Harvard Kennedy School’s (HKS) Palestinian Alumni Collective is calling for the resignation of Dean Douglas Elmendorf after he rescinded a fellowship to Ken Roth over his Israel criticisms. The group is also calling for Roth, who spent almost thirty years as the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), to be reinstated at the school.
According to a Jan 5 article by Michael Massing in The Nation, Roth was poised to become a fellow at HKS’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy after leaving HRW in 2022. Kennedy School professor Kathryn Sikkink told Massing that Elmendorf explicitly stated that Roth was denied the position over his criticisms of Israel, particularly his tweets on the subject.
“The Harvard Kennedy School is dear to all of us. Yet, our collective experiences with institutionalized anti-Palestinian discrimination at HKS have included the administration’s support for Israeli state-sponsored violence and apartheid,” reads the statement from the alumni collective. “We are deeply dismayed that this support continues.”
“The various standards applied by Dean Elmendorf are noteworthy,” it continues. “While rescinding Roth’s appointment, the Dean has chosen to host Israeli officials who bear responsibility for war crimes perpetrated against Palestinians, including the crime of apartheid, a crime against humanity.”
A number of other organizations have criticized the move, including PEN America, who expressed “dismay” and said the decision “raises serious questions about the credibility of the Harvard program itself.”
The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee said they were “disappointed but unsurprised” by the news. “As an organization, we condemn Harvard’s attempt to undermine the world’s leading human rights organization, and call on the university to honor its purported values by providing a platform for voices that bring human rights to the forefront, and divesting from the violations of said rights,” reads their statement.
HRW apartheid report
HRW has faced increased attacks from pro-Israel groups since its 2021 report “A Threshold Crossed.” The 213-page document details Israel’s “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” It also recommends that the international community alter its approach toward the country.
“While much of the world treats Israel’s half-century occupation as a temporary situation that a decades-long ‘peace process’ will soon cure, the oppression of Palestinians there has reached a threshold and a permanence that meets the definitions of the crimes of apartheid and persecution,” said Roth at the time.
As many have pointed out, HRW consistently criticizes hundreds of countries, and Israel still makes up a small percentage of the group’s work. It took them years to acknowledge that Israel is an apartheid state, but the move also signified the fact that support for Palestinian rights is beginning to permeate the most mainstream of organizations.
Pro-Israel donors
In his article Massing also identifies a number of pro-Israel HKS donors, including Thomas Kaplan, Leslie Wexner, Idan and Batia Ofer, and Robert and Renee Belfer. “A rabbi representing Wexner approached the Kennedy School with the idea of bringing Israeli officials and civic leaders to Cambridge for a year of mid-career study, and the school agreed,” reads one of Massing’s details. “Among the 10 fellows who come annually are ministry officials, local government representatives, policy analysts, and directors of nonprofits, as well as members of the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet security service.”
Roth is openly acknowledging that donor money could have had an impact on his fate at the school. “The ultimate question here is about donor-driven censorship. Why should any academic institution allow the perception that donor preferences, whether expressed or assumed, can restrict academic inquiry and publication?,” he wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian. “Regardless of what happened in my case, wealthy Harvard should take the lead here.”
This element of the story is already being denounced as a “conspiracy” by pro-Israel individuals like the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt. On Twitter, Greenblatt claimed that Massing had concocted a deception that “implicates Israel and the American Jewish community.”
It’s hard to detect where the conspiracy might begin as Sikkink says that Elmendorf openly admitted the decision was made over Israel.
You can sign on to support the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee’s statement. I did. Go to tinyurl/hksroth.
I also wrote to the Harvard Crimson, saying that this also happened at the University of Toronto (among other places), but while the U of T is a major school in Canada, Harvard is a major school in the world.
RE: “Palestinian alumni call for Harvard Kennedy School dean to step down over Ken Roth fiasco”
ALSO SEE: Hundreds Call for Resignation of Harvard Kennedy School Dean Accused of Blocking Fellowship Over Israel Criticism
By Miles J. Herszenhorn and Asher J. Montgomery
The Harvard Crimson
January 11, 2023
(EXCERPT) Hundreds of Harvard affiliates called on Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf to resign on Tuesday following accusations that he denied former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth a fellowship over his criticism of Israel.
Affiliates demanded Elmendorf’s resignation in an open letter addressed to Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow, University President-elect Claudine Gay, and Elmendorf. The letter, signed by 360 affiliates and co-sponsored by 19 student organizations as of Tuesday night, comes as Elmendorf faces fierce backlash from free speech and civil rights advocacy organizations for vetoing Roth’s fellowship at HKS’ Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. . .
ENTIRE ARTICLE – https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/1/11/hks-ken-roth-backlash/
SOMEWHAT RELATED: New study reveals rampant conflicts of interest at think tanks
The report focuses heavily on how the nuclear industry influences institutional output in its favor and works to censor its critics.
Written by Ben Freeman
Responsible Statecraft
January 11, 2023
(EXCERPT) “Scholars, media organizations, and members of the public should be sensitized to the conflicts of interest shaping foreign policy analysis generally and nuclear policy analysis specifically,” is the conclusion of new academic research that documents how think tank funders are shaping the foreign policy debate.
The study, “No such thing as a free donation: research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis,” authored by Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas of the Center for International Studies in Paris, was released in late December by Sage. After an exhaustive review of the world’s top foreign policy think tanks — including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Atlantic Council, and many more — the authors found that they all receive “donations from actors with interests in the perpetuation of the extant nuclear order.” The study then answers the question posed in its title — “No such thing as a free donation?” — by showing exactly how these donations provide funders with considerable influence over these institutions’ work and the marketplace of ideas.
Through interviews with grant managers and former and current employees at these think tanks, the authors identified numerous instances where funding biased these organizations’ work through outright censorship, self-censorship, and perspective filtering. . .
. . . Regardless of the FARA implications of think tank funding…the new study’s authors offer a practical takeaway based on their research: “Responsible scholars, journalists, and other members of the public should stop treating think tanks and university programmes that accept large donations from vested interests as research entities and instead think of them as communications or public relations operations.”
LINK – https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/01/11/new-study-reveals-rampant-conflicts-of-interest-at-think-tanks/
Where? When? The Nation piece quotes Prof. Kathryn Sikkink as having been given this reason by Dean Elmendorf, but it can’t get the dean himself to say it on the record: “To this day, Elmendorf has given no indication of who may have objected to Roth’s presence at the school.” That’s not “openly admitted.”