The question of what the university administration should be doing for its Jewish students is currently roiling not just Harvard but much of the Ivy League.

The Trenches of Academe

Allegations of anti-Semitism have students, faculty, and donors at Harvard in an uproar—and the university’s new president is caught in the middle

By Johanna Berkman

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP

At a now-notorious congressional hearing this past Tuesday, newly inaugurated Harvard president Claudine Gay testified that the reason she could not take action against the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on her campus, even when they include chants like “Globalize the intifada,” which Gay said she found “personally abhorrent” and “at odds with the values of Harvard,” was because Harvard gives “a wide berth to free expression even of views that are objectionable, outrageous, or offensive.”

Elise Stefanik, a Republican representing New York and a Harvard alumna herself, countered that Harvard had ranked last of 248 colleges in a recent free-speech survey conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “I reject that characterization of our campus,” Gay replied.