Note: At the end of April, the editors of the Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, penned an editorial supporting BDS and Palestinian liberation. In response,150 members of the Harvard Faculty wrote a statement criticizing the editorial. Another group of faculty penned their own response, which was published in the Harvard Crimson. This letter is printed below. It was also posted on Mondoweiss.

Statement in Support of The Harvard Crimson and Palestinian Liberation

By Steven Caton, Sara Roy, and Ajantha Subramanian

May 26, 2022

As faculty and officers of Harvard University who oppose racism and colonial violence in all its forms, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and self-determination. Israeli state violence has devastated Palestinian life through a combination of warfare, territorial theft, and violent displacement. Unwavering US financial, military, and political support has fueled the systemic domination and repression of Palestinians. In 2018, Jewish supremacy in Israel was given legal sanction through the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, which makes the right to national self-determination in Israel unique to the Jewish people and defines Jewish settlement as a national value. Long-standing criticisms of Israeli state violence by Palestinians themselves are now echoed in reports by Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem that document widespread human rights violations against Palestinians. Amnesty International has noted that “Israel’s system of institutionalised segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, as a racial group, in all areas under its control amounts to a system of apartheid.” Most recently, Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, called his country an “apartheid regime” and urged the international community to recognise this reality and hold Israel accountable.

It is this larger context of escalating ethnonationalist violence that the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee addressed in its Israeli Apartheid Week of events. It is also the context that prompted The Harvard Crimson to publish its April 29 editorial in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Palestinian liberation. And it is this larger context that is systematically distorted in the statement penned by a number of Harvard faculty members in opposition to the Crimson editorial.

In their statement, these faculty members repeatedly call for a more “complex” understanding of the situation in Israel/Palestine. But this complexity does not include any acknowledgment of the actual conditions of Palestinian life in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or refugee camps in adjacent countries. The statement makes no mention of the dispossession of Palestinian land by ever-expanding settlements, the siting of educational institutions on settlement land as a means of solidifying the Israeli occupation, the routine incarceration and killing of Palestinian protestors, the eviction of Palestinians and destruction of their homes, and the gunning down of Palestinian journalists. It makes no mention of the fact that Palestinian resistance is criminalized by Israel and the US and that every measure of self-defense by a people without a state or an army against a nuclear power backed by the US is subject to immediate censure. On the contrary, the statement completely obscures the relationship between the Jewish national project and Palestinian subjugation. In demonizing BDS, it also severs its family resemblance to other instances of boycott, divestment, and sanctions, including the movement against South African apartheid and the measures being adopted against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In short, the statement sidesteps any effort to understand why BDS — a nonviolent response to the violence of the Israeli state — might have been adopted by Palestinians as a political strategy and why it has increasing support around the world.

Instead, the only violence mentioned is that of antisemitism. The only threat identified is to the Jewish national project. The only vulnerability named is that faced by “Jewish and Zionist students.” In disregarding the everyday violence exercised by Israel on Palestinians, blaming BDS for rising antisemitism, and equating student opposition to Israel’s policies with “anti-Jewish hate speech,” the statement conflates Jewishness with Israel and Zionism and erases the presence of Jewish students and organizations that oppose Zionism and root their support for Palestinian liberation in a moral understanding of Judaism. Antisemitism is indeed real and dire. It is embedded in white supremacy, and many forms of racism have deep ties to antisemitism. However, blaming the movement for Palestinian liberation for rising antisemitism weaponizes a legitimate concern to distract from the racism and violence faced by Palestinians. In effect, the statement reprises a strategy deployed by Israeli and US governments as part of a growing trend to shut down legitimate criticism of an increasingly violent, exclusionary, and discriminatory state.

It is especially troubling that a group of faculty, including former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, has gone to such lengths to criticize the political stances of students in the name of “a respectful and inclusive learning environment.” The irony of leveraging the stark imbalance of power between faculty and students in order to obscure the gross asymmetries in power between Israel and Palestinians seems to be lost on them. So too is the inherent contradiction of censoring criticism of Israel in the name of intellectual exchange. This abuse of power is compounded by their patronizing attitude to the Crimson editors whom they encourage to access resources at Harvard, including the signatories themselves, to “[learn] more deeply about Jewish identity and Israel, the diversity of the Jewish experience, and the multifaceted nature of contemporary antisemitism.” Not only do such comments render Palestinian experiences irrelevant, even illegitimate, they substitute institutional power and credentials for knowledge in order to put students in their place. We strongly oppose such tactics of intimidation and applaud the Crimson editors and the Palestine Solidarity Committee for their moral clarity and fortitude in defending Palestinian rights against consistent efforts to deny them. It is students like these who make our university proud. We stand with them and the Palestinian people in their principled opposition to Israeli apartheid.

