Harvard University released its long-awaited reports on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias, presenting a scathing critique of how its students treated each other in the aftermath of the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“I’m sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” Harvard President Alan Garber said in a letter Tuesday accompanying the reports, which offered recommendations for the university covering admissions, handling complaints and how it teaches.

Garber, who’s acknowledged he’s recently experienced antisemitism at Harvard, is releasing the studies as the oldest and richest U.S. university faces multiple government probes over its treatment of Jewish students and the role race plays on campus. The reports scrutinize a tumultuous period in the previous school year marked by anti-Israel protests and tent encampments in Harvard Yard, as well as allegations that pro-Zionist groups doxxed demonstrators.

While the federal government slammed Harvard over antisemitism on campus after the deadly 2023 Hamas attack, its critique under the Trump administration has morphed into a broader offensive on the university’s governance, its promotion of diversity programs and its perceived liberal bias. On Monday, the government opened another investigation, alleging discrimination at the Harvard Law Review.

The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based school has fired back against the demands, saying they amount to an effort by the administration to exert government control over the school and not to address antisemitism. Harvard sued the government this month, accusing it of unlawfully suspending funding after the university refused to comply with “unconstitutional demands.”

Garber created the task forces on antisemitism and Islamophobia in January 2024, weeks after he stepped in as interim president following the abrupt resignation of Claudine Gay, the university’s first Black president. She was forced out after allegations of plagiarism and criticism of her disastrous response in congressional testimony over whether calling for the genocide of Jews goes against university policy.

Together, the task forces’ reports run to more than 500 pages, which at times offered searing accounts of life for Jewish, Israeli, Muslim and Arab students. They were derived from interviews with community members and written by groups of more than a dozen faculty, students and staff.

Antisemitism report

The Task Force Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Bias described problems going back decades and said antisemitism has been excluded from discussion of other forms of prejudice such as racism or xenophobia.

Some Jewish staff, faculty and students said injecting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into unrelated contexts and events at Harvard amounted to an attempt to make them feel uncomfortable or excluded. One faculty member blamed a power shift from regular professors to “para-academic” administrators for fostering widespread anti-Israel sentiment.

The report included an example of a Jewish student planning to give a speech describing their experiences as a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor. But the student recounted being told, “I cannot mention my grandfather’s rescue mission in my speech because his rescue mission involves Israel. Nowhere does my speech mention the current war or Zionism. It is strictly about the Holocaust.”

The report also described a “new era” of pro-Palestinian organizing with tactics such as injecting discussions of the Palestinian cause into a wide range of areas in student life and using disruptive tactics at important events including first-year convocation at Harvard College and match day at the medical school. An Israeli Arab student described social discrimination by Arabs who don’t have ties to the Jewish state.

The task force recommended changes in eight categories, including admissions and discipline. For admissions, it suggested assessing an applicant’s aptitude in navigating situations with diverging viewpoints — something Harvard College already did with a new essay question announced last year.

Anti-Muslim report

The Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab and Anti-Palestinian Bias said students and other community members felt “abandoned and silenced” during the 2023-24 school year. In comments to the task force, they expressed dissatisfaction with Harvard’s institutional response to incidents of bias and hate, saying they felt fearful of retaliation for expressing their identities.

Muslim students said they were living in fear. One said peers had lost their jobs for being leaders in Muslim faith groups. They were also concerned about doxxing — the posting of private information about a person without their consent — which they said created a climate of intimidation.

Palestinian members of the Harvard community told the task force about mourning friends and relatives killed in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas conflict that followed the October 2023 attack and hostage-taking by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. They described dealing with their grief in isolation, in part because of a lack of institutional support from the university.

More than 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.

The report suggested seven sets of recommendations, relating to safety, freedom of expression and transparency. Proposals also included increasing courses on Palestinian studies and bolstering cross-cultural understanding.

Focus areas

The authors of the reports said they set out to listen to the concerns of community members and not to verify them.

The reports didn’t make recommendations on whether to divest Harvard’s $53 billion endowment from Israel or U.S. weapons makers, which was a major demand of many pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Garber has said previously that Harvard’s consistent position is that it has no intention of “divesting from Israel.”

Garber said the school would focus on three areas: nurturing a widespread sense of belonging and promoting respectful dialogue; revising and implementing policies, procedures, and training; and strengthening academic and residential life.

New actions Harvard will take include an initiative to promote viewpoint diversity and further review of disciplinary policies and procedures to assess their effectiveness and efficiency. Harvard will also review the recommendations, some of which can be implemented by the university and some by individual schools, such as admissions.

The institution has spent more than a year emphasizing efforts it’s taken to combat antisemitism, including education and safety measures. In recent weeks, the school placed the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee on probation and forced the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies to leave their posts. Harvard also suspended a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Harvard said Monday that its diversity, equity and inclusion office would be renamed as Community and Campus Life. That aligns with its current focus on building community, the school said.

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, said the report on antisemitism marked a critical step in a long overdue reckoning with the prejudice at the university and praised Garber for being “committed to addressing the deeper causes of this intolerable state of affairs.”

But the reports didn’t appease critics such as U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and Harvard alumna who has slammed the school for antisemitism on campus.

“Harvard’s own task force reveals longtime, deep-rooted, dangerous, and rampant antisemitism embedded in coursework, campus life, and faculty hiring,” she said. “There must be accountability.”

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(With assistance from Bill Haubert.)

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