The co-chair of the Harvard antisemitism task force resigned Monday over doubts that the university would commit to implementing the recommendations of the group.
Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun stepped down because the body’s mandate did not explicitly require the administration to enact measures to combat antisemitism on campus, a person familiar with the situation told the Harvard Crimson. Antisemitism has surged at colleges across the country since Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7.
Sadun wanted the university to be obligated to enforce the task force’s recommendations before any were formally delivered. Her objections centered around the task force’s advisory authority. Three Harvard affiliates shared with the college publication on the condition of anonymity details about Sadun’s abrupt exit.
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, the founding president of Harvard Chabad, which calls itself “the soul of Jewish life on campus,” told the Crimson that Sadun’s grievances with the task force had been brewing for a while.
Harvard established the task force in January, designing it to identify the “root causes” of anti-Jewish sentiment on campus. Interim Harvard president Alan Garber appointed Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history and director of the Center for Jewish Studies, to lead the task force with Sadun as co-chair.
Sadun previously signed a statement opposing the Crimson editorial board’s endorsement of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which aims to delegitimize and pressure Israel through the three aforementioned methods.
Garber told the Crimson that Sadun “expressed her desire to refocus her efforts on her research, teaching, and administrative responsibilities at HBS.”
“I am extremely appreciative of Professor Sadun’s participation in the task force over the past weeks,” Garber said. “Her insights and passion for this work have helped shape the mandate for the task force and how it can best productively advance the important work ahead.”
Soon after it was created, the task force came under scrutiny for Penslar’s history of criticizing Israel. In August, before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Penslar signed an open letter along with nearly 2,900 other signatories who, at the time, called Israel a “regime of apartheid” over its treatment of Palestinians, the Washington Free Beacon reported. The letter was later replaced by two new petitions, neither of which Penslar signed.
“We, academics, clergy, and other public figures from Israel/Palestine and abroad, call attention to the direct link between Israel’s recent attack on the judiciary and its illegal occupation of millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” the August letter read.
Penslar was also one of the faculty members to initiate a December letter defending Harvard president Claudine Gay following calls for her resignation after she refused to condemn the genocide of Jews at a House hearing on campus antisemitism. In the letter, over 700 faculty members demanded that Harvard’s administration retain Gay.