“We are compelled to speak out because these actions are being taken in the name of protecting us – Harvard Jewish students – from antisemitism,” the students wrote, according to The Harvard Crimson. “But this crackdown will not protect us. On the contrary, we know that funding cuts will harm the campus community we are part of and care about deeply,” Hillel wrote in an open letter signed by over 100 students.
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Pr-Palestinian protest at Harvard University last year, Donald Trump
(Photo: Boston Globe, GettyImages)
“The current, escalating federal assault against Harvard – shuttering apolitical, life-saving research; targeting the university’s tax-exempt status; and threatening all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus – is neither focused nor measured, and stands to substantially harm the very Jewish students and scholars it purports to protect,” the letter said.
“This is a transparent move by the Trump administration to concentrate power and erode university independence under the offensive pretext of ‘protecting Jewish students,’” the letter read.
"We hope for the speedy restoration of productive, sober collaboration between Harvard and our government that safeguards the rights of Harvard's Jewish community, advances the university's scholarship, and secures the preeminence of American research and industry-three deeply worthy, widely supported, and mutually reinforcing causes."
The students said that even those who felt personally harmed by the pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses could not support an affront to basic rights. They said Mahdawi was a prominent voice in Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and not in confrontations and removing him would spread fear and destroy the hope for peace, adding that freedom of speech is not an exclusive right of citizens but a basic principle of any democracy.
A senior member of the task force called Harvard soon after the letter was made public and claimed it was not coordinated with the proper authorities.
The letter sent by e-mail was signed by three senior members of the task force and received by the university as an official demand of the administration. But according to some sources, it was only a working draft meant to be reviewed by task force members.
