Saul Noam Zaritt, the University’s sole tenure-track Yiddish instructor, filed a grievance with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences alleging procedural irregularities in his tenure review process after Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 blocked his bid for tenure in June.

Zaritt’s tenure review committee and several of his department leaders in Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations levied similar allegations in early July, urging Garber and University Provost John F. Manning ’82 to reconsider the decision.

In an appeal letter obtained by The Crimson, they alleged that Harvard let a “field-defining” scholar go after a process riddled with deviations from usual procedures.

When Zaritt was notified of the decision, many of his colleagues were stunned. Some felt that they had never before seen a tenure candidate with so many positive peer assessments be denied tenure, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Though Zaritt wasn’t a unanimous pick — at least one professor in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department opposed giving him tenure — the outcry from his colleagues could reignite controversy over Harvard’s tenure review procedures.

The people who spoke for this article about Zaritt’s tenure process were granted anonymity to discuss the confidential proceedings. University spokesperson Jason A. Newton declined to comment on the specifics of Zaritt’s case. Zaritt also declined to comment for this article.

The denial leaves Harvard’s Yiddish studies program in a precarious place.

At Harvard, professors who are denied tenure must leave at the end of the academic year. Currently, two faculty members — Zaritt and preceptor Sara M. Feldman — teach all of Harvard’s Yiddish classes. But between Zaritt’s tenure denial and a timecap that will prevent Feldman from renewing her contract, both will be gone by the end of spring 2026.

Concerns over Zaritt and Feldman’s looming departures prompted a group of students to meet twice with Derek J. Penslar, who leads the Center for Jewish Studies, to discuss the state of Jewish studies at Harvard.

Penslar wrote in a statement that his “powers are largely limited to lobbying department chairs and FAS.”

“I have made clear that the need for a robust center for Jewish Studies is greater than ever given the turmoil this campus has experienced over the past year,” he added.

In response to a request for comment, FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote the school intends to recruit new faculty members who can teach Yiddish studies.

“We are committed to maintaining Yiddish studies, language, and literature, which are essential aspects of the study of world history and culture,” Chisholm wrote.

A Last-Minute Rejection

It’s not unusual for Harvard professors to be denied tenure.

The FAS’ job description for “Tenured Professor” states that “appointments are reserved for scholars of the first order of eminence,” emphasizing they should “have the capacity to make significant and lasting contributions to the department(s) proposing the appointment.”

Among the 200 FAS faculty who stood for tenure between the 2009-10 and 2019-20 academic years, 30 percent did not receive a promotion, according to an October 2021 report.

After an appointment passes the FAS’ internal review — as Zaritt’s did — the president decides whether to convene an ad hoc committee to gather more information on a candidate’s qualifications before issuing a final decision.

In Zaritt’s case, Garber chose to do so. And after the ad hoc committee met, Garber ultimately rejected Zaritt’s bid. It is unclear if Garber did so at the committee’s recommendation.

It is less common, though not unheard of, for faculty to see their candidacy shot down at the ad hoc stage. During the same 10-year period from 2009-10 to 2019-20, of the 163 tenure cases that were successful at both the department and FAS level, only 23 failed following an ad hoc review.

Yiddish professor Saul Noam Zaritt was denied tenure by University President Alan M. Garber '76. By Courtesy of Saul Zaritt

At least one infamous tenure controversy — Harvard’s 2019 decision not to grant tenure to Romance Languages and Literatures scholar Lorgia García Peña — resulted from a denial at the ad hoc stage. Over the years, faculty critics have blasted the confidential ad hoc process as a “black box” and a “star chamber.”

Facing backlash over García Peña’s tenure denial, then-University President Lawrence S. Bacow told The Crimson he never reversed a decision to deny tenure during his presidency.

Comparative Literature professor David Damrosch, who served on Zaritt’s tenure review committee, confirmed in an interview that Zaritt had filed a grievance with the University. Unlike the faculty letter, Zaritt’s appeal could lead to a formal investigation if the FAS Faculty Council’s docket committee chooses to take it up.

In response to the letter from Zaritt’s colleagues, Garber declined to comment on the confidential proceedings of the ad hoc committee, but didn’t indicate that he saw a need to revisit Zaritt’s candidacy.

“He asserted that they had reviewed the case with great care and felt that the procedures were appropriately followed,” Damrosch said.

Newton, the University spokesperson, wrote in his statement that though Harvard does not comment on specific tenure cases, the school handles every tenure case diligently.

