We Deserve Better: Letter to Harvard President in response to Erasure of Palestine
An Invitation to Practice Veritas
Dear President Gay,
I am so glad that you are doing such extensive work to cultivate a task force to combat antisemitism; real hatred of any people, when it manifests anywhere, warrants serious action which you have outlined in your email.
I couldn’t find the names of the people you will include in the task force to combat anti-Arab and Palestinian racism or Islamophobia on campus. I didn’t see you make any mention of the term Palestinian, you know, to acknowledge that we exist. You mentioned history, and taught African-American history and Social Sciences. And yet, on three separate occasions, when addressing the Harvard community over the past month, you failed to acknowledge Palestinians altogether.
In the video on October 12, when you expressed your condolences to “all those in the Jewish and Muslim community”, you not only actively participated in the long history of Palestinian erasure in this country by failing to mention us, you also reinforced a racist trope that presumes all Palestinians, and Arabs for that matter, are Muslim.
We deserve an apology.
I am a Black woman of Palestinian heritage who worked for Harvard Dean of Students Office for five years, studied at the Divinity school for two, currently work with Community Partnerships at Radcliffe and cheered you on as you took your seat. Never have I felt more unseen, unsafe and mentally asphyxiated after reading your email last week.
You’ve been here for nearly 20 years, so I’m sure the institutional power imbalance that many Black, Brown and marginalized communities face is not new to you. Just as there is no institutional equivalent of the Harvard Hillel, which we are glad exists, for Black students on campus, there is no institutional equivalent of the Harvard Hillel for Palestinian or Arab students on campus, which makes it much more difficult for student needs, concerns or grievances to be acknowledged by leadership.
How do you speak about the need for diversity, inclusion, and belonging in Harvard’s beautiful, heterogeneous community, yet fail to acknowledge the very community who is being politically censured, and explicitly annihilated in the world right now? I am curious about your timing.
I can only imagine the mounting pressure that you are receiving, namely from high-powered alumni and donors. You hold immense authority in your seat as the first Black president of one of the world’s most elite universities, and that comes with unimaginable responsibility. Without a follow-up to your last email, your message feels morally bereft and quasi debilitating. No follow-up would be unfathomable.
We deserve better.
The amount of death that has gone unacknowledged– over 12,000 confirmed massacred in Gaza by Israeli bombs — is heartbreaking.
We don’t expect you to be a Middle East scholar. We do expect you to be consistent and fair in your messaging. There are people dying in Palestine, who have nothing to do with Hamas. This is a fact. Maybe this can be your first acknowledgement in the next email, President Gay.
There is beautiful work that students of various backgrounds — Jewish, Palestinian, Black, Latinx, indigenous, in the Harvard community have been doing over the past month and years. Maybe their ongoing work to bear witness to the intolerable suffering and to embody veritas — speaking truth to power — can inspire and help guide your next email?
It may also be helpful to acknowledge that Black and Brown students, who are particularly vulnerable, are taking the brunt of this punishment from parents, staff and powerful alumni, who are harassing them online. Beyond mere resources like CAMHS (Counseling and Mental Health Services), they deserve your public acknowledgement too.
And what about the Islamophobic hate crime that killed 6 year old Wadea in our country? You didn’t address this bigotry, or recognize our humanity and heartache in the slightest way. At the least, condolences to the Arab community would be deeply appreciated.
You mentioned the incident on Harvard Business School campus. Many parents seemed to call and complain about the Black student who was doing his job, protecting dozens of Harvard community members from the counter-protester at a peaceful die-in. He made the courageous choice to serve Harvard students, even amid credible safety concerns, threats on his life, online harassment and a doxxing truck you all failed to have removed. Calling for the firing of a Black student for doing their job, protecting Harvard students, and exercising their free speech is considered bullying. Over 8500 + students, staff, parents and alumni are calling on Harvard to rectify the unilateral decision to displace him, and this must be addressed.
There is a dangerous double standard when Harvard justifies punishing a Black student and staff for protecting hundreds of students from an agitator who was violating several students by placing a phone in their face without consent and stepping over their heads while they were peacefully laying on the ground, yet overlooks the hateful rhetoric espoused by a Harvard leader who openly reduces students who care about justice in Palestine to “animals” and “monsters’, encouraging peope to view them as “evil”.
And about that statement — “from the river to the sea” — it is wildly ideological to suggest that the Harvard community writ-large adopt a wholesale interpretation that this statement implies eradicating Jews from Israel. By now, millions of American Jews have made it clear that to conflate a nation state with a group of people is leaven for even more antisemitism, for it creates the logical fallacy that can lead people to blame Jews for the actions of the state of Israel, which is unacceptable hatred. Full stop. I can’t express how incredibly insensitive, and outstandingly tone deaf this misinformation was.
Over one-hundred Harvard faculty expressed deep concern with how dangerously one-sided your email came across. If you leave these things unsaid, you not only dishonor your students, but delegitimize Harvard’s stated commitment to veritas — truth-telling via higher education.
Perhaps you yourself are getting bullied from a high seat, and don’t know what to tell us younger folk looking up to you. We are looking to you to speak, to provide real leadership. Not lip service.
You stated in your inaugural address that you are up for the challenge to lead us into the future of promise and hope. We must love our community enough to be critical of it, and I trust you will receive this with the love it was written.
The motto of this university is veritas — truth.
And the truth is, your email was missing the grief that we are experiencing. The affirmation that it is not absurd, nor should it — in any world past, present or future — be deemed “antisemitic”, to want bloodshed of civilians to end. To call for a ceasefire NOW.
With deepest gratitude for your attention to this matter,
© Azmera Hammouri-Davis 2023
Signatures:
1. Fatema Elbakoury, HDS alum
2. Delrisha White, HGSE alum
3. Lesedi Graveline, HDS alum
4. Anca Wilkening, PhD Candidate in Religion
5. Alejandra Salemi, HDS alum
6. Sarah Kissel, concerned citizen
7. Britney Foster, HDS alum
8. Rev. Danielle Ayers, Pastor
9. Anna, HDS alum
10. Najha Zigbi-Johnson, HDS alum
11. Chance Bonar, GSAS alum & HDS Faculty
12. Kayla Smith, HDS alum
13. Alexis Yeboah-Kodie, HLS alum
14. Amy Greulich, HDS alum
15. Nicole Morris, HDS alum
16. MW, former college student
17. Kaia Stern, HDS alum
18. Ella Wechsler-Matthaei, HGSE alum
19. Amanda Lubniewski, HGSE alum
20. Camille Jack, HGSE alum
21. Shariqa Rahman, HRI staff
22. Nadia Asfour, GSD alum
23. Parker Thompson, concerned citizen
24. Amanda Campbell, HDS alum
25. Darlene Domian, concerned citizen of the Commonwealth
26. Yena Sharma Purmasir, HDS alum
27. Sophia Dover, MPP alum
28. Rudayna Abdo, concerned citizen
29. Randa Khuri, concerned citizen
30. Diana Domian, concerned citizen
31. Cassidy Aranda, CK Law students
32. Faran Sikandar, HLS alum
33. Sienna Ruddick, concerned citizen
34. Karla B. Magana Figueroa, HKS alum
35. Andrew Kurban, HKS alum
36. Hossam Nasr, Harvard college alum
37. Ayesha Mehrotra, Harvard GSD alum
*Signatures welcome here.
