Anti-Divestment Drive Gains Steam

Over 300 professors have signed a petition calling for the University to publicly state that it will not divest from Israel, as a group of faculty, students and staff have demanded.

Although the University has not issued a statement of its position, President Lawrence H. Summers has indicated that he opposes divestment from Israel.

Harvard should not use divestment to involve itself in the controversy in the Middle East, Summers said at a Dunster House study break last Wednesday night.

A view in support of divestment “is one I would hope and trust will not be a majority view within our community,” Summers said.

Summers’ statement came after 65 Harvard faculty members, including two House masters, signed a petition that called on Harvard and MIT to sell-off an estimated $614 million in investments in companies that do business in Israel.

The anti-divestment petition calls these demands “a one-sided attempt to delegitimize Israel” that ignores Israel’s right to respond to terrorist attacks.

“Reasonable people should work for a peacefully negotiated solution, and not single out Israel for partisan attack,” the petition reads.

While no particular group sponsored the petition, Harvard Hillel has endorsed it and has promoted it in e-mails sent by Hillel’s Executive Director Bernard Steinberg.

Yesterday, Steinberg echoed the petition’s sentiments, calling the movement for divestment offensive.

“The divestment petition is in intent and content demeaning to us as Jews,” Steinberg said. “That is particularly disturbing in the context of a resurgence of anti-semitism globally and even here at Harvard.”

Steinberg said the petition was an attempt to undermine the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. He also called the petition’s content “arguably anti-semitic.”

Opponents of divestment also said that by calling for divestment faculty had deeply offended students.

Hillel President Benjamin P. Solomon-Schwartz ’03, said that by signing the pro-divestment petition, Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson and Currier House Master William A. Graham had created an uncomfortable atmosphere for House residents.

Supporting divestment “is not just expressing a political view, it is expressing a political view in a way that really makes students who support Israel deeply uncomfortable,” said Solomon-Schwartz, who is also a Crimson editor.

House masters have the right to express their opinions, Steinberg said.

But he and others questioned the masters’ wisdom in signing a petition that created “an atmosphere of suspicion and discomfort in their Houses.”

At last week’s study break, Summers stressed the need for the University to be supportive of the Masters’ rights to free speech.

“I think a community like this one has to bend over backwards to be prepared to support the value of free speech and to recognize that individuals will hold views that will be disturbing and troubling to others,” Summers said.

But speaking personally, Summers said he understood students’ discomfort.

“The suggestion that defense against terrorist attacks is inherently immoral seems to me to be an unsupportable one,” Summers said. “It would be one I would be acutely uncomfortable with.”

Najeeb N. Khoury, a Harvard Law student who helped organize the pro-divestment petition, defended the campaign’s motives.

“This campaign is clear that it is anti-occupation, not anti-semitic,” Khoury said. “There’s no reason why any individual who is Jewish or a supporter of Israel should be offended by this campaign.”

Khoury also responded to the criticism that the divestment petition did not mention peace as its central goal.

“I think we feel that it’s self-evident that peace will come with the end of occupation,” Khoury said.

The pro-divestment petition can be read online at www.harvardmitdivest.org. The anti-divestment petition can be found at www.harvardmitjustice.org.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.