Professors at Harvard Divinity School who reached out to me.
It was the progressive activists of Harvard Divinity School—those who introduced themselves with their preferred gender pronouns, built safe spaces for neurodivergent students on campus, and assigned Judith Butler as required reading—who were the first to call for the violent destruction of the Jewish State.
The embrace of Jew-murder and terrorism did not end on October 7th.
A few days later, the Religion and Public Life (RPL) Department released its own statement—not to denounce Hamas, but to urge empathy, understanding, and nuance in our treatment of the massacre. Subsequently, the RPL, of which a disproportionate number of members helped publish last year’s antisemitic cartoon, hosted or co-sponsored dozens of events that cast Israel as a genocidal apartheid state engaged in ethnic cleansing.
Even before Israel began its ground invasion, hundreds of Harvard Divinity School students and their professors organized a march on campus to declare their intention of “globalizing the intifada.” They adopted the Hamas charter’s chant of freeing Palestine “from the river to the sea” and, eventually, took leading roles in the subsequent encampments.
Predictably, Harvard Divinity School’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion officers, who went out of their way to condemn the murder of George Floyd, express their shock at the reversal of Roe V. Wade, and routinely extend sympathy for the LGBTQ+ student population, never once agreed to condemn students behaving in blatantly antisemitic manners.
In fact, Harvard Divinity School Dean Marla Frederick has not once agreed to meet with me to discuss my experiences of antisemitism on campus. Instead, she opted to award former Harvard President Claudine Gay a profile in courage, declaring her to be “our forever President.” With leadership like this, it is easy to see why the climate on campus deteriorated so rapidly.
The manifestation of antisemitism at Harvard University points to a much larger issue within American society, and in particular, the progressive movement.
Although I showed a desire to be included in progressive ideological spaces, it was the progressive activists of Harvard Divinity School—those who introduced themselves with their preferred gender pronouns, built safe spaces for neurodivergent students on campus, and assigned Judith Butler as required reading—who were the first to call for the violent destruction of the Jewish State. It was those who preached inclusivity who expelled me from the Harvard Divinity School WhatsApp group for asking leading students why they hadn’t called for the elimination of Hamas.
Contemporary progressivism can be described as the toleration of intolerance. While progressives take knees for black lives and build gender-free restrooms, they simultaneously raise fists of solidarity with Yayhaw Sinwar, Ismael Haniyeh, and Osama bin Laden.
Unfortunately, this is not hyperbole, exaggeration, or a political narrative. Rather, it is a direct, personal observation from my two years at what is arguably the most morally confused American institution of higher learning: Harvard Divinity School.