When 70 university presidents gathered for a summit in late January, the topic on everyone's mind was the crisis at Harvard.
Summit organizers treated the university, which has been battered by accusations of indulgent anti-Semitism, as a business school case study in leadership in higher education, complete with a slide presentation about its plummeting reputation.
Definitive slide: “Boeing and Tesla have similar levels of negative buzz as Harvard University.”
In other words, Harvard University, a symbol of academic excellence for centuries, is as much in denial as an airplane manufacturer whose door panels have fallen from the sky or an automobile company with a mercurial CEO and multiple recalls. It was attracting a lot of attention.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, organized the summit. “Despite nearly 400 years of history, the value of brand equity is not as enduring as Harvard trustees think,” he said in an interview. “There used to be a saying in the industry that we were the Cadillac of the industry. Well, Cadillac itself, as you know, is sadly no longer the Cadillac of the industry.”
Many of the presidents who attended the summit saw the decline in Harvard's brand as a problem not just for the school but for the entire higher education enterprise. If Harvard can't protect itself, what will happen to other universities? Can Harvard's leaders find an effective response?
A sign of a more proactive approach by Harvard University on Monday, when the university announced it was investigating “highly offensive anti-Semitic tropes” posted on social media by a pro-Palestinian student and faculty group. was there. The group was posting or reposting material, including an old caricature of a puppeteer with a dollar sign inside a Star of David. Lynch Muhammad Ali and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Harvard University's move comes as the House Education and Labor Committee begins to scrutinize the school's anti-Semitism record. On Friday, the committee subpoenaed Harvard's interim president, the head of the school's governing board and investment managers in an extensive search for documents related to the university's response to allegations of anti-Semitism on campus. Issued. In response to the threat of subpoenas, PEN America, a writer's group that advocates for academic freedom, issued a warning against fishing expeditions.
A lawsuit has also been filed against Harvard University, calling it a “bastion of rampant anti-Semitic hatred and harassment,” and a federal investigation into accusations that the university has ignored anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus. It is being said.
Corporate executives and major donors, including hedge fund executive Ken Griffin, will withhold funding and employment from a Harvard University student who defended Hamas' atrocities in the October 7 attack on Israel. I'm threatening you. Right-wing media and anonymous researchers continue to make plagiarism allegations against university officials as part of their attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
There is already evidence of reputational damage, with the number of students applying for early admissions at Harvard this year down 17 percent. Other Ivy League schools also saw increases.
Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor, said the attack “clearly made Harvard nervous in terms of its highest leadership.” “They damaged morale. It was a very effective attack.”
Inside Harvard, faculty and students are looking for signals from university officials, including Harvard's main board of governors, about the university's future direction.
Alan Garber, the university's interim president, said in an interview with Harvard Magazine last week that the series of measures aimed at enforcing rules against disruptive demonstrations and promoting dialogue rather than confrontation between students and faculty members. He outlined several efforts to reduce tensions by providing events.
Novelist Dara Horne, who last year served on a committee advising Harvard's president on how to combat anti-Semitism, said these are good moves. She noticed that many students did not want to engage with people with whom they disagreed, and did not know how to do so.
“That kind of attitude is the end of education,” said Dr. Horne, who published an article in The Atlantic about his experience at Harvard. “For me, it's like the basics.”
Alex Bernat, a Harvard junior and director of the Jewish student organization Chabad, said Tuesday that the university's swift response to this week's anti-Semitic posts was a good sign. But he was concerned that some members of a pro-Palestinian faculty group who reposted anti-Semitic material were having influence over the academic work of Jewish and Israeli students.
The group that posted the material removed it on Monday, saying it had been inadvertent in endorsing clearly anti-Semitic imagery.
Still, Harvard University confirmed that its leader, philanthropist and former Obama administration official Penny Pritzker, will remain in office and conduct a new presidential election, just as she led her predecessor. Other than what he did, he has remained relatively quiet. President Claudine Gay.
