The co-chair of a task force created by Harvard University to combat anti-Semitism resigned on Sunday. It is the second high-profile resignation in 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, a professor of business administration, did not give a reason for her resignation, but a colleague said she seemed frustrated with how long it was taking to make progress in addressing the issue.
“Basically her conclusion is that she didn’t feel confident or satisfied that she could lead and influence this process in a way that made sense to her,” said Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Harvard Chabad, a Jewish campus organization. He said he had spoken to several people who knew about Dr. Sadun’s way of thinking.
A nationally prominent rabbi, David Wolpe, resigned from a previous advisory committee on anti-Semitism in early December, following widely criticized testimony about anti-Semitism on campus before Congress by former Harvard President Claudine Gay. “Both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the difference I had hoped,” he wrote on X at the time.
In January it was revealed that the co-chair of the current task force, Derek Penslar, had signed an agreement a letter He called Israel an “apartheid regime,” prompting protests from many pro-Israel students and alumni who questioned whether he was representing their interests.
Dr. Sadun did not respond to emails or phone calls asking about her departure. But the uproar shows how volatile the climate has been at Harvard since the Hamas attack on Israel. The attack, and Harvard’s often clumsy responses to it, have reinforced longstanding fears among Jewish students and alumni that they can no longer feel completely at home at the Ivy League school.
Some Jewish students say they have traded in their kipas, or yarmulkes, for baseball hats. They say they now keep their Zionist beliefs to themselves in classrooms and residence halls.
Last week, a cartoon circulated on Instagram by pro-Palestinian 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.
The resignation of Dr. Sadun is the latest in a series of failures for Harvard’s efforts to address anti-Semitism on campus.
Last year, Dr. Gay formed an advisory committee to address anti-Semitism. On December 5, she testified before a congressional committee, giving legalistic answers when asked whether Harvard would punish students who called for the genocide of Jews.
Rabbi Wolpe’s resignation came two days later, and on January 2, Dr. Gay resigned under pressure. Later that month, Alan M. Garber, who took over as Harvard’s interim president, created two new task forces, one on anti-Semitism and one on anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias.
He appointed Dr. Sadun and Dr. Penslar as co-chairs of the Task Force on Anti-Semitism. Dr. Sadun was seen as a counterweight to Dr. Penslar, a professor of Jewish history, who had faced protests.
“She was the one who had to be the reassuring voice and leader of the task force,” Rabbi Zarchi said.
Dr. Penslar, who still heads the task force, did not help matters by downplaying the extent of anti-Semitism at Harvard in interviews he gave shortly after his appointment. In a interview with The Boston Globehe wondered how serious the anti-Semitism problem was on campus.
“It’s not a myth, but it’s exaggerated,” Dr. Penslar was quoted as saying.
He said that even before Oct. 7, some Jewish students were being “shunned” from “progressive political communities” because of the students’ attachment to Israel. “Is that vicious anti-Semitism? No,” he told the Globe. “But it is a form of social exclusion and social pressure.”
But his supporters note that he also told The Globe that Israel “is a state that has every right to exist.”
While the university accepted Dr. Sadun’s resignation on Sunday, it announced who the members of both task forces would be and appointed a law professor, Jared Ellias, to replace Dr. Sadun.
“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.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed to research.
