The Harvard Kennedy School announced that it plans to offer a fellowship to former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth.
The school has faced widespread criticism over an article published by Michael Massing in The Nation detailing how Roth had been recruited for the fellowship before allegedly being denied the position over his criticisms of Israel. A professor at the school told Massing that Dean Douglas Elmendorf openly admitted that the fellowship was pulled over Roth’s “anti-Israel bias.”
Massing’s article details the school’s longstanding connections to the military-industrial complex and identifies a number of its pro-Israel donors. These include Thomas Kaplan, Leslie Wexner, Idan and Batia Ofer, and Robert and Renee Belfer.
In an email to the Kennedy School community Elmendorf says he made an “error” in rescinding Roth’s fellowship, but offers few details explaining why that decision was made. He does insist that donor influence had nothing to do with the move.
“First let me emphasize that my decision was not influenced by donors. Donors do not affect our consideration of academic matters,” it reads. “My decision also was not made to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country. As a community we are steadfastly committed to free inquiry and including a wide range of views on public policy, and the appointment of a Fellow is never an endorsement of the views of that individual nor a refutation of other views. My decision on Mr. Roth last summer was based on my evaluation of his potential contributions to the School.”
The email does not specifically mention Israel at any point.
Roth has released a statement saying he is “thrilled” in “grateful” about the reversal. However, he also notes that Elmendorf’s announcement lacks transparency and that he remains worried about academic freedom at the school.
“It’s great that this happened. But it happened, in part, because it’s harder to cancel people like Ken Roth, who are Jewish rather than Palestinian,” noted Jewish Currents editor Peter Beinart on Twitter. “Palestinians are the greatest victims of this kind of exclusion. The goal must be universities that no longer cancel them.”
In April 2021, when Roth was still at the helm of Human Rights Watch, the organization released a 213-page report detailing Israel’s “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”
“These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another,” said Roth at the time.
This is great news. Ken Roth is a person of high character and high achievement. He is a fellow who deserves this Fellowship. I hope he will accept it because this is a pivotal moment in the march to address the injustices in Palestine and Israel.
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In an email to the Kennedy School community Elmendorf says he made an “error” in rescinding Roth’s fellowship, but offers few details explaining why that decision was made. He does insist that donor influence had nothing to do with the move.
There is a great deal to unpack here so let’s focus first on what Elmendorf did and what he has yet to do.
He must be obligated to:
1) Articulate in detail the “error” he made, i.e., what was the error and how did he arrive at the idea that denying Roth the fellowship was in the best interests of HKS;
2) Provide all the emails, phone logs, notes, meetings he had with any donor, staff person or outside source in the process of coming to his decision;
3) Explain how he thought his decision to abuse his discretionary powers would not erupt into a campus-wide condemnation as well as a mass media firestorm;
4) Explain why anyone, anywhere, should take his word for fact and believe that he did not consult with donors given that he has not released all the communications related to the decision to rescind the fellowship and finally;
5) Explain how HKS gets its reputation back without doing all the above.
It should be stated here that although Elmendorf said it was Roth’s “anti-Israel bias” (as per The Nation) that was at the heart of his decision to rescind the fellowship let us not be naive and think for even a moment that this justification was anything other than shorthand for a subtle accusation of antisemitism according to IHRA.
Likely without realizing it HKS’s reversal of Elmendorf’s high-handedness actually parallels closely the review procedures outlined in the DOJ/FBI’s highly respected Hate Crimes Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual Version 3.0 – 2022 in that it requires all claims of bias, including “anti-Jewish bias” (DOJ/FBI do not use the term “antisemitism” anywhere in the Manual) to be reviewed by two separate levels of expertise.
(Cont.)
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The First Tier Review is carried out by the party most closely engaged in the incident which in this case was Elmendorf. The Second Tier Review is then carried out by a more experienced and detached panel that applies a fixed set of questions and tests to ascertain the quality of the First Tier’s facts and analysis. Of course, DOJ’s entire purpose in this multi-tiered review process is to introduce checks and balances into the process and to guard against personal, political or other extraneous elements from impacting what is meant to be an impartial and transparent review. HKS is to be commended for acting swiftly to rectify Elmendorf’s “error” but it must now persevere and do a more thorough job of elaborating facts so that lessons can be learned and future outrages such as Elmendorf’s never occur again, at HKS or in any other academic setting.
One immediate product of this scandal might be to meme a new term: To “Elmendorf” – to act as a willing Zionist minion by (mis)using discretionary authority, coy proceduralism and opacity to damage the reputations and/or employment prospects of any and all critics of Israel.
Open Question for Any Zionist: Is it antisemitic according to IHRA to consider the above post correct, valid and utterly Constitutional?
View here 500+ Palestine posters on the subject of Cancelled/Censored/Compromised/Criticized/Blacklisted Exhibits/Posters/Cultural Events/Institutions
“First let me emphasize that my decision was not influenced by donors. Donors do not affect our consideration of academic matters. My decision also was not made to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country.”
Oh, sure. And we believe him? Don’t think so. So much for VERITAS.
I was on a webinar yesterday, with Ken Roth and others, when this news came in. We were told that the main reason for the reversal was concerted opposition by the faculty of the Kennedy School.
There was also opposition from alumni/ae and students.
Urgh. Prepare for Roth to continue to provide a nauseating defence of the entity from a ‘left-zionist’ point of view from within ‘the academy’.