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Harvard University Announces New ‘Institutional Neutrality’ Policy, Vowing to Stay Out of Politics
Graduating students rise in support of 13 students not able to graduate because of their participation in pro-Palestinian protests during the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 23, 2024. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University has announced that will no longer take sides in polarizing political debates, a decision which follows months of condemnation from Harvard students and faculty of Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories and its war to eradicate Hamas.
The policy, described as “institutional neutrality,” is the final recommendation of a report issued by a faculty group which interim president Alan M. Garber convened to study whether Harvard “should use its official voice to address matters of social and political significance.” According to The Harvard Crimson, Garber, as well as the Harvard Corporation, has embraced it.
“The university and its leaders should not, however, issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function,” the report says, citing reasons which crystallized the group’s consensus and outlining its expectations of high-level, non-faculty, Harvard officials.
“Faculty members, speaking for themselves, have expertise in the respective domains of knowledge, and they may often speak about what they know. In so doing, however, they do not speak for the university,” it continues. “The university’s leaders are hired for their skill in leading an in institution of higher education, not their expertise in public affairs. When speaking in their official roles, therefore, they should restrict themselves to matters within their area of institutional expertise and responsibility: the running of a university.”
The report also argues that Harvard’s “integrity and credibility” are “compromised” when it privileges one point of view over another and that doing so sometimes offends groups it aims to “comfort.” Moreover, it emphasized that Harvard’s business is education, not politics.
“If the university and its leaders become accustomed to issuing official statements about matters beyond the core function of the university, they will inevitably come under intense pressure to do so from multiple, competing sides on nearly every imaginable issue of the day,” it continues. “The university is not a government, tasked with engaging the full range of foreign and domestic policy issues, and its leaders are not, and must not be, selected for their personal political beliefs.”
The landmark report comes two weeks after interim president Alan Garber cut a deal with a student anti-Zionist group which ended a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that had been erected at Harvard Yard. While Harvard made some concessions, including promising the group a meeting with the Harvard Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility to discuss the possibility of divestment from companies linked to Israel and factoring mitigating circumstances into disciplinary decisions rendered in cases brought against students who illegally occupied school property, it refused to adopt a boycott of Israel as a condition of the students’ going home for the summer.
Harvard struggled in its responses to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on October 7, a wavering critics have attributed to left-wing bias among Harvard leaders. The school, led at the time by a president who later resigned after being outed as a serial plagiarist, was allegedly late in condemning the terrorist group’s atrocities and it became a newfound defender of unbridled free speech — an idea championed by conservative academics and intellectuals at a time when elite universities allegedly took steps to squelch free speech — when over two dozen groups issued a statement blaming Israel for the violence.
It is not clear how “institutional neutrality” will bear on the welfare Harvard’s Jewish students, who, a recently filed lawsuit alleges, have been victims of and witnesses to vicious incidents of antisemitism.
In the hours after the events of October 7, 31 student groups at Harvard issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza. Later, students stormed academic buildings chanting “globalize the intifada,” a mob followed and surrounded a Jewish graduate student, screaming “Shame! Shame! Shame!” into his ears, and the Harvard Law School student government passed a resolution that falsely accused Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In December, former Harvard president Claudine Gay told a US congressional committee that calling for a genocide of Jews living in Israel would only violate school rules “depending on the context.” In February, Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine — a spinoff of a student group allegedly linked to terrorist organizations — shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media which showed a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, containing a dollar sign at its center, dangling a Black man and an Arab man from a noose. The group’s former leader, history professor Walter Johnson, later participated in a “Gaza encampment” protest in which students clamored for a boycott of Israel.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard University Announces New ‘Institutional Neutrality’ Policy, Vowing to Stay Out of Politics first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Our Report Shows How Support for Palestinian Terrorism Has Spread on College Campuses
Protesters march against the ICE detention of Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, during a protest near Arizona State University (ASU) in Phoenix, Arizona, US, March 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Noble
On June 14, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) posted the following on Instagram:
National SJP condemns the Zionist, US-backed attacks on Iran. The Zionist entity has been attempting to ignite a regional war since the day the genocide began […]. Israel’s actions are those of a colonial project that knows its time has come to a close—the world wants Israel to be dismantled, and for Palestine to be free.
This is not fringe rhetoric. NSJP is one of the most prominent anti-Israel student organizations in the United States, and groups like it — some with documented links to extremist and even terrorist organizations — are not just influencing but organizing a growing share of anti-Israel activism on US campuses. As our recent research shows, these networks are coordinated, ideological, and increasingly radical.
In our Anti-Israel Campus Groups: Online Networks and Narratives report, my research team and I analyzed 76,000 Instagram posts, reviewed nearly 10,000 antisemitic incidents, and mapped more than 1,000 anti-Israel campus groups.
What we found was sobering: pro-Hamas and pro-Iranian rhetoric has become normalized in some campus protest spaces. These are not simply students speaking out against a government — they’re echoing propaganda from internationally recognized terrorist organizations.
How did we get here? How did so many students adopt such extreme views so quickly? The answer lies partly in social media — and partly in the silence of campus leadership.