The university drew criticism for its selection and support of Dr. Gay, who resigned on January 2 following an uproar over his congressional testimony that calling for the genocide of Jews does not necessarily violate Harvard's code of conduct. ing. context.
The corporation has been accused of “screwing the university” by not acting more quickly on the issue, as outspoken psychology professor Steven Pinker said in an interview. (He quickly realized that he was not calling for the banishment of gay doctors.)
But some faculty feel the university may be going too far in appeasing its critics.
At the December Congressional hearing that decided Dr. Gay's fate, North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx referred to her Harvard University class “Race and Racism in the Formation of the United States as a World Power” as “Ideology in the United States.” ” was taken as an example. work. “
The class's teacher, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, called the accusations “ridiculous” and said the class also included readings about the history of anti-Semitism in the United States. He is concerned that new rules of conduct adopted in September that prohibit discrimination based on “political beliefs” will lead to complaints from students like Dr. Fox who objected to the course content. He said there was.
“Prominent black people at this university have reason to fear that their credentials will be called into question,” he said.
In a hostile atmosphere, good intentions could sometimes lead to problems.
Harvard University's decision to establish a special committee on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus is usually the most unpleasant of institutional responses, but noted Jewish scholar Derek Pensler It hit a snag in late January after he was named co-chair of the Anti-Semitism Task Force.
Critics opposed his appointment, citing an open letter signed by Dr. Pensler and other academics and released before the October 7 attack that accused Israel of being an “apartheid regime.” Critics derided his remarks, which were quoted in the Jewish press, as exaggerating the degree of anti-Semitism at Harvard.
David Wolpe, a distinguished rabbi and visiting fellow at Harvard Divinity School, said he could not have anticipated Harvard's skeptical reaction to Dr. Pensler's appointment because the leadership was too insular. It is said that it is showing.
“There's a maladroidy in universities that doesn't have the ability to understand how they're seen and that's discouraging many Jewish students and faculty,” Rabbi Wolpe said.
Dr. Pensler, who remains co-chair of the task force, declined to comment for this article. His supporters were furious at what they saw as cheap criticism of a respected academic.
Stephen Levitsky, a professor of Latin American studies and government at Harvard University, said: “The fact that he has an external veto on expressing his views, especially when they are fairly mainstream views, is a huge challenge.'' “If you think about it, it's just a terrible, terrible precedent.” Contrary to public perception, Dr. Pensler is a “self-confessed Zionist,” Dr. Levitsky said.
Some graduates are trying to change that. Several independent candidates have begun campaigning for seats on the Harvard University Board of Supervisors, the university's second governing body. The candidates were unable to gather enough petition signatures to qualify for the ballot, but vowed to continue their efforts.
One such candidate, 2005 Harvard graduate and venture capitalist Sam Lessin, said the election process itself exposed leadership issues.
He said Harvard's governance system “almost resembles a peacetime organization” and is not suited to weather difficult circumstances. Candidates for the Board of Supervisors are typically nominated through the Alumni Association, and the position is often recognized as a “honorable reward for being a patron.”
Some teachers are also organizing. About 170 Harvard professors have joined the Council on Academic Freedom, which Dr. Pinker co-founded last spring to combat what he calls “intellectual monoculture.”
Dr. Pinker believes that some of the suffering of recent months could have been avoided if Harvard had adopted a policy of institutional neutrality and not taken a stance on the thorny issues of the day.
“Universities need to stop giving mini-sermons every time there is a news event,” he said.
Dr. Pinker has a silly hobby of collecting headlines and cartoons that poke fun at Harvard University's reputational problems. A bumper sticker in his collection reads, “My son didn't go to Harvard.”
But Harvard “still has a brand, it still has a tradition,” Dr. Pinker said. “I don't know if it's going to get back on track. I think it will.”
Stephanie Saul Contributed to the report. Sealag McNeil Contributed to research.