Harvard Claims That Jewish and Muslim Students Faced Harassment, Bullying, and Discrimination
Jose Nino
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On June 26, 2024, Harvard University task forces set up to ostensibility fight bias, revealed that Jewish, Muslim, and Arab students were alleged to have been bullied, discriminated against, and harassed.
The two task forces, one that studied alleged acts of antisemitism and another that dealt with anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias, published separate reports calling for changes the university should make. They included providing anti-bias training for staff and students and providing a clear way for individuals to report acts of discrimination to the school. The recommendations were in their embryonic stage, the task forces stated, and they expect to publish additional details in the fall.
The task forces were established in January by Harvard’s interim president after the university was swept by rowdy protests after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, announced that the university will look over the recommendations throughout the summer.
“We must strengthen our ties with a sustained commitment to engaging each other with tact, decency, and compassion,” Garber declared in a statement.
Garber said he expects to carry out shorter-term recommendations throughout the summer. “Those that are longer-term will be developed, refined, and implemented in due course,” he stated.
The two Harvard task forces asserted that they carried out listening sessions with students, faculty and staff.
The antisemitism task force stated the situation for Israeli students has been quite hostile. Individuals holding pro-Israel views reported to have been harassed by faculty members and banned from joining several extracurricular activities, the report stated.
“They have frequently been subject to derision and social exclusion,” the report added. It added that discrimination, bullying, or harassment based on an individual’s Israeli nationality “must be both publicly condemned and subject to substantive disciplinary action.”
The anti-Muslim bias task force claimed there was “a deep-seated sense of fear” for individuals of Islamic confession on campus.
Students who were donning a kaffiyeh, a scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, alleged to have been called terrorists and spat on, the report noted.
“Muslims, Palestinians, Arab Christians, and others of Arab descent as well as pro-Palestinian allies described a state of uncertainty, abandonment, threat, and isolation, and a pervasive climate of intolerance,” the report continued.
What’s happening at universities such as Harvard is the product of multiculturalism where diverse ethnic groups air out their grievances at the expense of the social cohesion of institutions. If the US is to remain a stable world power that bequeaths tranquility and prosperity to future generations.
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