The Harvard Kennedy School reversed course on Thursday and said it would award a scholarship to a leading human rights advocate it had previously turned down, after news of the decision sparked a dramatic outcry. public outcry over academic freedom, donor influence, and the boundaries of criticism of Israel.
The controversy erupted earlier this month, when The Nation published a long post revealed that last summer, the school’s principal, Douglas Elmendorf, vetoed the proposal of the school’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy to provide a one-year scholarship to Kenneth Roth, recently retired executive director of Human Rights Watch. At the time, Elmendorf told colleagues he was concerned about the perception that Human Rights Watch was biased against Israel, according to two faculty members.
The disclosure has drawn criticism from prominent free-expression groups; a letter signed by more than 1,000 Harvard students, faculty and alumni criticizing what it called “a shameful decision to blacklist Kenneth Roth”; and private complaints from instructors.
In an email to the Kennedy School community on Thursday, Elmendorf said his decision was a “mistake” and that the school would send an invitation to Roth.
Elmendorf, an economist who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2009 to 2015, also denied allegations that donors influenced his original decision, which was proposed. in the Nation article and repeated in public. commands by Roth.
“Sponsors do not influence our review of academic affairs,” he said in the statement. “Nor is my decision taken to limit debate at the Kennedy School on human rights in any country.”
He did not elaborate on why he turned down Mr Roth’s scholarship except to say it was “based on my assessment of his potential contributions to the school.”
As for Roth, who after becoming the face of Harvard accepted an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is now a member of Perry World House, Elmendorf said, “I hope that our community We will be able to benefit from his profound experience in a wide range of human rights issues.”
Roth, contacted by phone after the reversal was announced, said he was pleased with the decision, which he called “awesome”. interest from the faculty, and that he will use the scholarship to write a book about his decades of human rights advocacy. But he also called for more transparency.
“Dean Elmendorf has said that he made this decision because of the people who were ‘important’ to him at university,” Roth said, referring to Published account by instructors. He still refuses to say who the people important to him are.
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And he called on Harvard to make a stronger commitment to academic freedom, even for those not in a position to campaign.
He continued: “Punishing those who criticize Israel is virtually unlimited for me. “What will the Kennedy School, and more broadly Harvard, do to show that this episode conveys a renewed commitment to academic freedom, rather than just special treatment of a famous individual?”
The incident is the latest outbreak in the ongoing debate over when to criticize Israel shades in against anti-Semitism, and in turn, when accused of opposing anti-Semitism, used to quell criticism.
In interviews (and on Twitter), Roth, a Jew whose father fled Nazi Germany as a child, says Elmendorf’s initial decision reflects the influence of those seeking to authorize Human Rights Watch, which has tracks abuses in more than 100 countries, as an impartial observer of Israel. And he has describe it as a case of “sponsor-driven censorship”, although he says he has no proof.
“It seems to be the influence of donors that undermine intellectual independence,” he said in an interview with The New York Times last week.
(A Harvard spokesperson said the university and its president, Lawrence Bacow, had no comment.)
Donor influence can be fuzzy, with rarely details of conversations held behind closed doors to the surface. But Israel has become a particular flashpoint in recent years, as some donors concerned about what they see as anti-Semitism or anti-Israel trends in academia have sought to reverse the gift or influence hiring decisions.
In 2020, the University of Toronto stopped hiring Valentina Azarova as director of the law school’s human rights program, after a major donor contacted the administrator to express concern about her academic work critical of Israel’s human rights record. (After public outcry, the university offered Azarova the job with protections for academic freedom, but she declined.)
Last year, the University of Washington return the gift of 5 million USDafter a sponsor of the Israel Studies program expressed displeasure with a professor who had joined other Israeli and Jewish scholars in the study. sign open letter criticized the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians and Arabs in the Palestinian country and territories. donor, by universityrequested an amendment to the gift agreement to prohibit scholars supported by the donation from making statements “considered hostile to Israel”.
Kennedy School, one federal of 12 centers and dozens of other initiatives, is one of the nation’s top public policy schools. It is also no stranger to controversy, often originating not from its regular faculty but from more than 750 visiting fellows, including prominent figures from politics, government and the media.
