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All It Takes To Censor Speech at Harvard Is a Lawsuit

By Julian J. Giordano
By Tommy Barone, Crimson Opinion Writer
Tommy Barone ’25, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House.

Harvard announced today that it has allowed the plaintiffs behind two obviously weak lawsuits to dictate how it regulates speech and conduct critical of Israel.

Over roughly the past year, two different groups of Jewish students have filed suits alleging Harvard’s response to widespread Israel-critical speech and conduct on campus, along with some isolated incidents of antisemitism, discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

That the University settled the cases is unremarkable. It did not acknowledge any wrongdoing, and, like many large institutions, it routinely settles civil suits to avoid the headaches that come with a public trial. What’s concerning is that the settlement makes a major, possibly unprecedented change in University policy that will repress criticism of Israel and invites further legal challenges that would erode the status of free speech and academic freedom at Harvard.

As part of the settlement, Harvard will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism, which categorizes a wide swath of criticisms levied against Israel as ipso facto antisemitic. Under the IHRA definition, non-exhaustively, criticisms of Israel construed to “[deny] the Jewish people their right to self-determination” or judge it by a standard other than that “expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” represent antisemitism.

These provisions leave much up to interpretation, but there’s reason to believe Harvard will interpret them expansively. For one thing, the settlement stipulates that the University will also embrace the IHRA’s examples of antisemitism, which include calling Israel’s existence a “racist endeavor.” Anyone who’s paid attention to recent Israel-Palestine discourse at Harvard could tell you that Israel’s stauncher defenders on campus and beyond believe most criticisms of Israel fall into one of those categories — and will redouble pressure on the University to punish them as such.

Reasonable people can surely disagree over what constitutes antisemitism, and it’s perfectly legitimate for an individual to prefer the IHRA definition. But it’s just as plain to me that it is inappropriate to a pluralistic, liberal institution tolerant of a wide range of viewpoints and dedicated to open engagement.

The IHRA definition, enforced as the litigants probably intend, would slam the door shut on a range of serious and legitimate criticisms that many Jewish people at Harvard tolerate and have even themselves levelled. It could discourage important ethical inquiry into Israel’s foundation and present conduct, including as to the permissibility of establishing an ethnostate and whether Israel is engaging in apartheid or ethnic cleansing.

To see the problems the IHRA definition poses for such discussions more clearly, it’s worth considering some analogous cases. Is it legitimate to call all white Americans racist? To say that Saudi Arabia mistreats women? To accuse the Catholic church of cruelty to gay people?

Each position is to some extent controversial and closely identified with a Title VI-protected group that could claim it bigoted and demand a definition of bigotry that declares it categorically off-limits. Certain instantiations of each criticism would be bigoted under most reasonable definitions. But it is not obvious that these criticisms are necessarily or usually bigoted, don’t add to campus discourse, or should be eliminated by the powers that be in this community of very intelligent adults.

Imposing such a sweeping definition in an area of such vigorous disagreement is a shocking abrogation of the University’s commitments to free speech and academic freedom. Ironically, in an indication of how much Harvard conceded to the litigants, it also exceptionalizes antisemitism: As far as I can tell, none of Harvard’s rules governing free speech, bullying and harassment, or student conduct at the College even mention — much less define — racism, sexism, or any other ism, relying instead on more uncomplicated categories like identity-based bullying, discrimination, or disrespect.

Most worryingly, with this move, Harvard has signaled that upset constituents — and outside groups backing them — can bring thinly-supported, mostly-anonymous legal complaints against the University to reshape policies at the heart of the academic mission.

Harvard has been a contentious place since October 7th. It has seen much more protest than usual, some of it featuring chants and signs I have myself criticized as insensitive and counterproductive, and it has borne witness to a few appalling incidents of antisemitism (that mostly received swift, widespread condemnation, it should be noted).

But a bastion of antisemitism Harvard was and is not. What the two legal complaints frame as “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” harassment — one of the standards for the Title VI claim that would have proceeded to trial — fall into one of two categories: Rare and isolated incidents not characteristic of the overall climate at Harvard and anti-Israel speech from classes, protests, and elsewhere that — odious or not — is far from harassment.

Some Jewish students undoubtedly experience Harvard as hostile and threatening lately. I know people who do, and I hear and sympathize with their fear. Still, I believe that the concerns about antisemitism are massively overstated — a position shared by many on campus, including, again, many of my Jewish peers — and that Harvard has unequivocally not violated Title VI.

By making such a significant concession to litigants arguing the reverse, Harvard tacitly acknowledges that their position is reasonable and very possibly correct. That acknowledgment doesn’t have the force of law — it is not an admission of wrongdoing — but it lends credence to a theory of Title VI that invites students to consider whether speech and conduct that involves their identity and troubles them may not just be unethical but illegal.

For a university so shaped in recent decades by increasing demands for comfort, ease, and safety — and that has taken such pains lately to quietly walk their influence back — it is a move as perplexing as it is disturbing.

Tommy Barone ’25, a former Crimson Editorial Chair, is a Social Studies concentrator in Currier House.

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