Steven Caton is the Khalid Bin Abdullah Bin Abdulrahman Al Saud Professor of Contemporary Arab Studies. Sara Roy is a senior research scholar at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Ajantha Subramanian is the Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies and Chair of the Anthropology Department.

Originally, the signatory list was limited to Harvard faculty and staff and then was expanded to include others who wished to endorse the Crimson’s editorial stance in support of Palestinian liberation. The combined list is as follows:

Lila Abu-Lughod, (Harvard PhD ‘84), Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia University

Fida Adely, Associate Professor, Georgetown University

Zena Agha, Kennedy Scholar, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2017

Neel Ahuja, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Maryland-College Park

Susan M. Akram, Clinical Professor and Director, International Human Rights Clinic, Boston University School of Law

Hussein Ali Agrama, Associate Professor, University of Chicago

Diana Allan, PhD 2008, Harvard;  Associate Professor of Anthropology and Canada Research Chair, McGill University

Lori Allen, Reader in Anthropology, SOAS University of London

Eman Ansari, Instructor, Harvard Medical School 

Reem Atassi, Religion and Public Life, Harvard Divinity School

Sa’ed Atshan, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Emory University; Harvard ‘08 (MPP), ‘10 (AM), ‘13 (PhD)

Elsa Auerbach, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston

Sara Awartani, Postdoctoral Fellow & Lecturer, Harvard University

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Professor, Comparative literature and Modern Culture & Media, Brown University

Gonzalo Bacigalupe, Professor, Department of Counseling and School Psychology, University of Massachusetts Boston, Harvard School of Public Health ‘07 (MPH).

Brian K. Barber, Professor Emeritus, University of Tennessee

Mary T. Bassett, François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights (on leave), Harvard University

Prof. Dr. Helga Baumgarten, Germany

Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University; Harvard ’74 (A.M.)

Naor Ben-Yehoyada, AM ‘07, PhD ‘11, Anthropology, Harvard University. Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University 

Deirdre Bergson, New York

Anat Biletzki, Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac University

Amahl Bishara, AB ‘98, Harvard University. Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropology,

Tufts University

Michael Bronski, Professor of the Practice in Activism and Media in Women, Gender and

Sexuality, Harvard University

Edmund Burke III, Emeritus Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz

Dorothy Burlage, Ph.D. ’78

Diana Buttu, Attorney

Glenda Carpio, Professor of English and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Professor of Anthropology and of Art, Harvard University

Steven Caton, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University

Sidney Chalhoub, Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Sir Iain Chalmers, Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, University of Oxford

Jih-Fei Cheng, Associate Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Scripps College

Noam Chomsky, University of Arizona

Valeria Chomsky, University of Arizona

Elora Halim Chowdhury, Professor, Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Department, University of Massachusetts Boston

Vilashini Cooppan, Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz

Eleanor Craig, Program Director and Lecturer, Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, Harvard

University

Cindy Cruz, Associate Professor of Education and Critical Youth Studies, University of Arizona

Souad Dajani, Ph.D., Independent Consultant (Retired), Post-doctoral Fellow, Program on

Nonviolent Sanctions, Harvard ’87-’88, and Associate Scholar in Residence, Program on Nonviolent Sanctions, Harvard ’90-’91

Karam Dana, Alyson McGregor Distinguished Professor of Excellence and Transformative Research. University of Washington Bothell, Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard ’09-’10, Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Belfer Center ’10-‘12

Lawrence Davidson, Professor Emeritus, West Chester University

Lara Deeb, Professor, Scripps College

Natalia Deeb-Sossa, Professor, Chicana/o Studies, UC Davis

Namita Dharia, PhD’15, Harvard University. Associate Professor of Political Economy, Rhode Island School of Design 

Estelle Disch, Professor Emerita, Sociology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Linda Dittmar, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts Boston

Samuel Dolbee, Lecturer, History & Literature, Harvard University 

Alireza Doostdar, EdM’04, AM’09, PhD’12, Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies,

Harvard University. Associate Professor, Divinity School and the College, The University of Chicago

Maha Farhat, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School

Tessa Farmer, Assistant Professor Middle Eastern South Asian Languages and Cultures, UVA 

Leila Farsakh, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

Margaret Ferguson, PhD (Yale, Comparative Literature, ‘74), Distinguished Professor of English, Emerita, University of California at Davis

Federico Pérez Fernández, PhD ‘14, Harvard University. Associate Professor of Urban

Anthropology, Honors College, Portland State University.

