Last week The Nation published a great article by Michael Massing about how Kenneth Roth had his fellowship from the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) rescinded. Roth had just left a twenty-nine-year career with Human Rights Watch (HRW) as their executive director and was poised to become a senior fellow at the school’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Roth had been involved with the Carr Center since its founding in 1999 and seemed like a natural fit. “We thought he would be a terrific fellow,” Kennedy School professor Kathryn Sikkink told Massing.
However, Roth was denied the position. According to Sikkink, HKS Dean Douglas Elmendorf admitted that the decision was made over Israel. He told Sikkink that HRW had an “anti-Israel bias” and that he was particularly concerned about Roth’s tweets criticizing the country.
The Massing article provides some necessary context about the school’s connections to the military-industrial complex and it lists a number of its big pro-Israel donors. 92nd Street Y chair Thomas Kaplan (you might recall that the cultural center canceled a panel over the inclusion of a Palestinian doctor in 2011), the pro-Israel billionaire and GOP donor Leslie Wexner (who maintained a close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein until his death), and Israeli billionaires Idan and Batia Ofer–both of whom sit on the Dean’s Executive Board. Robert and Renee Belfer (philanthropists who donated hundreds of antiquities to The Israel Museum in 2015) even have a building at the school named after them: the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
On Twitter, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Jonathan Greenblatt predictably accused Massing of concocting conspiracy theories by bringing this stuff up. He also claimed that the article “plays into antisemitic myths about power and money and draws conclusions unsupported by evidence.” His tweet doesn’t link to the piece, which makes sense because anyone who reads it learns that Massing’s evidence includes an on-record source in Sikkink.
People having an influence on the academic institutions they donate to isn’t much of a conspiracy theory as a lot of this information is in the public record. When Kennedy School’s Stephen Walt and University of Chicago’s John Mearsheimer published their original working paper about the Israel Lobby on HKS’s website back in 2006 the school removed its logo from the document and stuck a sizable disclaimer at the top of it. According to a piece in the (now defunct) New York Sun an observer close to the situation said that the paper ignited a donor revolt of sorts. The observer said the school had received “several calls” from “pro-Israel donors” upset about the paper. One of those angry calls came from the aforementioned Robert Belfer. Ironically Walt’s official title is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Relations. Here’s a quote from the observer: “Since the furor, Bob Belfer has called expressing his deep concerns and asked that Stephen not use his professorship title in publicity related to the article.”
The New York Sun article probably wasn’t denounced as a conspiracy theory as it seemingly failed to permeate the mainstream media in any real capacity. A New York Times article on the backlash to the paper quotes a number of people who taught at the school but it doesn’t mention the donors or Belfer at all. A Haaretz piece on the paper does mention it and admits that Israel critics might have a point. “The study also accused the pro-Israel lobby of monitoring academics to ensure that they do not diverge from the pro-Israel line,” it reads. “They will undoubtedly see proof of this contention in Harvard’s decision to distance itself from the study due to pressure applied by pro-Israel donors. According to the New York Sun, Robert Belfer – who gave the Kennedy School $7.5 million in 1997 in order, among other things, to endow the chair that Walt now occupies – called the university and asked that Walt be forbidden to use his title in publicity for the study.”
A lot has changed since 2006. The Massing piece is getting a lot of attention, not just in spots like Democracy Now, but in the Associated Press. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan did a segment on it. The Boston Globe’s editorial board criticized the move. The Guardian even published an op-ed by Roth. Elmendorf’s decision is being denounced, not just by groups like the HKS Palestinian Alumni Collective and Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, but by organizations like PEN America.
The fact that Roth is the one who ended up in this situation is also a testament to the progress that’s been made on this issue. If you’ve been reading sites like Mondoweiss at any point over the last twenty or so years, you probably know that HRW has regularly been criticized for being too tepid on the subject of Palestine.
Let’s take 2006 as an example since that was the same year the Walt/Mearsheimer paper was published. In 2006 the Israeli military purposely bombed Gaza’s only power plant leaving over a million people without electricity for months. Soldiers also shelled the residential neighborhood of Beit Hanoun, killing at least nineteen Palestinian civilians, eight of them children. The Israeli government apologized and said the brutal destruction was a mistake. HRW called for independent investigations in these cases. However, when Hamas captured an IDF soldier in hopes of exchanging him for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons that year, the group denounced the action with much stronger language. HRW called that a “war crime.” 2006 also saw HRW publish a 101-page report that called on the Palestinian Authority to implement “immediate steps to halt” Palestinian rockets.
