Jewish alums are auditing Harvard to root out antisemitism

The campaign by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance amounts to a virtually unprecedented effort by independent university alumni to intervene in the core administrative and academic functions of their alma mater. Many alliance members believe that Harvard has become a hotbed for antisemitism and have grown frustrated by what they see as feckless leadership in the face of a sustained crisis, according to internal messages, emails, and planning documents seen by the Globe. And after four rocky months, members of the group increasingly view themselves as engaged in an existential struggle for Harvard’s future.

“The real question, in my opinion, is whether we can win the proverbial ‘war’ at Harvard,” Antony Gordon, a 1990 Harvard Law School graduate, wrote earlier this month in the group’s WhatsApp chat forum.

Leaders of the group have participated in the chat forum as recently as this month, and the forum was included on the group’s official WhatsApp community until Thursday, when the Globe asked about it and it was removed. It had been labeled “unendorsed” and was a place for group members to share opinions and ideas. A spokesperson from the alliance on Friday sought to distance the group from the conversation in the forum.

“I want to be clear that writing or insinuating that this group or its content represents HJAA is factually inaccurate,” Roni Brunn, a spokesperson for the alliance, said.

The alliance now wields real-world influence. Its leaders secured a meeting last month with Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber, and other top Harvard leaders.

“[W]e were very, very clear how frustrated our group was and the wide range of emotions from anger to disappointment,” Eric Fleiss, the CEO of a real estate firm who is one of the group’s cofounders, wrote in another of the group’s WhatsApp channels.

A delegation from the group met last month with Israeli president Isaac Herzog in Israel. And it hosted a webinar with former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who has been sharply critical in recent months of the university’s handling of antisemitism. The university officially recognized the alliance as a “special interest group” earlier this year, which gives the group certain privileges, such as the ability to use Harvard’s logo.

Alumni coalitions sometimes spring up in response to proposed college closures or mergers that can change an institution’s mission or identity, said Larry Ladd, a consultant with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. “It breaks your heart to see the institution as you remember it change,” he said.

But he said this level of alumni activism is “very rare.” He said he has never heard of an alumni group conducting a content audit of a university.

The alliance formed in the days after the Hamas-led attack on Israel, which sent shockwaves rippling through American university campuses. At Harvard, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protesters decried Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in a way that some members of the alliance thought verged into antisemitism.

Since then, the group has grown to include approximately 3,000 members, including both Jews and non-Jews, according to Brunn, the group’s spokesperson.

“Harvard holds a cherished place in our hearts, serving not just as an academic institution but as a symbol of excellence and truth,” she said in a statement. “We joined together for one simple reason — a shared concern about growing antisemitism at Harvard.”

Many members reacted with horror last month when posters on campus about hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 were defaced with antisemitic graffiti, including “Israel did 9/11.” They were outraged over Presidents’ Day Weekend when several pro-Palestinian Harvard groups, including one consisting of faculty and staff, posted an antisemitic cartoon on social media. The cartoon, which Harvard quickly condemned, showed a hand inscribed with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding ropes around the necks of an Arab man and a Black man.

Members have also expressed concern about declining Jewish enrollment at Harvard in recent years, and say they fear their own children and other prospective Jewish students will not find a welcoming environment at the school.

There is disagreement within Harvard’s Jewish community about the extent of antisemitism on campus, and whether the school needs the help of alumni to deal with it.

“Antisemitism is real,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government and Latin American studies. “It’s not as pervasive as many people say [it is] at Harvard, but it’s real.”

Levitsky, who is Jewish, said Harvard’s response to the antisemitic cartoon, which included full-throated official condemnations, a critical editorial in the Harvard Crimson, and threats of discipline from the administration, showed that the school is capable of dealing with bigotry. “Outside actors should go back to their day jobs, and let Harvard resolve issues of antisemitism,” Levitsky said.

He also questioned the group’s audit. “I see this ultimately as an effort to stifle criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian speech,” he added.

Brunn, the spokesperson, said the group is not opposed to all criticism of Israel. “I’m Israeli. Criticism of Israel is a national sport among Israelis,” she said. She said the focus of the audit is squarely on potential sources of antisemitism at Harvard.

In the group’s early days, members shared a sense of solidarity and common cause. But as the alliance grew and its priorities began taking concrete shape, divisions emerged.

One early member, Marc Bodnick, an entrepreneur and 1990 Harvard graduate, was kicked out of the chat forum after clashing with other members there about Elon Musk, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israel-Hamas war. In messages, Bodnick was sharply critical of all three, prompting pushback from other members and, eventually, his expulsion.

Another source of tension was a December email from Fleiss, the group’s cofounder, to Harvard leaders, including Gay. The email, which was sent days after Gay’s much-criticized testimony at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, included incendiary memes critical of Harvard that were then circulating online. One of the memes showed Gay with a Hitler mustache. Another showed a Nazi flag flying on Harvard’s campus.

In response to questions sent to Fleiss, Brunn, the spokesperson, said, “We did not create the memes, many of which have exploded on social media and all of which are embarrassing to the school, students, faculty, and alumni.”

Rebecca Brooks, a lawyer and 2017 graduate who was a member of HJAA’s executive board, found the email “offensive,” she said in an email to the Globe, and stepped away from the group shortly thereafter.

She also said that the “broader reason” for her departure from the group “was that I was concerned about external, far-right forces co-opting the real problem of antisemitism on campus to push their own conservative agenda (that I do not share) and go after President Gay in a way that I thought was unconscionable.”

The group is now pressing a number of priorities. Before the meeting with Garber, held on Jan. 22, the group prepared a list of requests, outlined in a document shared in a WhatsApp channel for HJAA announcements and reviewed by the Globe.

The group’s leaders want the university to “[l]aunch a transparent inquiry … to review and revise the objectives and practices” of Harvard’s diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, which they feel have poorly served Jewish students.

They want Harvard to “[t]ake swift, concrete and public action” to discipline students, faculty, and staff who violate school rules by, among other things, “[d]isrupting classes, occupying buildings and inciting violence.”

They want the school to adopt “clearly articulated principles” on “institutional neutrality,” a principle, now gaining traction in higher education circles, that holds that university administrators generally should not take positions on weighty social and political questions.

In an open letter to the administration last year, the group also asked Harvard to officially adopt a definition of antisemitism embraced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance that identifies some forms of anti-Israel speech and behavior as antisemitic.

After the meeting with Garber, Fleiss reported back in the WhatsApp announcements channel: “We think it is fair to say that they clearly recognize they have a problem, and that it is part of/related to the broader issue on campus of free speech and institutional neutrality.”

The group’s audit seeks to identify sources of antisemitism within the university’s courses, events, and programs, according to internal messages seen by the Globe and a member of the group involved with the effort.

In WhatsApp messages and in planning documents reviewed by the Globe, some HJAA members articulated the view that antisemitism is exacerbated by Harvard professors teaching students certain worldviews, such as those that divide the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed.” Some argue these viewpoints lead to demonization of Jews and Israel — a claim that has led to fierce campus debates and pushback.

Some members have expressed concern in the chat forum that their Ivy League degrees have lost their luster, a sentiment shared by some Harvard graduates outside the group as well.

Last week, 10 Harvard alumni filed a lawsuit in federal court that alleged the school’s failure “to end antisemitism on its campus” had led to “the devaluation of their Harvard degrees.”

The lawsuit mirrored a sense of despair and alienation that many members of the alliance seem to feel about a place that still means so much to them.

One member, Nathan Low, wrote in the chat forum last year: “I am seriously thinking about mailing back my 1982 diploma.”

Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns. Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.