BY MARJORIE HEINS
Harvard University’s announcement last month that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism was a sufficiently serious blow to academic freedom at that hallowed institution that it motivated me, as a graduate of Harvard Law School, to submit a letter to Harvard, the alumni magazine. As Hank Reichman’s “Anticipatory Obedience at Harvard,” my own earlier essay “What Those College Presidents Should Have Said,” and many other writings have pointed out, the IHRA definition, which conflates antisemitism with questioning Zionism or applying a “double standard” to the actions of Israel, suppresses free and open discussion of one of today’s most pressing international human rights issues.
I emailed my letter on January 26 but have yet to receive any response—not even an acknowledgment. I’m sure the magazine has received plenty of mail on this subject, and I suppose it will publish some letters at some point. I wonder if the editors are contemplating just how much they can print without running afoul of the policy itself. Here is the letter. I urge my fellow alums to join in the protest, and in particular fellow law school graduates for whom free speech in all its ramifications ought to have particular resonance.
To the editor:
As a graduate of Harvard Law School, where I learned about the First Amendment, I’m shocked and saddened by Harvard’s recent announcement that it is adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which confuses criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitic speech. Harvard even explicitly states that it is adopting some of the extreme examples of “antisemitism” given by the IHRA, such as applying a “double standard“ to the actions of Israel or questioning the validity of the basic Zionist enterprise.
It’s hard to think of more obvious examples of essential discussion about human rights in the world today than Israel’s destruction of most habitations in Gaza, its killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians and reduction of the surviving population to near-famine, and its policy of forcibly removing Palestinians from their land and homes in the West Bank in order to make room for more Israeli settlers. Yet any such discussions at Harvard now, if they take place at all, will be markedly one-sided, and fraught with fears of punishment. At Harvard, one would even be at risk in citing the decisions of the International Court of Justice, which last year found it “plausible” that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza amounted to genocide.
Part of Harvard’s motivation was evidently settling a lawsuit; another factor was probably the political beating that former president Claudine Gay took before a witchhunting House of Representatives committee last fall; and I fear that a third factor was President Trump’s threat to deprive elite universities of Title VI funding if they don’t, under the guise of combating antisemitism, in fact suppress criticism of Israel or Zionism.
It’s a sad day for academic freedom, and for Harvard to cave in to these political pressures is especially disheartening.
Marjorie Heins, HLS class of 1978
Author of “Priests of Our Democracy: the Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge“ (NYU Press, 2013)
Marjorie Heins is the former director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Arts Censorship Project.
Absolutely. This is just one of many means of blocking legitimate and accurate cricticism of Israel. Objections to Israeli apartheid and terrorism are not hate. They are a legitimate response to ongoing ethnic cleansing and religious bigotry!
Marjorie Heins, your assertion that “the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found it “plausible” that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza amounted to genocide” is altogether false. The ICJ did no such thing.
Judge Joan Donoghue, the president of the ICJ at the time of that ruling, noted shortly afterwards that “It did not decide – and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media – that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
Moreover Judge Donoghue further noted that the decision “did emphasize …that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide. But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”
I quote from the Court’s decision: “In the Court’s view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible. This is the case with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article II.”
However this language is parsed, I think we are splitting hairs. The decision has been widely reported as finding some of South Africa’s claims to be plausible. My point is that mentioning the decision as it has been reported could now risk sanctions under Harvard’s adoption of the IHRA definition.
Marjorie Heins, there is no parsing language or splitting hairs here. The ICJ never concluded that Israel’s conduct in the war plausibly amounted to genocide. What they did conclude was that the (unproven) allegations by South Africa appear to fall within the provisions of the Genocide Convention. Nothing more.
As a respected attorney, you must know the difference between mere allegations and court findings that are rendered after an exhaustive trial. The unfortunate fact that the ICJ interim judgment was twisted into something that it wasn’t and widely misreported – by partisans – does not condone your repeating the falsehood.
Your greater point about the perceived harm to academic freedom from Harvard using the IHRA definition can still be made using honest examples.
Ms Heins is a well trained lawyer so it seems unlikely that her distortion of the ICJ ruling is not deliberate. The court did not rule that the genocide charge was plausible, it ruled that the claims against Israeli actions could plausibly be treated as genocidal if true. The court did not make any ruling about the plausibility of the claims themselves. The head of the court made that distinction clear in a public statements
I can only say that Hamas’s goal is not only “plausible” but is clearly stated with the intent of genocide and to see Harvard students supporting that position and efforts to curb that hatred being challenged on the basis of free speech seems a bit “lopsided “