In 2021 HRW finally put out a report accusing Israel of apartheid. Many human rights organizations have made the same charge throughout the years, but this was a bombshell precisely because HRW is a very mainstream organization that had avoided leveling the charge. The title of the paper was “A Threshold Crossed,” an apt (if accidental) double entendre. A threshold had been crossed. Prominent liberal groups were using the A Word and acknowledging the suffering of Palestinians. 2021 was the same year that the progressive company Ben & Jerry’s (after over a decade of pressure from Vermont activists) announced it would stop selling its ice cream in the illegally occupied West Bank. The following year Amnesty International put out its own report on Israel’s apartheid.
Each one of these events resulted in hysterical reactions from the pro-apartheid crowd and that makes sense when you think about the existential crisis that Israel is currently experiencing. The situation in the region continues to become more dire while support for the country continues to slip. Poll after poll shows us that Palestinian self-determination is becoming more and more popular among Democrats and young people, including young Jewish people.
Elmendorf’s brazen move strikes me as a potentially massive own goal. If Roth got the fellowship you probably would have seen some complaints from the staunchest of Israel supporters online, but I don’t believe it would have been much of a story. Now you have organizations calling for Elmendorf’s resignation, Roth hitting the interview circuit, and a fresh round of people checking out HRW’s apartheid report.
Suppression of speech over Israel is a routine occurrence across the academy, but those impacted don’t usually get this kind of attention. Someone as well-connected as Roth can take any number of positions instead, but a big part of the current discourse should be focused on untenured faculty and students who have suffered without fanfare.
Odds & Ends
???? Texas Rep. Jon Rosenthal has introduced a bill that would reverse all of the state’s anti-boycott laws, including the anti-BDS one. “It is unfortunate that Texas, a state that prides itself on individual liberty and freedom, is disallowing business to be conducted freely,” he tweeted. “If we value Constitutional protections, we must repeal these statutes that restrict the fundamental right to freedom of speech.”
⚖️ Today the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a federal court’s dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the group by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Palestine Legal had a good thread on the case:
What are the accusations in JNF v. US Campaign for Pal Rights based on? The dangerous claims that support for boycotts is prohibited, and that because USCPR expressed support for the Great March of Return, it’s responsible for “terrorist kites” launched during the March.
The facts are: USCPR is a grassroots org working for freedom & justice for Palestinians – collectively, through constitutionally-protected boycotts, public awareness raising campaigns, and other tactics. They are one of the oldest & largest Palestine solidarity orgs in the US.
Ironically, JNF lands sit on the sites of depopulated Palestinian villages, many Palestinians marching in Gaza were from those very same villages. The lawsuit also cited USCPR participation in a campaign to Stop the JNF.
JNF is an unofficial arm of the Israeli govt holding 13% of all Israeli land, mostly stolen from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons, managed under apartheid that privileges Jewish Israelis at the expense of Palestinians.
???? An email from Rep. Rashida Tlaib to her supporters:
“This weekend, I was sworn in for my third term in the U.S. Congress. Wearing a Palestinian thobe during swearing-in, I had my ancestors by my side. The new Israeli government has also been sworn in, led by far-right extremist Prime Minister Netanyahu. As part of Netanyahu’s deals with fascist factions, he is moving toward even more ethnic cleansing, claiming that there’s an ‘exclusive Jewish right’ to expand settlements in Palestine’s West Bank. He even promised to annex the West Bank to Israel—all without granting citizenship to the 6.5 million Palestinians who live there. These racist policies are dangerous and continue to support an apartheid government.”
“As Jewish Voice for Peace explained: ‘This is the most extremist, supremacist government in Israel’s history.’ They want to eliminate Palestinians altogether. The fact that our country continues to fund Israel’s apartheid is shameful.”
???????? NYC Council member Tiffany Cabán tweeted about Israel banning Palestinian flags in public: “There was a time when Puerto Ricans were banned from flying our flag. A move intended to forcefully quiet nationalists. To sow fear of punishment & disrupt the building of an organized mass movement to rise up against colonial rule & fight for freedom & dignity. #FreePalestine.”
???????? Netanyahu appeared on screen at AIPAC’s political leadership forum and received a standing ovation.
???? Earlier this week, the Supreme Court allowed WhatsApp (the messaging platform owned by Meta Platforms) to proceed with its lawsuit against the Israeli spyware company NSO Group Technologies. The NSO Group’s request for immunity had already been rejected by lower courts before reaching SCOTUS. Meta sued the NSO Group in October 2019 over its Pegasus hacking technology. Meta alleges that Pegasus allowed users to access WhatsApp servers and surveil some 1,400 individuals illegally.
???? US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides on accusations that Biden has shut out Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir: “There’s no boycott. I don’t do boycotts… We are going to work with the Israeli government. It is a democratically elected government. We’ll work with everyone. But in principle who I’ll be working with is the prime minister.”
Stay safe out there,
Michael
