At the end of January, 70 university presidents gathered together to discuss the crisis at Harvard.
Summit organizers cast the university, battered by accusations of condoning anti-Semitism, as a business school case study in higher education leadership, with a slide presentation of its plummeting reputation.
Killer slide: “Boeing and Tesla’s negative reviews are similar to Harvard’s.”
In other words, Harvard, a centuries-old symbol of academic excellence, attracts as much negative attention as an airplane manufacturer with door panels falling from the sky and a car company with a erratic CEO and multiple recalls.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, organized the summit. “Despite being nearly 400 years old, the value of brand equity is far less permanent than the Harvard board thinks,” he said in an interview. “There used to be a term in the industry called the Cadillac of the industry. Well, you know , unfortunately, Cadillac itself is no longer the Cadillac of the industry.”
Many presidents who participated in the summit believed that the erosion of Harvard’s brand was not only a problem for the school, but also for the entire higher education industry. If Harvard can’t protect itself, what about every other institution? Can Harvard leadership find an effective response?
In a sign of Harvard’s more assertive approach, the university announced on Monday that it was investigating “highly offensive anti-Semitic comments” posted on social media by pro-Palestinian student and faculty groups. The groups posted or retweeted material containing old cartoons of the Puppeteer, his hand marked with a dollar sign inside a Star of David, Lynchings of Muhammad Ali and Gamal Abdul Nasser.
Harvard’s action comes as the House Education and Workforce Committee has begun a review of its record on anti-Semitism. On Friday, the committee issued subpoenas to Harvard University’s interim president, the chair of the school’s Board of Governors and an investment manager in a broad search for documents related to the school’s handling of allegations of anti-Semitism on campus. The threat of subpoenas led PEN America, a writers group that defends academic freedom, to issue a warning against fishing expeditions.
There are also lawsuits against Harvard University, calling the university a “bastion of rampant anti-Semitic hatred and harassment,” and a federal investigation into allegations that the university ignored anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus.
Corporate executives and major donors, including hedge fund executive Ken Griffin, have threatened to withhold funds and not hire Harvard students who defended Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Right-wing media outlets and anonymous researchers continue to level plagiarism accusations against university officials as part of an attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
There is already evidence of the reputational damage: The number of students applying for early admission to Harvard fell 17% this year. Other Ivy League schools have also seen increases.
Randall Kennedy, a Harvard law professor, said the attacks were “clearly unsettling to Harvard’s top leadership.” “They weakened morale. It was a very effective attack.”
Inside Harvard, faculty, staff and students are looking to university officials, including its main board of trustees, the Harvard Corporation, for some signals about its future direction.
In an interview with Harvard magazine last week, the school’s interim president, Alan Garber, outlined some efforts to ease tensions, including enforcing rules against disruptive demonstrations and holding a series of events designed to encourage interaction between students and faculty. dialogue rather than conflict.
Novelist Dara Horn says these are good moves. Darla Horn served on a committee last year advising the president of Harvard University on how to combat anti-Semitism. She observed that many students did not interact with people who disagreed with them and did not know how to interact with them.
“This attitude is the end of education,” said Dr. Horn, who wrote an article in The Atlantic about her experience at Harvard. “To me, that’s kind of like a baseline.”
Alex Bernat, a junior at Harvard and a board member of Chabad, a Jewish student organization, said Tuesday that the school’s swift response to this week’s anti-Semitic posts was a good sign. But he worries about the influence some members of pro-Palestinian faculty groups who forward anti-Semitic material have over the academic careers of Jewish and Israeli students.
The group that posted the material removed it on Monday and said their apparent support for anti-Semitic imagery was unintentional.
Even so, Harvard Corporation has been relatively quiet, except to confirm that its leader, philanthropist and former Obama administration official Penny Pritzker, will stay on and pursue a new presidential campaign, just as she led the selection of her predecessor. The selection is the same. President Claudine Gay.
The company has drawn criticism for its selection and support of Dr. Gay. Dr. Gay resigned on January 2 after causing an uproar after testifying to Congress that calling for genocide of Jews did not necessarily violate Harvard’s code of conduct, which is subject to Harvard’s code of conduct. context.
As one outspoken psychology professor, Steven Pinker, said in an interview, the company has been criticized for not moving faster to address the problem, “leaving the university to twist in the wind.” “. (He was quick to point out that he was not calling for Dr. Gay to step down.)
Still, some faculty believe the university may have gone too far in appeasing critics.
At a congressional hearing in December that doomed Dr. Guy, North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx singled out a Harvard course, “Race and Racism in America’s Becoming a Global Power,” as a An example of “American Ideology.” Work. “
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a teacher in the course, which includes readings on the history of anti-Semitism in the United States, called the accusation “ridiculous.” He said he was concerned that new rules of conduct passed in September banning discrimination based on “political beliefs” would lead to complaints from students if, like Dr Fox, they objected to the content of his courses.
He said “prominent black people at this university have real reason to worry” that their credentials will be questioned.
In an atmosphere filled with worry, good intentions can sometimes lead to problems.
Harvard University’s decision to create a task force on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia on campus — usually the most analgesic institutional response — ran into trouble in late January when prominent Jewish studies scholar Derek Penslar (Derek Penslar) appointed co-chair of the Anti-Semitism Task Force.
Critics opposed his appointment, citing an open letter signed by Dr Penslar and other academics and published before the October 7 attack, accusing Israel of being an “apartheid regime”. His comments were quoted in the Jewish press and critics scoffed, saying the extent of anti-Semitism at Harvard was exaggerated.
David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi and visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, said Harvard’s failure to anticipate the questions surrounding Dr. Pensra’s appointment showed that Harvard’s leadership was too insular.
“The university could not foresee how it would be viewed, and this clumsy behavior frustrated many Jewish students and faculty,” Rabbi Volpe said.
Dr. Pensla, who remains co-chair of the task force, declined to comment for this article. His supporters were outraged by what they saw as flippant criticism of a respected academic.
“For him to be externally dismissed for expressing his views — especially given that those views are quite mainstream — is a very, very big deal,” said Steven Levitsky, a professor of Latin American studies and government at Harvard University. Bad precedent.” Dr. Levitsky said that contrary to his public image, Dr. Pensla was “a self-proclaimed Zionist.”
Some alumni are trying to change that. Several independent candidates have launched campaigns for seats on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the school’s second governing body. The candidates failed to collect enough petition signatures to get on the ballot but vowed to keep pushing.
One of the candidates, venture capitalist Sam Lessin, a 2005 Harvard graduate, said the election process itself exposed leadership issues.
He said Harvard’s governance system is “almost like a peacetime organization” and is not suitable for fishing in troubled waters. Candidates for the Board of Supervisors are typically nominated through the Alumni Association, and the position is often viewed as an “honorable reward for promoters.”
Some faculty members are also organizing. About 170 Harvard professors have joined the Council on Academic Freedom, which Dr. Pinker co-founded last spring to fight what he calls an “intellectual monoculture.”
Dr. Pinker believes that some of the pain of recent months might have been avoided if Harvard had adopted a policy of institutional neutrality and not taken a stance on today’s thorny issues.
“Universities should break the habit of giving mini-sermons every time an event is reported in the news,” he said.
Dr. Pinker has a naughty hobby of collecting headlines and cartoons that poke fun at Harvard’s reputational problems. His collection of bumper stickers reads: “My son didn’t go to Harvard.”
Still, Dr. Pinker said, Harvard “still has the brand, it still has the legacy.” “Whether it will get back on track, I don’t know. I doubt it will.”
Stephanie Saul Contributed reporting. Sheila McNeil Contributed research.