Tucked away at the end of a corridor on the second floor of Harvard’s Divinity Hall, the offices of the Religion and Public Life program are usually quiet — a quietness that belies their position at the center of a highly public controversy that, in just a few short years, has threatened to consume it entirely.

Launched in 2020 as part of an effort by the Harvard Divinity School to improve public understanding of religion, RPL has, over the past two years, become embroiled in a broad and often acrimonious debate over the University’s curriculum on Israel and Palestine. Criticism of the program has been repeatedly used as justification for the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard, which culminated in the freeze of billions of dollars in federal research funding.

The program has been targeted in a lawsuit accusing Harvard of permitting antisemitism on campus and an early list of demands that the Trump administration considered imposing on Harvard.

It also faced criticism in a report by Harvard’s internal task force on combating antisemitism, which deemed RPL “a focal point for concerns about one-sidedness and the promotion of a specific political ideology under the guise of academic inquiry.”

But RPL’s own faculty say that it is the critics of the program that are practicing intolerance as they seek to police pro-Palestine speech.

Atalia Omer, a former visiting professor affiliated with the RPL program, described the criticism as “anti-intellectual,” calling it an attempt to define “who is an acceptable Jew and who is not an acceptable Jew in this space of Palestine-Israel studies.”

Harvard, it seems, has chosen a side in the debate. Even as it proclaimed its defiance of demands from the Trump administration, the University dismantled a core initiative within RPL and forced out its leaders and staff. (Its body of faculty advisers remains largely intact.)

Now, RPL — along with a research partnership with a Palestinian university, the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and Harvard’s diversity offices — stands as one of the casualties of a political backlash that has pushed the University to cut disputed programs.

RPL’s associate dean, Diane L. Moore, resigned abruptly at the end of January — almost a semester before she planned to retire. Moore’s assistant dean left a day later, accusing Harvard of interfering with RPL and betraying the program in the face of public criticism. An associate director within RPL, the Palestinian scholar Hilary Rantisi, was told in late March that her contract would not be renewed.

A week later, facing the loss of a major donor, the Divinity School suspended the program Rantisi led: the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, which focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Harvard would use the pause to “rethink its focus and reimagine its future,” HDS wrote in an announcement.

On June 2, the Divinity School put all five of RPL’s remaining staff on notice. The school terminated contracts belonging to three of the program’s staff. Only two staff members remain as employees of the program, and both are on short-term contracts.

‘The First To Go’

The public backlash against RPL erupted in October 2023 when a number of its faculty put out a letter asking Divinity School affiliates to “challenge single story narratives that justify vengeance and retaliation” shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

That letter sparked outrage and pushed the school’s interim dean, David F. Holland, to put out a statement distancing HDS from the program.

The next semester, Omer — a University of Notre Dame faculty member who was one of the letter’s signatories — was informed that her contract as a visiting scholar would not be renewed for the following year.

“I was informed that there was basically a directive from Central to not renew me,” Omer said, “so I was the first to go.”

Spokespeople for Harvard did not respond to a request for comment on Omer’s contract. A spokesperson for the Divinity School declined to comment, citing a policy against statements on faculty contracts.

Even earlier, in 2018, Omer was denied tenure at HDS despite widespread support from fellow faculty. Two members of the search committee that reviewed her tenure bid emailed her afterward to say they were shocked by the denial, which was handed down by then-Provost Alan M. Garber ’76. Both indicated that they suspected the denial was motivated by Omer’s political beliefs, though neither had seen anything to confirm that was the case.

Omer likewise has not seen evidence that directly suggests she was denied tenure or lost her fellowship because of her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. But she was just the first RPL faculty member to be pushed out or step down as criticism of the program continued.

Moore, who had led RPL since its founding in 2020, and Assistant Dean Hussein Rashid both left in January.

Then, just prior to the March announcement that the RCPI would be placed on an indefinite pause, Rantisi, its associate director, was informed that her contract with the University would not be renewed.

“I wasn’t surprised or shocked,” Rantisi said, pointing to several other high-profile changes within the University, such as the decision to fire the directors of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“It was as if they were all rushing to get all of these things done within that week before Trump sent his letter,” she added, referring to an extensive list of demands sent by the Trump administration to Harvard in April.

A spokesperson for the Divinity School declined to comment on Rantisi’s dismissal.

And as Harvard weighs how to move forward in its ongoing conflict with the Trump administration — which has resulted in the loss of over $2 billion in federal funding, in addition to threats to the status of Harvard’s international students — its overhaul of RPL has continued.

In June, several of the program’s remaining staff members were called one by one into meetings with Holland, now HDS’s associate dean for faculty and academic affairs, and informed that their contracts — which end June 30 — would not be renewed, according to Omer.

In a statement sent to The Crimson by HDS spokesperson Tyler Sprouse and signed only “HDS leadership,” the school cited financial constraints along with other concerns as the reason for the changes.

