Over the past year, Harvard University has systematically curtailed, suspended, or restructured every program with a serious focus on studying Palestinian rights. It’s abundantly clear that some views are not welcome on this campus.
By Mary T. Bassett*
Jun 11, 2026
Harvard University leaders have been soliciting wealthy donors for $10 million contributions to fund endowed professorships with the stated goal of expanding “viewpoint diversity” on campus.
Pardon me for finding this hypocritical.
Over the past year, the University has systematically curtailed, suspended, or restructured every program with a serious focus on studying Palestinian rights and raising up Palestinian voices targeted by the Trump administration’s April 11 demands. It’s abundantly clear that some views are not welcome on this campus.
In December 2025, as reported deaths in Gaza exceeded 71,000 (mostly women and children), I was removed from my position as the director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, a University-wide center based at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dean Andrea Baccarelli framed this as part of a new strategic direction for the center, but it was apparent that my removal was the result of calling attention to this carnage.
And so, the last major Harvard program that made Palestine its focus effectively ended.
Unlike many other faculty members across the United States being censored, I have not lost my faculty position or my income. I also have no legal barrier to the expression of my views. Here is my perspective on what is being lost as Harvard silences Palestinian voices.
The crackdown began in the spring of 2025 with the resignations of staff in the Religion and Public Life program at the Harvard Divinity School. Next came the abrupt dismissal of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’s leadership, followed by the suspension of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, housed under RPL. Both programs had offered vibrant programming about Palestinian issues and provided a home for scholars who focused on Palestine.
Finally, on December 9, 2025, Dean Baccarelli announced his intention to change FXB’s strategic focus from “oppression, poverty, and stigma” more broadly to “children’s health—particularly during early childhood development” (This announcement has since been removed from HSPH’s website.)
I’ll leave aside the haphazard nature of the change, or how to parse the dean’s reasoning that separated “oppression, poverty, and stigma” from the new remit focused on early childhood — surely the intent is not a focus on wealthy, entitled, nonmarginalized children?
Harvard has communicated its actual intent through a series of purposeful actions, launching new partnerships with multiple Israeli institutions while allowing a memorandum of understanding with Birzeit University’s Institute of Community and Public Health in the West Bank to lapse. It expanded opportunities for students to study abroad with Israeli universities at the same time that it abruptly ended co-sponsorship with the World Health Organization of an annual Palestine Social Medicine Course hosted by Birzeit. HSPH even recently hosted an all-Israeli healthcare symposium after effectively halting Palestine-related public programming hosted by FXB.
Ironically, this move came after the University’s own task force on combating bias toward Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates revealed strong interest among students in more programs that helped them understand issues facing Palestinians. Innovative research examined the impact of Mark-84 2,000 pound bombs on Gazan hospitals. Our webinars offered critical discussions of topics ranging from mortality estimates in Gaza to the risk of circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus, and more — making us one of the only centers at Harvard exploring these vital topics.
The Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights was established as part of FXB’s focus on marginalized populations after revered former HSPH Dean Howard H. Hiatt ’46 brought the idea to me in 2021. After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, the program turned its attention to the impact of Israel’s military actions on hospital facilities and the civilian population, which many have described as genocide.
The FXB center soon became a target, named in a sweeping lawsuit regarding antisemitism at Harvard. The University did not mount its defense on the grounds of a distinct analytical separation between criticisms of the Israeli state and antisemitism.
The FXB Center became one of critics’ prime examples of antisemitism claims. These charges would be echoed in the antisemitism task force report, although Harvard itself subsequently raised concerns about the accuracy of the report’s conclusions.
HSPH then decided it would relaunch its “periodic” five-year review of FXB, framed as an opportunity to “rigorously evaluate” the center. The last five-year review took place more than ten years ago. Nevertheless, my colleagues and I worked hard to produce a detailed 113-page “self-study” explaining our mission, scholarship, programming, and fundraising and provided it to an external committee, chaired by a Harvard faculty member. After a one-day virtual visit with no actionable recommendations, I received no subsequent feedback.
All of this raises the question: How is Harvard navigating the relationship of science, evidence, and ideology in these trying times? Right now, the answer seems clear. Harvard’s guiding imperative is defending the restoration of $3 billion in federal grants, which apparently means appeasing those in the Trump administration who have decreed that any discussion of Palestinian rights is by definition antisemitic.
On March 24, the Congressional Committee on Education and Workforce, led by Trump’s allies in the House of Representatives, stated in a report that while Harvard was one of many “hotbeds” of antisemitism, it had done some things right: “the university has dismissed the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Religion and Public Life Program, and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.”
And yet, the matter of federal funding remains contested.
Well done, Harvard.
* Mary T. Bassett ’74 is a Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights in Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is the former director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights.
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