“These decisions are complex and multidimensional, and at Harvard every tenure case is reviewed with great care by multiple bodies within the University,” Newton wrote.

Procedural Puzzles

Like all junior faculty positions, Zaritt’s appointment came with a ticking clock: At the end of seven years, he would go up for tenure review, a highly selective process through which Harvard decides who to grant a lifetime appointment — and who to dismiss by end of year.

So, at the conclusion of his seven years, Zaritt was nominated by both of his departments, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Comparative Literature, for tenure.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ tenure process begins at the department level. The department chairs first nominate a committee composed of tenured faculty members, at least one of whom must be from outside the department. Once the committee is approved by the divisional dean, it solicits materials from the candidates, gathers evaluations from their peers, and drafts a case statement. After reading the statement, all tenured faculty in the candidate’s department cast a vote.

Zaritt passed his Comp Lit vote with unanimous support, but the count was closer in NELC. In a secret ballot vote, five professors voted in favor, one voted against, and two abstained.

Then, each tenured faculty member in the two departments submitted a confidential letter on Zaritt’s case to FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra, who chairs the FAS’ Committee on Appointments and Promotions.

CAP, as the committee is commonly known, had access to the full vote results, but the NELC department did not share its results with the tenure review committee. So, when members of the review committee spoke before CAP, they were surprised to hear that there was any opposition to the promotion at all.

The Crimson was given an account of CAP’s discussion of Zarit’s case by two people with knowledge of the proceedings. The meeting was also described in the faculty letter to Garber and Manning that asked them to reconsider the decision after the full process had concluded.

That letter was signed by all four members of Zaritt’s review committee — Damrosch, Germanic Languages and Literature professor Alison Frank Johnson, Comparative Literature professor Martin Puchner, and Hebrew professor David M. Stern — as well as Jay M. Harris, then-interim chair of NELC; Jeffrey T. Schnapp, chair of Comp Lit; and Mariano Siskind, who is serving as interim chair of Comp Lit while Schnapp is on leave.

Of Zaritt’s department leadership, only NELC department chair Khaled El-Rouayheb, who is currently on leave, did not sign the letter.

In the appeal letter, the faculty wrote that Damrosch and Schnapp were “blindsided” during the CAP meeting and unable to effectively address concerns they had only just learned about.

“It is no wonder that a puzzled Hopi Hoekstra began the meeting by asking how the review process had been conducted,” they wrote in the letter.

However, CAP still voted to approve Zaritt’s case and send it to Garber’s desk.

Zaritt’s ad hoc meeting was run by Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Judith D. Singer, according to one person familiar with the matter. While the meetings are typically attended by at least one of the president and provost, two people familiar with the meeting said that neither Garber nor Manning were present.

Singer declined to comment on the meeting through a University spokesperson.

The signatories of the appeal letter called Garber and Manning’s absence one of several points of irregularity in the process.

“We have no way to know how the results of the Ad Hoc discussions were conveyed to you, but we are concerned that — uniquely in our experience at Harvard — the meeting was chaired neither by the Provost or the President,” they wrote.

In addition, the signatories alleged that the ad hoc committee failed to bring in NELC witnesses who were experts in Jewish studies. Instead, the committee chose to bring in “a Middle Eastern specialist who has no connection to Saul’s work or discipline,” according to the letter.

An Empty Seat

Zaritt’s departure will leave Harvard with no other tenure-track faculty members who specialize in Yiddish studies. Feldman, who teaches Yiddish language courses, will reach the end of her contract at the end of spring 2026.

Harvard could go more than a year before it finds a replacement for Zaritt. Had he been granted tenure, Zaritt likely would have received an endowed title as the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature — a position that spans the NELC and Comp Lit departments.

The existence of the endowed professorship, established in 1993, indicates that Harvard has the necessary funding to appoint another Yiddish literature specialist — but there’s no guarantee that will happen in the near future. Following the retirement of Yiddish Literature professor Ruth Wisse in 2014, two years passed until Zaritt began teaching at Harvard.

Zaritt, whose scholarship focuses on 20th-century Yiddish literature, is also one of a small group of faculty who teach in modern Jewish studies. His second book — A Taytsh Manifesto — examines how Yiddish (or “taytsh”) texts engaged with and were translated into surrounding cultural contexts.