“The Religion and Public Life program is being integrated more fully within the Harvard Divinity School’s broader administrative structure and programmatic offerings,” the statement read. “With this transition, three term-limited appointments for the Religion and Public Life (RPL) program will not be renewed when those terms conclude on June 30. HDS leadership is grateful to these colleagues for their dedication and contributions to the program.”

But the cutbacks to RPL have also been driven by the loss of a major donor who backed the RCPI program.

In March, when the suspension was first announced, HDS administrators wrote in an online update that the changes “coincide with long- and short-term budgetary issues related to RCPI’s loss of financial support and additional reductions to the School’s budget that will take effect next fiscal year.”

RCPI received significant funding from a single primary donor, who ended their commitment to supporting the program following Moore’s retirement, according to Rantisi.

“I can say that they were committed to supporting the program and work, and funds could have supported the program for an additional two years,” Rantisi wrote in an email, “but all changed when HDS leadership removed Associate Dean Diane Moore from her position.”

Rantisi declined to identify the donor to The Crimson.

When RCPI was founded, it was funded by private equity fund manager Ramez Sousou ’85 and his wife, philanthropist Tiziana Sousou. The Sousous did not respond to multiple inquiries, and The Crimson was unable to determine how much they contributed and whether they had recently pulled funding.

By Joshua A. Ng

A Program Under Fire

In fall 2021, an Israeli student named Nitsan Plitman enrolled in an RPL course on Israel and Palestine. Three years later, she wrote in an op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz — part of which was later translated from Hebrew into English and published in Harvard’s antisemitism task force report — that she had felt alienated in the course.

Plitman alleged that the lecturer who taught it told students that she had removed Israeli sources from the syllabus and would “focus solely on Palestinian literature because power disparities, methodology, and conscience demand it.”

“As we progressed in the lessons, my classmates’ antipathy toward me, the sole Israeli in the course, intensified,” Plitman wrote. “And who could blame them?”

In a lawsuit claiming Harvard had permitted campus antisemitism, Harvard Divinity School graduate Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum argued that RPL had rewarded antisemitism by recognizing a photo of graffiti at a refugee camp near Bethlehem in its 2023 student photo competition. Taken by an HDS student, the photo showed caricatures of a Palestinian man holding an empty bucket while an Israeli man hoards water from three faucets.

The Israeli man in the drawing has an elongated nose and a Star of David on his shirt. Kestenbaum alleged that it played into stereotypes of Jews as greedy — and that RPL, by recognizing the image, had promoted hate.

“Both the program and its leaders seem to be consumed, absolutely consumed with the slandering of Israel,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the president of Harvard Chabad, said in an interview. Zarchi has repeatedly called for RPL’s dismantling.

But it is RCPI, a subprogram of RPL, that has become a particular target of criticism due to its decision to focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict as a case study.

Pressure on RPL to reform intensified after Harvard’s task forces on combating bias towards Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates released their twin reports in April.

Both RPL and RCPI were cited extensively across the reports. The report on combating anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias raised concerns about the recent leadership changes within the program, referencing Rashid’s accusations of bias within the University.

And the report on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias devoted nearly 10 pages of criticism to the programs. The report argued that RPL is overly focused on the Israel and Palestine conflict, and has faced consistent accusations of one-sidedness and bias.

“This narrow focus on this exceptionally polarizing topic appears to have stemmed from the decision, made soon after RPL’s founding, to center its programming around a multi-year case study on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the report’s authors wrote.

They added, “This disconnect between the apparent mission and the actual implementation is a central concern addressed below.”

When asked for comment, Sprouse, the HDS spokesperson, pointed to Dean Marla F. Frederick’s official statement on the task force reports, in which she commits the school to combating all forms of bias and hate — including by conducting an independent review of the Religion and Public Life Program.

Harvard Divinity School dean Marla F. Frederick announced she would tap a committee of external scholars to review the Religion and Public Life program. By Jina H. Choe

The Trump administration, which has said its campaign of punishment against Harvard is justified by persistent antisemitism at the University, applauded the dismantling of RCPI in a memo sent to Harvard’s lawyers on April 3.

But HDS senior lecturer Dan P. McKanan ’89, who is not directly affiliated with the program, challenged the view of RPL presented in the report and by critics.

“The suggestion that all of the other activities of the RPL program are insignificant compared to their programming on Israel-Palestine, that just does not mesh with my lived experience, or the lived experience of the students involved in RPL that I’ve had conversations with,” he said.

Omer argues that by focusing primarily on RCPI, the report is misleading and offers a limited view of RPL and its offerings.

“It also reflects kind of the confusion between RPL, Religion Public Life, and RCPI, the Religion Conflict and Peace Initiative,” she said.

“They are used interchangeably, which is false. It’s not the same program. One is a part of the other. RPL is much larger than RCPI,” she added.

‘A New Vision’

When RPL was launched in 2020, the Divinity School lauded it as a major step toward connecting religious education with real-world issues — not as a blemish on the school’s public image.

“It represents a new vision for the role and mission of our School that will truly shape our character and trajectory both in the years to come as well as in our tumultuous present,” then-Dean David N. Hempton wrote in a statement to the school’s website.

