Summers Accuses Harvard Corporation, Garber of Inaction Against Antisemitism

Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers accused the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, of being “ineffectual” in addressing campus antisemitism in a Monday statement on X.

Summers’ thread was an extraordinary broadside against Harvard — not just a rebuke of the University’s sitting leadership by a former president, but also a wide-ranging attack against individual instructors, academic programming, and professional schools that Summers termed “redoubts of the far left.”

The posts indicated that Summers, who was among Harvard President Claudine Gay’s most prominent critics during her short tenure, was growing frustrated with her successor. Though he stopped short of calling for the resignation of President Alan M. Garber ’76, he wrote that Garber “lacked the will and/or leverage” to combat antisemitism.

While Summers said in an interview with The Crimson that he had “huge respect” for Garber, whom he once described as a “superb choice” to replace Gay, he suggested Garber had either slow-walked or been hamstrung in his efforts to address antisemitism.

“I don’t understand why the response to various problematic and likely antisemitic episodes has been so limited,” he said in an interview with The Crimson.

“I wish the Corporation was taking a stronger hand in encouraging vigorous responses to antisemitism — both because it’s morally right and practically important, given the broader pressures the University is experiencing,” Summers added.

In his Tuesday post, Summers expressed impatience with Garber’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, one of two task forces that Garber created in the first month of his interim presidency to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

Summers criticized the task force for failing to issue its final recommendations despite being established more than one year ago.

“It is by the way shocking and I think outrageous that months after the Harvard’s abject failures after Oct 7, the Task Force hasn’t even reached a conclusion,” he wrote.

Since releasing a preliminary report in June, both of Garber’s task forces have provided no further updates on the status of their heavily-anticipated follow-up reports.

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton wrote in a statement that the University is “committed to ensuring our Jewish community is embraced, respected, and can thrive at Harvard.”

But Summers also suggested that Garber and the Corporation should have taken action or spoken against faculty for statements or events he called antisemitic.

Summers argued that a February panel event at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies with three non-Harvard scholars focused on the “past and present” of “Israel’s war in Lebanon” was “very likely” antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which the University adopted as part of a settlement agreement in January.

The post seemed to suggest the settlement terms should limit Harvard’s academic programming — something that University leaders have explicitly told some faculty they will not do.

The panelists and the CMES did not respond to requests for comment.

Summers wrote that it was not “tenable” for History professor Derek Penslar to remain a co-chair of the task force on combating antisemitism unless Penslar renounced his affiliation with the CMES — and reiterated his accusations that Penslar did not take campus antisemitism seriously.

“The task force reports are forthcoming,” Penslar wrote in a statement. “Anyone who has doubts about the seriousness with which I have treated antisemitism at Harvard should withhold judgment until they read the report.”

He added that he had urged the CMES to hold events presenting Israeli perspectives on the aftermath of Oct. 7 and had not been involved in the center’s recent programming.

Summers also condemned a convocation address delivered by Harvard Divinity School dean Marla Frederick, in which she used the term Nakba, which refers to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the subsequent displacement of Palestinians, and placed the war — which led to Israel’s founding – alongside the Trail of Tears, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the Holocaust.

Frederick did not respond to a request for comment, and Harvard Divinity School spokesperson Jonathan G. Beasley declined to comment on the convocation address.

While Summers accused Harvard of maintaining a “complacent attitude” toward antisemitism, he cautioned on X that the Trump administration's threat to strip the University of its federal funding was “wildly unreasonable.”

“Cutoffs of any kind of Harvard’s funding would be terrible for the University, and more important, terrible for the country, because of opportunities denied, scientific progress prevented, international understanding limited,” he said in an interview. “So I certainly pray that things will never come to that.”

“But I do think that the University has a moral and a practical obligation to enhance its efforts to call out and resist antisemitism beyond what has happened to date,” Summers added.

Summers’ remarks come just days after the Department of Justice’s task force on antisemitism announced that it would visit Harvard and nine other colleges and universities to investigate antisemitism allegations.

Since the Trump administration won back the White House in January, it has kept Harvard in its sights, launching an investigation into pro-Palestine messaging displayed by Harvard Medical School students and threatening to revoke the University’s federal research funding.

Correction: March 4, 2025

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Lawrence H. Summers’ remarks on X were made Tuesday. In fact, he posted the statements Monday.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.