In 2017, Elmendorf cancel the scholarship provided for Chelsea Manningformer military intelligence analyst who in 2010 leaked an archive of military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, following criticism the words Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA, and others in the intelligence community. In 2019, Rick Snyder, former governor of Michigan, withdraw from a scholarship after his appointment caused a backlash on social media and from students who cited his role in Fiery water crisis.
For partisan voices on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the school has hosted many fellows in recent years, including Amos Yadlina retired top Israeli general, and Saeb Erekatthen chief Palestinian negotiator and secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Roth was recruited by Mathias Risse, director of the Carr Center, for a scholarship, which does not include teaching duties. In an email to Carr Center students, faculty, fellows, alumni and others, Risse called him “one of the most celebrated human rights leaders of our time.” and said that the rejection of the scholarship was “one of the worst moments of my professional life.”
In interviews and emails with The Times, Risse and another lecturer, Kathryn Sikkink, said that Elmendorf, in explaining his rejection of Roth, cited the perception that Human Rights Watch was “biased”. against Israel. He told them he became aware of the problem after discussing it with unnamed people in the university, they said.
Donors, they said, were not mentioned. But they say a report for 2021 of Human Rights Watch, concluding that Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the occupied territories meet the legal definition of “the crime of racism,” was discussed.
Is Human Rights Watch fair to Israel? a source of dispute, inside and outside the organization. In a 2009 essay in The Times, Robert Bernstein, one of the group’s founders, charge that its criticism of Israel is “helping those who want to turn Israel into an abandoned nation.”
In 2019, Israel Exclude the director of the corporation for Israel and Palestine and the lead researcher and author of the 2021 report, Omar Shakir, under the law that prohibits foreigners from supporting a boycott of Israel or its territories. At the time, Shakir denied that he or Human Rights Watch had called for wholesale consumers to boycott Israel or its settlements.
With its 2021 report, titled “Threshold Crossed,” Human Rights Watch became the first major international human rights organization to apply the term “racist” to Israeli behavior. Six months later, Amnesty International followed in its own report. (In 2022, the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic issued a similar, less notable report. report.)
Sarah Leah Whitson, former Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch, said the “racist” designation came after “painful” internal debate.
Whitson, currently the chief executive officer of Democracy in the Arab world now, or DAWN. There is a fear “that if you cross those red lines, they will try to behead you as an effective advocacy group.”
The Human Rights Watch report was attacked by Israel, whose ambassador to the United States said it was close to anti-Semitism. American Jewish Committee called it “a pitiful job” and accused Roth of harboring “personal hatred for Israel.” Some progressive Jewish groups expressed concern at the “cynical attacks” on the report also noted their own disagreement with the term “racist”.
The report does not characterize Israel, as some (including some Israeli group) Yes like “a racist state.” It uses the term not to refer to the character of the Israeli government, but to specific discriminatory policies in the occupied territories, which it argues meet the definition of a “crime.” of the apartheid regime” contained in internationally approved legal bans adopted by United Nations and International Criminal Court.
Roth said the purpose of the report, which he personally spent “a lot of time editing,” was not to equate Israel with the apartheid old regime in South Africa but to apply legal definitions. . And it reflects the fact, he said, that the peace process is “dead”.
“There is no evidence that what is happening today will go away,” he said. “That’s what made us all realize that we had to change our model.”
For some on campus, the issue is not about Roth or Human Rights Watch but the balance of discussions on campus.
“From a free speech perspective, yes, he should get a scholarship” if the Carr Center deems it appropriate, said Natalie Kahn, a senior at Harvard University and co-chair of Harvard Students for Israel. suitable to invite him. “However, I think there are a lot of people at Harvard who are espousing anti-Israel views, so we really don’t need another one.”
Ahmed Moor, a 2013 Kennedy School graduate who helped organize a open letter from Palestinian alumni who opposed Elmendorf’s initial decision, noting that the school hosted Yadlin, the Israeli general, but also “people like me.”
“That is good and appropriate for that type of institution,” because representing multiple views is part of the purpose of “the prime minister’s public policy agenda.”
With the original decision, he added, “That’s where the current principal screwed things up.”