Zaritt’s departure will thin the already-shrinking ranks of Jewish Studies at Harvard. Hebrew Literature and Philosophy professor Shaye J.D. Cohen will retire by the end of the spring 2025 semester and Stern will retire from teaching the year after.

Penslar wrote in his statement to The Crimson that he was “concerned” about the impending departures of Zaritt and Feldman.

“Losing both of them in such short order is yet another blow to CJS, which is losing many of its senior faculty to retirements,” he added.

Because Yiddish is a Germanic language, and because Zaritt’s work focuses on modern literature instead of NELC’s philological methods, some Jewish studies faculty have questioned whether NELC is the appropriate home for Harvard’s Yiddish program.

When it became clear that Zaritt’s tenure case might face headwinds, his review committee instead proposed appointing him entirely within Comparative Literature, without a joint position in NELC.

“There was a structural strangeness for Yiddish studies to be located at all in NELC, Yiddish not being a Near Eastern language — and particularly so in Yiddish literature, NELC not being primarily a literature department either,” Damrosch said.

The Dana Palmer House is home to the Department of Comparative Literature. Zaritt's appointment spanned the Comparative Literature and NELC departments. By Adeline S. Kim

Johnson, the Germanic Languages and Literature department chair who served on Zaritt’s tenure review committee, offered high praises for his work: “Speaking as myself and as the chair of the German department, I would love to have Saul Zaritt as a colleague in my department.”

Harvard Divinity School professor Annette Yoshiko Reed also said she was disappointed to see Zaritt leave — particularly because his departure means losing a scholar of Jewish culture at a moment when many of the conversations around Judaism at Harvard are political debates over Israel.

“It’s highly unfortunate that both a very popular and effective scholar teaching Yiddish literature will no longer be at Harvard,” Reed said. “Especially since we have such a rich tradition of studying Yiddish language and literature.”

“It seems at this moment it’s very important for the University to put more resources into Jewish studies in general,” she added.

‘A Gargantuan Loss’

In July, 22 of Zaritt’s students sent a letter to Hoekstra, the FAS dean, and Arts and Humanities Dean Sean D. Kelly lamenting the decision to deny him tenure.

“Losing Professor Zaritt is a gargantuan loss of educational opportunities for students who are interested in studying Yiddish culture, Yiddish art, and the history of Yiddish,” said Lauren A. Perl ’25, who took Zaritt’s seminar — Comparative Literature 166: “Jews, Humor, and the Politics of Laughter” — last spring.

“His presence was a big draw for our program. We were encouraged to work with him, and I don’t think anyone imagined he wouldn’t get tenure,” said Jess J. Mitchell, a Ph.D. candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures.

“There are a lot of people who might have chosen Harvard because they knew Saul was here and they wanted to work with him, and now they can’t,” Mitchell added.

Zaritt’s departure creates an uncertain future for his advisees, who must now find a new faculty member to oversee their work, and for students focused on Yiddish and Jewish studies.

“This year alone, we’ve had Yiddish-focused admits, which is very bizarre, because it means they were admitted to a school that no longer has Yiddish faculty,” said Raphael A. Halff, a Ph.D. student in Comp Lit.

Uri S. Schreter, a Ph.D. student of Zaritt’s who is expected to graduate this year, said the decision to let Zaritt go would make it harder for Schreter to draw on his Harvard network after graduation.

“He’s going to be there with me until I graduate. What I’m going to do going forward? I don’t really know,” Schreter said. “It’s more difficult for me to mobilize my Harvard connections moving forward when you know one of my advisers, or one of my committee members, is no longer at Harvard.”

Garry J. Nitz ’26, who took two of Zaritt’s classes, asked Zaritt to serve as his adviser for the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, a research program designed to help students from underrepresented backgrounds build their profile in humanities fields.

Nitz, who plans to write a senior thesis in Comp Lit, had hoped to ask Zaritt — one of the few Harvard scholars in the discipline who studies humor — to serve as his adviser. Zaritt’s departure left him searching for a new mentor.

“Within this generation of scholars he was one of a few people who were making the particular intervention that he was making — about humor, about who contemporary and 20th-century Jewish writers are writing to,” Nitz said.

When students met with Penslar, the Center for Jewish Studies director, to express worries about the program’s future, they felt it was difficult to get clear answers.

“Derek himself says his power is limited to his powers of annoyance,” Halff said. “He can himself annoy other people, but no one can do anything.”

“No one we’ve spoken to can actually do anything,” he added.

—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tillyrobin.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.