Back in early 2024 — months before campus encampments against Israel dominated national headlines — students in my Social Media & Hate Research Lab flagged several troubling posts from pro-Palestinian student groups. These weren’t calls for peace or for a two-state solution. They were open endorsements of Hamas, a group responsible for mass murder, rape, and kidnapping.
I was skeptical at first. I had spoken with some of these activists a few weeks and months earlier; they seemed reasonable — even critical of Hamas in private. But the posts were public and unambiguous: “Glory to Hamas.” “Hamas is morally superior to Israel.”
These posts were not buried in the dark corners of the internet. They were posted by prominent student leaders, easily accessible on platforms like X and Instagram. When a compilation of these posts was circulated publicly, the response from university officials was telling: silence.
I attempted to engage students directly. Some couldn’t explain the slogans on their own signs. One read, “IUPD, KKK, IOF, all the same.” The students holding it had no idea what “IOF” meant — a derogatory term for the Israeli Defense Forces. Others shut down any conversation altogether. “We don’t talk to Zionists,” one organizer told me.
So I did what professors do: I started researching.
We found that some of the most radical posts by anti-Israel groups on social media had become also some of the most popular ones.
The most widely shared post we found was published on October 8, 2023 — one day after the Hamas attacks in Israel. It came from a group called SUPER at the University of Washington. While Hamas militants were still actively killing civilians, SUPER posted a statement endorsing “the right of Palestinians to resist,” without qualification. SUPER has since doubled down and become more extremist. In May, they helped lead the occupation of the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building at the University of Washington in Seattle. Their June 6 “Right to Resist Teach-In” featured a promotional image depicting a Hamas-seized IDF tank flying the Palestinian flag — the same image used on the cover of the Hamas propaganda booklet Our Narrative…
This pattern isn’t limited to one group. NSJP, the same group that posted the call to dismantle Israel and siding with Iran, acts as a strategic and narrative hub. On October 8, 2023, NSJP published a toolkit celebrating the Hamas attacks as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” along with templates and talking points for organizing campus protests.
Off-campus groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement, which has documented ties to the PFLP, also play a key role. So do radical left-wing organizations and foreign actors aligned with Iran. The rhetoric often avoids explicitly calling for violence against Jews. Instead, it adopts the language of resistance and decolonization — terms that mask the underlying glorification of armed struggle.
And yet, many Jewish students know exactly what it means. After the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the Tariq El-Tahrir Youth and Student Network called the killings “a legitimate act of resistance.” The rhetoric is escalating and can lead to violence, even if it’s only a fringe part of the students who are protesting.
The data supports what many Jewish students have long felt: antisemitism rises alongside anti-Israel activism.
Universities with more anti-Israel groups report significantly higher numbers of antisemitic incidents. The correlation is strong, and it’s growing with the number of anti-Israel groups that can establish an anti-Zionist climate on campus that effectively targets Jews.
This isn’t protest in the traditional sense. It’s propaganda, often shaped by off-campus entities and disseminated through social media with strategic precision. Faculty members and graduate student unions often lend moral cover. Dissent is increasingly treated not as dialogue but as betrayal. And pro-Hamas rhetoric is ignored and pretended to be non-existent on campus.
When I gave a talk in May entitled, “In the Mind of a Pro-Hamas Student,” backlash followed swiftly. Complaints were filed, letters written, and pressure applied — not to engage with the argument, but to silence it.
But we can’t afford to pretend. We can’t pretend that celebrating Hamas isn’t happening on our campuses. Or that slogans like “resistance by any means” are merely poetic. Or that calls to “globalize the Intifada” are harmless slogans.
Pretending comes at a cost. It threatens the safety of Jewish students. It erodes the academic values of open inquiry and honest debate. And it undermines our ability to distinguish justice from its dangerous imitations.
We don’t need to agree on everything about Israel and the Palestinians. But we should be able to agree on this: a campus culture that tolerates — or worse, celebrates — terrorism is not one that fosters justice. It is one that fails everyone.
Günther Jikeli holds the Erna B. Rosenfeld Professorship at the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism in the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. He heads the research lab “Social Media & Hate.”
The post Our Report Shows How Support for Palestinian Terrorism Has Spread on College Campuses first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australian Journalist Erin Molan Refuses to Flee Israel Amid Iran War, Will Stay to ‘Report the Truth From the Ground’
Television presenter Erin Molan at a press conference during a visit to Penshurst Girls School in Sydney, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
Australian broadcaster and journalist Erin Molan is in Israel during the country’s war against Iran and said she will remain in the Jewish state “to report the truth about what is happening here on the ground.”
“Let me make it very clear – despite media reports – I have not asked the Australian government – or ANYONE to on my behalf – to come to my rescue or evacuate me,” the former television presenter wrote in a social media post on Monday.
“There are a million other priorities for all involved in this conflict right now,” she added in part. “I desperately want to get home to my daughter – BUT – unlike so many people here — she is SAFE — many other children in Israel/Iran/Gaza are not. I am patiently waiting and thinking of all those who are in a far worse position than I am.”
