Demonstrators take part in an “Emergency Rally: Stand With Palestinians Under Siege in Gaza,” amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Harvard University has ties to anti-Zionist nongovernmental organizations and other entities acting as proxy organizations for terrorist groups that warrant scrutiny and reproach, according to a new “preliminary” report published by nonprofit watchdog NGO Monitor.

Titled, “Advocacy NGOs in Academic Frameworks: Harvard University Case Study,” the report presents copious evidence that Harvard’s academic centers, including Harvard Law School, have come under the influence of Al-Haq and Addameer — two groups identified by the Israeli government as agents and propaganda manufacturers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. The NGOs, the report added, influence research and institutional culture, tilting the ideological balance of the campus toward anti-Zionism.

“The report demonstrates the major contribution from prominent advocacy NGOs to the atmosphere of propaganda and antisemitism at Harvard, particularly through frameworks claiming human rights agendas,” Professor Gerald Steinberg, who authored the report alongside Dr. Adi Schwartz, said in a statement. “The close cooperation between prominent NGOs and Harvard academic programs warrants urgent scrutiny. The blurred lines between scholarship and advocacy threaten academic integrity and risk further inflaming campus tensions.”

He added, “In this context, it is important to highlight the urgent need for transparency regarding funding for the NGOs and these Harvard academic frameworks.”

One academic center named in the report is the Harvard François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights (FXB), which was until this year formally partnered with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. The center, it explains, farms its research from an interconnected network of anti-Zionist figures and nonprofits, such as Amnesty International. Moreover, it appears to focus less on improving health outcomes than on politics and Gaza, having devoted 40 percent of its public events to the topic.

FXB director Mary T. Bassett, is particularly problematic, the report alleges.

“A review of her publication record reflects the absence of any expertise on health issues in conflict zones, in general, or regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular,” Steinberg and Schwartz write. “She has consistently displayed an anti-Israeli ideological bias, which is distributed widely through the center’s website and the media. For example, a week after [Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel], she published an ‘End-of-year message’ on the FXB website (since deleted), in which she wrote of ‘the potential genocide facing civilians in Gaza.'”

Another academic center, the Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC), has cooperated in presenting research to a United Nations commission of inquiry that has been widely accused of antisemitic bias. Additionally, an instructor there once worked as a fellow for Amnesty International, a human rights organization that legal experts and Israeli officials have lambasted for pushing anti-Israel “propaganda” and “antisemitic blood libels.” The academics and clinicians there, stationed both to teach and mentor students, use the classroom to replicate their biases, accoding to NGO Monitor.

“The clinic prides itself on finding jobs for its alumni at a variety of NGOs around the globe,” the report says. “In this sense, the clinic acts as a training framework and ‘feeder’ for the NGRO ideological advocacy network.”

Steinberg and Schwartz’s research comes amid concerns that Harvard University has become a hub for antisemitism and illiberalism that is glossed with a veneer of progressive values.

“Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,” US President Donald Trump said last month, writing on Truth Social. “The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER and HATE [sic]. It is truly horrific. Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all ‘American Apple Pie.’ Harvard is a threat to democracy.”

In April, the university released a long anticipated report on campus antisemitism and along with it an apology from interim president Alan Garber which acknowledged that school officials failed in key ways to address the hatred to which Jewish students were subjected following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

The over 300-page document provides a complete account of antisemitic incidents which transpired on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s (PSC) endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Jews as murderers of people of color — and said that one source of the problem is the institution’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups.

“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on campus,” Garber said in the statement that accompanied the report. “Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry. We will continue to provide for the safety and security of all members of our community and safeguard their freedom from harassment. We will redouble our efforts to ensure that the university is a place where ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirt of seeking truth; where argument proceeds without sacrificing dignity; and where mutual respect is the norm.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.