‘Ethnonationalist Project’: Harvard Program Director Resigns to Protest New Antisemitism Policies

An employee of the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has resigned from his position to protest the university’s recent enactment of policies aimed at combating antisemitism and the spreading of blood libels by its faculty.

Jay Ulfelder, program director of the Nonviolent Action Lab at HKS’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, shared the resignation letter he sent to his employers on the social media platform Blue Sky on Friday. In it, he accused Harvard University of quelling criticism of what he described as “Israeli apartheid and genocide” and declared that he finds intolerable Harvard’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism  and choosing to recognize Zionism as a central component of Jewish identity.

“The university’s recent decision to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism gave me the final push,” Ulfelder wrote, enumerating beliefs widely perceived as antisemitic by Jewish civil rights activists and scholars. “I know that Zionism is an ethnonationalist project, and that ethnonationalist projects inevitably involve racism and authoritarian governance and violent boundary maintenance. I know that Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza over the past 16 months is a genocide punctuating a 76-year history of violent dispossession and subordination of the Palestinian people.”

He continued, “I know that political and material support for Israel from the US government, corporations, and cultural and educational institutions has been and remains fundamental to that endeavor. And I know that mass mobilization in the US can play an important supporting role in ending that genocide and helping to create space for real Palestinian liberation.”

Ulfelder then admitted that uttering his beliefs “in public” may constitute a violation of “the university’s anti-discrimination policies” and “[harm] the work the Lab and the Ash Center.” He added that while he has “decided to leave the institution,” he is certain that many others employed by HKS and the Ash Center “share my basic values and are trying hard to embody them.”

The director’s resignation, which becomes effective on Feb. 5, was precipitated by a previously reported civil settlement in which Harvard University agreed to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism to its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies, recognize the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity, and explicitly state that targeting an individual on the basis of their Zionism constitutes a violation of school rules.

That agreement resolved claims brought by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Students Against Antisemitism (SAA) in 2024. The Brandeis Center alleged that the university’s neglecting to discipline a professor whose mistreatment of Israeli-Jewish students was confirmed by a third-party investigator violated civil rights protections mandated by federal law. SAA, citing similar legal infractions, alleged that the university failed to address an explosion of antisemitic behavior on the campus, including harassment and hate speech.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism, to which Ulfelder expressed his strongest objection, is widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.

According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.

Jewish and non-Jewish civil rights activists and lawmakers called on the university to adopt the IHRA definition ever since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 descended Harvard into the most turbulent chapter of its history.

As scenes of Hamas terrorists abducting children and desecrating dead bodies circulated worldwide, 31 student groups at Harvard, led by the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) issued a statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza, despite that the Israeli military withdrew from the territory in 2005. In the weeks that followed, anti-Zionists stormed the campus screaming “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “globalize the intifada,” terrorizing Jewish students and preventing some from attending class.

Observers of the situation there, both on and off campus, accused Harvard of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism, while important donors suspended funding for prestigious academic programs. Later, its first Black president, Claudine Gay — who refused to explicitly denounce antisemitic speech until the public turned against her — resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist, ending the shortest tenure of any Harvard president.

Faculty also engaged in controversial conduct. In one incident in February 2024, an anti-Zionist faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, which contained a dollar sign at its center, dangling a Black man and an Arab man from a noose. The cartoon’s subtext was that Jewish money oppresses Arabs and African Americans.

Harvard, America’s oldest and arguably most important institution of higher education, has now agreed, on paper, to begin the work of eradicating antisemitic discrimination from its campus. In announcing its settlement with the Brandeis Center and Students Against Antisemitism, it proclaimed its “enduring commitment to ensuring our Jewish students. faculty, and staff are embraced, respected, and supported.”

As for Ulfelder, he boasted in his resignation letter about being privileged enough to endure unemployment rather than be a part of Harvard’s antidiscrimination initiatives.

“Lots of people can’t afford to quit their jobs; I’m very lucky that I can,” he concluded. “The university administration’s deepening repression of activism against the genocide in Palestine has now devalued and degraded that asset to an extent that I personally can no longer tolerate.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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