Molan was scheduled to fly home to Australia on Friday but has been stranded in Israel since all airspace was closed following the start of Israel’s attack on nuclear and military targets in Iran, which started overnight on Friday. Since then, she has been reporting live from Israel about the war against Iran, sharing commentary on social media as well as videos of destruction in Israel caused by Iranian missiles launched at the Jewish state in retaliation for Israel’s airstrikes. During her extended stay in Israel, she has also interviewed Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and Israel’s President Isaac Herzog.
On Friday morning, Molan filmed a video from Tel Aviv in which she expressed solidarity with Israel and the Israel Defense Forces amid its war against the regime in the Islamic Republic.
“A lot has changed in the Middle East over the past few hours,” she said. “Pray for the people of Israel, pray for the people of Iran – the vast majority of whom despise the regime in charge. I think the entire world should be incredibly grateful to Israel for carrying out these attacks on behalf of us all, because the enemy of terrorism and Iran’s Islamic regime is not just Israel, it is the entire Western world.”
In a video posted on Instagram on Monday, Molan called the Islamic regime in Iran a “satanic murderous, regime who hate peace and democracy.”
Molan is the daughter of the late Major General Jim Molan, an Australian senator who was an avid supporter of Israel and a strong advocate for Australia-Israel ties. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war that began after the deadly terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Molan publicly expressed strong support for Israel’s military actions targeting the Iran-backed terrorist organization that orchestrated the deadly massacre.
On Thursday, Israel’s national airline El Al will start operating one-way flights to Tel Aviv to help bring home thousands of Israelis who are stranded abroad since the start of Israel’s war with Iran.
Former reality television star and transgender Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner was also in Israel when Israel launched its attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and military infrastructure but managed to escape by land to Jordan on Sunday. Jenner, 75, was in Israel as the guest of honor for the Tel Aviv Pride Parade, which was scheduled to take place on Friday but was canceled after Israel began a series of airstrikes on Iran.
The post Australian Journalist Erin Molan Refuses to Flee Israel Amid Iran War, Will Stay to ‘Report the Truth From the Ground’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Shame on You!’: Jenna Ortega Receives Backlash for Ignoring Israeli Suffering in Message About Iran, Gaza Wars
American actress Jenna Ortega wearing Markgong SS25 RTW and Sheryl Lowe jewelry arrives at the Netflix Tudum 2025: The Live Event held at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Los Angeles, California, United States. Photo: Image Press Agency via Reuters Connect
American actress Jenna Ortega is being criticized for not acknowledging Israelis in a statement she shared on Saturday about the ongoing wars in the Middle East and how they are impacting civilians in Iran and the Gaza Strip.
The “Wednesday” star, 22, said in an Instagram Story that the world is “crying” because of immigration raids in Los Angeles, the Israel-Hamas war, and the Israel-Iran war that started earlier on Friday morning. “Innocent civilians in Iran are caught in the middle of warfare. Palestinian cries are still being buried in every day [sic] media. My thoughts are heavy, my heart follows,” she wrote.
Ortega then urged her followers to “never stop paying attention” as “human freedoms spanning across seas are being violated with such violence.” She told the 37.2 million people who follow her on Instagram: “Listen to one another & love, but be angry too. Educate yourself as best you can. To say this doesn’t concern you, or that it isn’t your problem, is a privilege under abuse.” The Story was later saved to Ortega’s Instagram highlights.
An Instagram Story uploaded by Jenna Ortega. Photo: Screenshot
Ortega’s post came a day after Israel launched airstrikes against Iran, targeting nuclear sites and military infrastructure in the Islamic Republic, and amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Ortega’s “Scream” co-star Melissa Barrera was dropped from an upcoming film in the franchise because of her anti-Israel social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war.
Ortega’s comments on Saturday garnered criticism from Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), a nonprofit, pro-Israel organization comprised of prominent members of the entertainment industry who aim to combat antisemitism. CCFP shamed Ortega for ignoring the suffering Israeli civilians are facing while Israel is engaged in two wars in the region.
“If you truly care about innocent lives, all lives, then don’t erase Israeli civilians,” said CCFP. “You wrote about being heartbroken over civilians in Iran and Palestinians being buried by the media. But where is your heartbreak for the Israeli families being slaughtered by Iran’s missiles and terror proxies? Where is your voice for the Jewish children who are forced to sleep in bomb shelters? For the Israeli families torn apart? For Jewish lives murdered simply for existing?”
CCFP noted that the regime in Iran “is the aggressor, deliberately targeting civilians in Israel in a blood hunt fueled by antisemitic hatred while also affecting the Iran population.”
“You say to ‘educate yourself’, so do it fully,” the organization added. “Don’t speak in vague moral poetry that hides support for terror ‘between the lines.’ Speak clearly. Condemn all violence. That includes the missiles launched at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. That includes Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Shame on you!”
Ortega has regularly posted support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which began after the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The post ‘Shame on You!’: Jenna Ortega Receives Backlash for Ignoring Israeli Suffering in Message About Iran, Gaza Wars first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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