I’ve Stopped Caring If Harvard Protesters Are Antisemitic. They Might Be Worse.

Yesterday Harvard finally released its long-awaited report on antisemitism, but, after over a year pondering the issue myself, I was left wondering why the University had commissioned it in the first place.

Across over 300 pages, the authors treat the much-sensationalized issue of antisemitism with the scholarly nuance it deserves. But the report misses a much more fundamental point — the whole debate about antisemitism within Harvard’s pro-Palestine movement fixates on how exactly to define it. This excessive focus on semantics is symptomatic of a larger problem with our politics: We reflexively condemn reprehensible ideologies only insofar as they are racist or hateful — rather than because they’re plain wrong.

I served as Harvard Hillel president in 2023, I’ve read think piece after think piece in The Atlantic and the New York Times’ opinion section, and I’m exhausted by the constant litigation of whether anti-Israel activity is antisemitic. Some of it is, most of it isn’t, but it is definitely wrong for many other reasons.

Eschewing the more fundamental problems with pro-Palestine organizing at Harvard, the task force cites provocative findings like a survey showing one in four Jewish students feel “physically unsafe” on campus — an absurd statistic I struggle to take seriously as someone who publicly and proudly wears a kippah around campus each day.

For years now, major Jewish civil rights groups have contended that criticism of Israel frequently veers into antisemitism. In response, Israel’s critics have embraced this framing: Last school year, Harvard Jews For Palestine demanded the University declare that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, as if such a distinction would absolve them of moral scrutiny.

Harvard’s decision to create an antisemitism task force stems from this misplaced discourse, which treats pro-Palestine protests as threatening merely because of their tendency to devolve into antisemitism. And while it is certainly true that there is some correlation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism — and that Harvard’s pro-Palestine movement has persistently proven capable of succumbing to despicably hateful beliefs — this characterization of pro-Palestine organizing misses half the story.

Take the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee’s infamous statement blaming Israel for the slaughter of its own people. Was the statement offensive? Surely. Did it reveal an astonishing misunderstanding of the conflict? I would say so. Did it fundamentally change how I see my classmates and make me seriously question their moral compasses? Most definitely.

But was it antisemitic? I suppose one could argue that it was — it did, after all, betray a disgraceful disregard for Jewish life. But to me that argument seems tenuous. Instead I content myself with calling the statement what it was: a stunningly shameful act for which, to my knowledge, no one in Harvard’s pro-Palestine coalition has apologized to this day.

A similar case can be made about chants like “globalize the Intifada” — an insensitive refrain protesters have used repeatedly despite the violent history it invokes. While not directly antisemitic on its face, the chant apparently references two previous waves of violence in which Palestinians killed hundreds of Israelis, including civilians. By calling for the Intifada’s globalization, protesters appear to be glorifying massacres and can reasonably be interpreted as threatening to unleash worldwide violence.

This argument extends to anti-Zionist ideology as a whole. While anti-Zionism may or may not be antisemitic depending on how you define your terms, there is a whole host of separate reasons for which one could object to anti-Zionism nonetheless.

For religiously literate observant Jews like myself — who chant the liturgical refrain “next year in Jerusalem” every Yom Kippur and Passover and have studied the Mishnaic tractates regulating agricultural practices in the Land of Israel — anti-Zionist ideology attacks a fundamental Jewish ideal and ignores the many religious commandments that can only be fulfilled in Israel.

Beyond Israel’s religious significance, there are many other sensible objections to anti-Zionist ideology. For one, its adherents too often neglect Jewish historical connections to the land. More disturbingly, they ignore the fate of nearly half the global Jewish population living in Israel, who would likely face persecution under any other regional power. Indeed, a plurality of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi, meaning of North African or Middle Eastern descent — many of whom hail from families that fled to Israel to escape intolerant regimes.

If we define antisemitism as animus towards or discrimination against Jews, these objections to anti-Zionism don’t directly imply that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. But anti-Zionism can still be deeply wrong without being antisemitic.

There is a reason Harvard created twin task forces on antisemitism and Islamophobia — not a “Task Force on Callous Statements Disregarding Human Life,” or a “Task Force on Violent Protest Chants,” or a “Task Force on Stupid Political Ideologies That Could Open Up Millions of People to Religious Persecution.” It’s because we as a society have agreed identity-based discrimination is morally wrong, but have struggled to reach a consensus that any other way of thinking is unethical.

My point is not that Harvard should actually set up task forces to investigate all the different failings of Harvard’s Pro-Palestine coalition, or even to convince you that their other actions deserve the same level of condemnation as outright identity-based hatred. It’s that our national politics, which rightly protects identity groups from prejudice but hasn’t adequately articulated other moral wrongs, has created a twisted incentive structure — one in which Jews on campus feel compelled to characterize certain behaviors as antisemitic because they know that is the one sin campus will surely condemn.

In reality, opposition to pro-Palestine organizing at Harvard should be based on more than its antisemitism. Our excoriation of the movement should be based on protesters’ simplistic thinking, extremist rhetoric, implicit justification and support of violence, and denial of Jewish religious teaching and history.

But as long as we continue believing that group-based prejudice is a singular moral sin — that Harvard’s antisemitism task force is the sole body capable of pronouncing moral judgments on pro-Palestine organizing at Harvard — we will be locked into a semantic debate about antisemitism entirely missing the numerous other issues at play.

Antisemitic or not, the pro-Palestine movement’s vision for Israel would be a travesty for Jews. It’s high time we abandon the talking points about double standards and defend the principle of a Jewish state on its own terms.

Jacob M. Miller ’25, a former Crimson Editorial chair, is a double concentrator in Mathematics and Economics in Lowell House. He served as Harvard Hillel president in 2023.