Two days after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel last year, senior administrators at Harvard University wrestled with how to respond. Drafting a public statement, they edited out the word “violent” to describe the attack, when a dean complained that it “sounded like assigning blame.”
They debated whether to explicitly disown a declaration by some Harvard student groups that Israel was responsible for the violence, but ultimately decided not to.
The internal debate among Harvard leaders including Claudine Gay, then the school’s president, played out furiously in emails and text messages that were released in a report on Thursday by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The report, part of a nearly yearlong inquiry by House Republicans investigating antisemitism on university campuses, offers a rare window into the discussions at multiple universities and how difficult judgment calls made by a small handful of people were scrutinized around the world.
The committee report accuses the schools’ leadership of permitting rampant antisemitism as pro-Palestinian students organized demonstrations at campuses across the country.
What is clear is that administrators struggled to find consensus on delicate moral judgments — like whether certain behavior constituted antisemitism — and how to take a stand on portentous affairs dividing the world.
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“The flood of resignations and vacancies are threatening government function,” she said. “Nonstop investigations will make it impossible to recruit and retain a qualified administration.”
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