From its inception, RPL was guided by the vision of Moore, whose Religious Literacy Project helped form the basis of what would become RPL.

Launched in 2015 under Moore’s leadership and based in her own scholarship on religious literacy, the Religious Literacy Project aimed to advance public understanding of religion. That program ended when HDS announced the inception of RPL, which integrated the Religious Literacy Project with the pre-existing RCPI, founded in 2018, as well as several other HDS programs.

While RCPI had used Israel and Palestine as its case study essentially since its founding, there is no official case study for the overall RPL program.

In addition to RCPI, RPL houses a second initiative, which is focused on religious literacy in sectors like K-12 education, public health, journalism, and entertainment media.

It also offers a Certificate in Religion and Public Life for Master of Divinity and Master of Theological Studies students, as well as its own Master of Religion and Public Life degree — which, when it was announced, was the first new degree program to be offered at the Divinity School in 50 years.

A one-year degree program aimed at experienced professionals, primarily those working in traditionally non-religious areas, the MRPL program has drawn national attention for its track record of bringing celebrities to study at Harvard. Best-selling author Alice Hoffman and singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers are both MRPL alumni.

“Having that in the classroom is incredibly meaningful,” said HDS professor Annette Yoshiko Reed, who is not affiliated with RPL but teaches a required introductory course that draws many students in the program. “Both their specific talents, which are substantial, and then the perspectives they bring.”

Both the certificate and the MRPL focus on applying the study of religion to areas beyond academia and in the public sphere — which many students in the program say is what drew them to HDS in the first place.

“One of the reasons I came to Divinity School specifically was because of this program,” said Elom K. Tettey-Tamaklo, who graduated with an RPL certificate this year. “I’ve seen the kind of work they were doing, the kind of people and the thinkers they were turning out.”

But those same students are now facing uncertainty in their academic future. RPL will continue in the fall under the leadership of incoming director Terrence L. Johnson, a professor of African American Religious Studies, who declined to comment for this article.

HDS has confirmed that certain programs, such as the certificate and master’s degree, will continue. But it is unclear how long the pause on RCPI, which remains in effect, will last — or how much of Moore’s original vision for RPL will remain under the new leadership.

In an official statement on the program, HDS leadership wrote, “Harvard Divinity School remains committed to advancing the public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace.”

By McKenna E. McKrell

A Sense of Loss

Some students and faculty affiliated with RPL see the changes less as a reevaluation and more as a total deconstruction. Carolyn D. Jones, a Divinity School student who is currently pursuing the RPL certificate, wrote in an email that she came to HDS to study how religion shapes the world.

“The dissolution of RPL shows a major lapse in this commitment, and a refusal to look the major questions of the world, and certainly the major questions of this moment, in the eye,” Carolyn Jones, currently pursuing the certificate, wrote in an emailed statement.

The suspension of RCPI in March brought wide outcry from students and alumni who pointed to its importance in shaping their careers at HDS, and challenged critics’ portrayal of the program as biased or one-sided — a sentiment echoed by other HDS students.

“Contrary to popular opinion or what people have said or written about the program as being myopic or one-sided, what this program did is that it exposed me to a variety of thinking, even some I disagreed with,” said Tettey-Tamaklo, who has been enmeshed in a controversy of his own over an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest.

A. Perlei Toor, a master of divinity student in RPL’s certificate program, said that she was mourning the loss of a program that she saw as fundamental to her time at Harvard.

“I just experienced a deep sense of grief and loss for potential future classes that might not be able to have the same experience that I have,” she said. “As I said, RPL has been an emotional and spiritual home for so many at HDS.”

And according to students affiliated with RPL, the majority of the changes to the program were carried out with minimal communication from administration.

“Generally, the communication has been opaque — has been deliberately, deliberately opaque,” Tettey-Tamaklo said.

“The administration has said close to nothing and has given us almost no information about why this is being done, about who is involved in this and about how it affects students,” he said.

Tettey-Tamaklo added that students were not informed directly about the non-renewal of the remaining RPL staff, and instead found out after a letter from Frederick announcing the decision to faculty and staff was leaked.

A spokesperson for the University confirmed that Frederick sent out a letter announcing the decision on June 3. He added that information on the terminations was also provided in an internal newsletter sent out to affiliates on June 25.

McKanan said he saw concern among Divinity School alums about the changes to RPL at a conference he attended in June, even as Harvard’s broader alumni base has cheered the University’s public defiance of Trump’s demands.

“Non-alums have only heard the good news about Harvard’s resistance to Trump,” he said, but added that “a lot of Divinity School alums are quite aware of the complexity and concern.”

Some program affiliates see Harvard’s dismantling of the program as not only a personal loss, but a failing on the part of the University.

“As someone for whom religion and public life is what I study, I don’t know how to reconcile my future academic experience with this disregard,” Jones wrote.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at sebastian.connolly@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X at @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Julia A. Karabolli can be reached at julia.karabolli@thecrimson.com.