Co-chair of the Harvard Anti-Semitism Task Force resigns

The co-chair of a task force created by Harvard University to combat anti-Semitism has resigned. It was the latest blow to the university’s efforts to address complaints that Jewish students have felt increasingly uncomfortable on campus since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

The co-chair – Raffaella Sadun, professor of business administration – submitted her resignation on Sunday. She was appointed about a month earlier by Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber.

Dr. Sadun said in a statement Sunday that she would continue to support efforts to address anti-Semitism from her position on the Harvard faculty. She did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Harvard Chabad said Monday that he had heard “from numerous people familiar with her thinking” that Dr. Sadun was dissatisfied with the pace at which Harvard handled complaints about anti-Semitism.

He said others at Harvard shared her views. “There is a widespread feeling in the community that there is already so much data on this,” Rabbi Zarchi said. “This task force was established based on the realization that there is a problem. It is difficult for many to understand why it is taking so long to bring about change in a more timely and urgent manner.”

The departure follows uproar over the appointment of the task force’s other co-chair, Derek J. Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard.

In a interview with The Boston Globe published after he was appointed, Dr. Penslar questioned how serious the anti-Semitism problem was on campus.

“It’s not a myth, but it’s exaggerated,” he said.

He said that even before Oct. 7, some Jewish students were “shunned” from “progressive political communities” because of the students’ attachment to Israel. ‘Is that cruel anti-Semitism? No,” he told the Globe. “But it is a form of social exclusion and social pressure.”

Dr. Penslar was one of nearly 2,900 academics and others who signed an open letter in August saying Israel was “an apartheid regime” and that the country was determined to “ethnically cleanse all areas under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.”

But he also told The Globe that Israel is “a state that has every right to exist.”

Influential figures such as Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard and former Secretary of the Treasury, and Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus, raised questions about Dr.’s selection. Penslar to help lead the task force.

Rabbi Zarchi said he had hoped that Dr. Sadun would be a counterbalance to Dr. Penslar. “It was very disturbing to me that she resigned,” the rabbi said. “She was the one who was supposed to be the reassuring voice.” He added that he thought many of the other task force members were solid choices.

In conjunction with Dr. Sadun’s resignation, Harvard announced the names of new members appointed to the Anti-Semitism Task Force and to a parallel task force to address anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias. A law professor, Jared Ellias, was appointed to Dr. Sadun in her leadership role.

“Over the past five months, grief, anger and fear have taken their toll on members of our community as divisions on our campus have continued,” said Dr. Garber, interim president of the university, said in the announcement. “We must do more to bridge the gaps.”

Dr. Garber said the task forces’ work would take months and that he had asked them to submit recommendations along the way, “so we could consider, refine and implement interventions.”

An earlier incarnation of the Anti-Semitism Task Force, a committee tasked with advising Harvard’s president on strategies to counter anti-Semitism, was rocked by a resignation. A prominent California rabbi, David Wolpe, who is now a visiting fellow at Harvard divinity school, resigned from the committee, saying he did not feel he could make a difference there. The committee has now been dissolved.

Jewish students at Harvard have described feeling increasingly alienated on campus. Some have traded their kipas, or skullcaps, for baseball hats and say they now keep their Zionist beliefs to themselves in classrooms and dorms.

Last week, a cartoon circulated on Instagram by pro-Palestinian Harvard student groups showing a hand with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding nooses around the necks of a black man and an Arab.

After complaints about the cartoon, the student groups and an affiliated faculty group apologized for the images.

Alain Delaqueriere research contributed.