An Institutional Double Standard that will Damage Academia
By Faisal Kutty
Sept/Oct 25
When Harvard University released over 500 pages of findings from its Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, and its Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias on April 29, it billed them as a comprehensive reckoning. But the reports reveal something else: an institutional double standard in how Harvard defines harm, assigns blame, and recommends reform.
According to Harvard’s own data, 92% of Muslim students reported feeling unsafe or marginalized on campus compared to 74% of Jewish students. That’s a staggering disparity, and yet, it is the task force on antisemitism that received greater institutional power, attention, and deference. The university recommended sweeping reforms to hiring, admissions, and faculty oversight including presidentially appointed disciplinary panels, audits of course content, and an embrace of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. This definition has been justifiably criticized for deliberately and falsely conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Many of these proposals mirror demands explicit from the Trump administration itself. It urges Harvard to ban masks at protests, punish professors who cancel class for student demonstrations, and conduct “viewpoint diversity” audits of academic programming. The anti-Muslim bias task force, on the other hand, explicitly states it was not authorized to investigate specific programming or extracurricular events.
The imbalance is not just bureaucratic; it’s ideological. The antisemitism report reads as though it was written to placate donors and deflect federal scrutiny while the report on anti-Muslim bias appears designed to avoid controversy altogether. This is especially evident in how the reports treat pro-Palestine activism.
The antisemitism task force portrays this form of hate as a tangible threat — “raucous, aggressive, and inflammatory” — that disrupts campus life for Jewish students. But it ignores how Harvard has punished pro-Palestine speech far more harshly than any other political expression. 13 seniors were barred from graduating this spring for their activism. The Islamophobia task force rightly noted that this level of discipline is “unprecedented” and has had a chilling effect on free speech at the university.
When protesters opposing Israeli policies wear masks to protect their identities — many after being doxxed or fired — they are met with calls for surveillance and policing. When professors speak out against Israeli state violence, the antisemitism report suggests they should face “lasting consequences.” Meanwhile, faculty who shut down debate and impose pro-Israel orthodoxy — like Harvard Hillel’s temporary suspension of its own Jewish student group for criticizing Gaza’s destruction — are held up as defenders of Jewish safety.
In fact, the antisemitism task force goes so far as to include in its list of concerns the academic work of dissenting Jewish scholars. Atalia Omer, a Jewish Israeli professor who taught in Harvard’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, found her program targeted in the report. Her sin? Exposing students to Mizrahi and Ethiopian Jewish voices, Palestinian artists, and anti-Zionist theologians. The report dismisses this as “non-mainstream” and ideologically suspect, reinforcing the idea that there is only one acceptable way to be Jewish on campus.
This reframing of what is acceptable when it comes to Jewish identity as a pro-Israel litmus test is, itself, both antisemitic and dangerous. It erases the long tradition of Jewish dissent, flattens complex debates into loyalty tests, and infantilizes students as victims of manipulation rather than agents of conscience.
Equally disturbing is the university’s embrace of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. By contrast, alternative definitions such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism and the Nexus Task Force’s Campus Guide, which offer more nuanced frameworks, are absent from the antisemitism task force’s citations despite being mentioned in events censured in the report.
The result is an official narrative that pathologizes political dissent and frames solidarity with Palestinians as inherently suspect. The same protests that Muslim, Arab, and many Jewish students say are acts of conscience are depicted as threats to campus order and Jewish safety. If Harvard were serious about equity, it would have ensured that both reports had the same investigative powers and were judged by the same standards. Instead, it granted one task force the authority to scrutinize departments, courses and partnerships with foreign universities while the other was told to steer clear of specifics.
Moreover, Harvard has committed to expanding Jewish and Israeli studies and partnering with Israeli institutions but has not made similar commitments to Palestinian studies or institutions, despite recommendations to do so.
What’s most galling is that all of this is happening under the pretense of protecting marginalized communities. But when a majority of Muslim students feel unsafe — and their concerns are met with less urgency, less institutional backing, and fewer concrete reforms — it’s clear that not all fears are treated equally.
Harvard may claim to be promoting pluralism, but pluralism cannot mean privileging one community’s pain while minimizing another’s. True inclusion requires consistency. That means protecting the academic freedom of anti-Zionist Jews and Palestinian advocates just as vigorously as we protect Jewish students from hate. It means distinguishing between protest and prejudice, between critique of a state and hate against a people.
The real danger is not student activism. It’s a university that rebrands censorship as safety, compliance as equity, and silence as pluralism.
If we want campuses where all students — Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli, and beyond — can feel safe and heard, we must reject frameworks that punish political speech under the guise of protection. We must also refuse to let any administration, including Harvard’s or Trump’s, weaponize identity to divide and control.
The test Harvard faces is not one of antisemitism or Islamophobia alone. It is a test of integrity. And so far, it is clearly failing.
Faisal Kutty, J.D., LL.M. is a lawyer, law professor, and regular contributor to The Toronto Star and Newsweek. You can follow him on X @faisalkutty.