Malay Firoz, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Arizona State University

Jessica Fjeld, Senior Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School

Robin Gabriel, PhD student, Sociology, University of California at Santa Cruz

Marshall Ganz, Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer is Leadership, Civil Society, and Organizing, Harvard Kennedy School

Marilyn Garson, Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices of Aotearoa NZ

Irene Gendzier, Professor Emerita, Boston University, Affiliate in Research, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard

Rita Giacaman, Professor, Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University

Yulia Gilich, PhD Candidate, Film & Digital Media, University of California at Santa Cruz

Harvey J. Graff, Professor Emeritus of English and History, and Ohio Eminent Scholar, Ohio State University

Jonathan Graubart, Professor, Political Science, San Diego State University

Christopher Hasty, Professor of Music, Harvard University

Camilla Hawthorne, Associate Professor of Sociology and Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Sami Hermez, Director of Liberal Arts Program and Associate Professor, Northwestern University in Qatar 

John Hess, Senior Lecturer II, English/American Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston

Gil Hochberg, Ransford Professor of Hebrew and Visual Studies, Comparative Literature, and Middle East Studies, Columbia University

Kathryn Himmelstein, Clinical Fellow, Harvard Medical School

Christine Hong, Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies and Literature, UC Santa Cruz

Nubar Hovsepian, Associate Professor of Political Science, Chapman University

Jesse Howell, Associate Director of the AM Program, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

Eric Robsky Huntley, Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Deena R. Hurwitz, Human Rights Attorney

Vijay Iyer, Professor of Music and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Walter Johnson, Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Suad Joseph, Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Davis

Jeanette Jouili, Associate Professor, Department of Religion, Syracuse University

Robin Just, Communications, Harvard Law School

Kyle Kajihiro, Lecturer, Geography and Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Rhoda Kanaaneh, A.B. 1992, Harvard University. Adjunct Assistant Professor, Fordham University

Ahmed Kanna, AM ‘00 Middle East Studies, PhD ‘06 Social Anthropology, Professor of

Anthropology and International Studies, University of the Pacific 

Yarden Katz, (Harvard Medical School Postdoc), Postdoc, University of Michigan

Kēhaulani Kauanui, Professor of American Studies and Anthropology, Wesleyan University

Jennifer Kelly, Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz 

Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Emeritus, Harvard Law School

Assaf Kfoury, Professor, Computer Science Department, Boston University

Joo Ok Kim, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, UC San Diego

Dennis Kortheuer, Lecturer Emeritus, History, California State University, Long Beach

Christopher Kruegler, Assistant Dean for Faculty Affairs, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard (retired)

Rose Marie Kuhn, Professor of French Emerita, California State University Fresno.

Ekin Kurtiç, PhD ‘19, Harvard University, Department of Anthropology and Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Stephen Laudig, National Lawyers Guild

James Marc Leas, National Lawyers Guild 

Justin Leroy, Assistant Professor of History, Duke University

Darryl Li, A.B. 2001, Ph.D. 2012, Harvard University

Andrew Littlejohn, PhD ‘17, Anthropology, Harvard University. Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University

Caroline Light, Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Harvard University

Kibibi V Mack-Shelton, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Boston

Lilith Mahmud, AM ’04, PhD ’08, GSAS, Harvard University. Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine. 

Sunaina Maira, B.A. 1991, Ed.D., 1998, Professor, Asian American Studies, UC Davis

Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Assistant Professor of Urban Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Jen Marlowe, Director, Producer, There Is A Field and Founder, Donkeysaddle Projects

Jodi Melamed, Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies, Marquette University

Hassan Melehy, Professor of French and Francophone Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Askold Melnyczuk, Professor of English, University of Massachusetts Boston

Anne Meneley, Professor of Anthropology, Trent University, Canada

Tara K. Menon, Assistant Professor, English, Harvard University

Brinkley Messick, Professor of Anthropology and of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, New York

David Mills, Instructor, Harvard Medical School

Dana Francisco Miranda, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts Boston

Maywa Montenegro, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Ahmad Moor, Consultant, World Bank, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, ’13 (MPP)

Diane L. Moore, Lecturer on Religion, Conflict, and Peace, Harvard Divinity School

Michelle Morse, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School

Anna Mudd, Program Specialist, Religion and Public Life, Harvard Divinity School 

Joia Mukherjee, Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Balmurli Natrajan, Professor of Anthropology, Dept of Community and Social Justice

Studies, William Paterson University of New Jersey

Atalia Omer, Visiting Professor, Harvard Divinity School  

Adi M. Ophir, Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Visiting Professor, The Cogut Institute for the Humanities and the Center for Middle East Studies, Brown University

Hannah Perls, Staff Attorney, Harvard Law School

Eugene Richardson, Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Junaid Rana, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Kasturi Ray, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies, San Francisco State University

Chandan Reddy, Associate Professor, Comparative History of Ideas and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Washington

Karen Rignall, Associate Professor, Community Development, University of Kentucky

Afsaneh Rigot, Senior Researcher and Affiliate, Harvard University 

Carissa Rodriguez, Lecturer, Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University

Tracey Rosen, Lecturer, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard College

Martin Rosenbluth, Immigration Attorney and former Country Specialist for Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority, Amnesty International USA

Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich, Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Bob Ross, Professor of Social Justice Studies and Community Engagement, Point Park University

Alice Rothchild, MD, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Harvard Medical School (retired)

Parama Roy, Professor of English, UC Davis

Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

Jennifer Ruth, Professor, School of Film, Portland State University

Vida Samiian, Visiting Researcher, UCLA; Professor and Dean emerita, CSU Fresno

Zoé Samudzi, Social Equity and Inclusion Fellow 2022-2024 and Assistant Professor in the Department of Photography at the Rhode Island School of Design

 Evren Savcı, Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Yale University

 Felicity Amaya Schaeffer, Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

Naomi Schiller, Associate Professor, Anthropology; Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

Heike Schotten, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Boston

Joan W. Scott, Professor Emerita, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Daniel A. Segal, Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History, Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges

Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History, UCSB

Namwali Serpell, Professor of English, Harvard University 

Aradhana Sharma, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Wesleyan University

Lara Sheehi, Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology, The George Washington University

Stephen Sheehi, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies, Professor of Arabic Studies, William & Mary

Malkit Shoshan, Area Head of Art, Design, and the Public Domain MDes, and Lecturer in Architecture. Harvard Graduate School of Design

Ellen Siegel, RN

Claudio Sopranzetti,  Ph.D. ‘13, Anthropology, Harvard University. Associate Professor of Anthropology, Central European University

Dominga Sotomayor, Visiting Professor, Department of Art Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University 

Ajantha Subramanian, Professor of Anthropology and of South Asian Studies, Harvard University

Karen L. Suyemoto, Professor, Psychology and Asian American Studies. University of Massachusetts Boston

Alfredo Thiermann, Visiting Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Arianne Sedef Urus, Lecturer, History & Literature, Harvard University 

Adaner Usmani, Assistant Professor, Sociology, Harvard University

Anand Vaidya, A.M. ‘09, Ph.D. ‘14, Anthropology, Harvard University. Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Reed College

Kamala Visweswaran, Radcliffe Fellow, 01-02; Professor of Anthropology, Rice University

Tracy Wallach, Senior Lecturer, Gender, Leadership & Public Policy Program, University of Massachusetts Boston

Eileen Weitzman, Attorney

Kirsten Weld, Professor of History, Harvard University

Christian A. Williams, Clinical Instructor, Criminal Justice Institute, Harvard Law School 

Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus, University of California,

Santa Barbara

Jessica Winegar, Professor of Anthropology and Middle East and North African Studies, Northwestern University

Bram Wispelwey, Instructor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Brian Wispelwey, William S. Jordan, Jr. Professor of Epidemiology in Medicine, University ofVirginia

John Womack, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Emeritus, Harvard University 

Susan Wright, PhD (Harvard), Research Scientist Emerita, History of Science, University ofMichigan.

Emrah Yildiz, AM ‘11, PhD ‘16, Anthropology and Middle East Studies. Assistant Professor of Anthropology and MENA Studies, Northwestern University

Pat Zavella, Professor Emerita of Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz

 

 

*Affiliations provided for identification purposes only