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

With 80% of its $53 billion endowment restricted by donors, Harvard announced plans to borrow $750 million as “contingency planning,” while facing a $2.26 billion freeze in Federal funding.

Harvard has spent two years throwing tantrums, making excuses, and avoiding accountability while Jewish students faced unprecedented bigotry on campus since October 7, 2023 — an event that prompted more than 30 student groups to issue a statement blaming Israel entirely for the massacre.

Harvard is widely regarded as a prestigious Ivy League school, a hedge fund with a campus, or the world’s top university. But its refusal to address anti-Jewish hatred reveals an undeniable truth: Harvard is the ultimate trust fund kid. 

Playing by Different Rules

Trust fund kids operate by a simple principle: rules apply to others, not them. Harvard exemplifies this attitude in its response to campus hatred against Jews.

When the Department of Health and Human Services issued a 34-page Notice of Violation on June 30 documenting Harvard’s “deliberate indifference” to anti-Jewish harassment, the findings spoke for themselves. Federal investigators found Jewish students were spit on, stalked, physically assaulted, and excluded from campus spaces while Harvard administrators debated “context.”

The most revealing example, according to the federal Notice, is that Harvard police “essentially refused to investigate” the videotaped assault of Israeli student Yoav Segev in October 2023. Despite footage from multiple angles, including a news helicopter, police wouldn’t cooperate with prosecutors seeking to identify additional attackers.

When one officer showed determination to pursue justice, the Notice states that Harvard “swiftly removed him from the investigation” and told officers “to halt their investigation and not to cooperate with local authorities.”

Assistant District Attorney Ursula Knight called Harvard’s behavior “a surprise to the Commonwealth,” telling the court that Harvard police “essentially refused to do that work.” This wasn’t mere incompetence. It was a deliberate strategy to protect perpetrators of anti-Jewish violence.

When prosecutors agreed to a pretrial diversion allowing the students to avoid conviction entirely — they walked away with little more than 80 hours of community service for assault — Harvard still declined to discipline or even investigate the students under its own policies.

On the contrary, Harvard rewarded the two students that the prosecutor said were responsible for the assaults. One received a $65,000 Harvard Law Review fellowship to work at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization whose executive director said he was “happy to see” Gazans “break the siege” on October 7 and declared that Israel “does not have that right to self-defense.” The other became a class marshal for graduation. This isn’t institutional failure. It’s institutional protection of bigotry.

Hollow Gestures

When pressured, Harvard responds with performative charity work. The university announced “partnerships” with Israeli universities that amount to existing exchange programs with new branding. It’s a masterclass in creating the appearance of action while changing nothing.

More telling is Harvard’s timing. The university published its antisemitism report the same day as its Islamophobia report, treating both communities’ suffering as equivalent public relations problems to be managed simultaneously. This wasn’t about reckoning with systemic issues. It was about damage control.

Harvard’s idea of accountability? Offering a course called Palestine 1000 Years, taught by three professors who participated in the illegal encampments that harassed and denigrated Jewish students in the spring of 2024. Imagine the outrage if Harvard offered a course on “Confederate Heritage” taught by professors who participated in white supremacist rallies.

Selective Compliance

Trust fund kids show a remarkable ability to choose which rules apply to them. When the Biden administration investigated Harvard for civil rights violations over legacy admissions in 2023, Harvard cooperated quietly without lawsuits or public complaints. An investigation that could justify admitting more full-tuition-paying international students while burnishing Harvard’s diversity credentials? No problem.

But when the Trump administration investigates Harvard for enabling anti-Jewish hatred, using Harvard’s own task force findings as evidence, suddenly Federal oversight becomes an assault on academic freedom requiring immediate legal action, especially to free Federal funding that Harvard wants. 

The difference reveals Harvard’s calculation. Investigations that align with Harvard’s political positions and financial interests are acceptable. Investigations that threaten to expose institutional failures and demand real accountability? Outrageous government overreach.

Harvard’s selective enforcement reveals its true priorities. When removing professors for research misconduct, the university moved swiftly and publicly. Francesca Gino became the first tenured professor fired in 80 years after allegations of data falsification, a decision Harvard announced with fanfare and defended vigorously.

But when Harvard quietly removed professors connected to anti-Jewish hatred on campus, it did so without public announcements or victory laps. The message was clear: some forms of misconduct deserve public accountability, while others merit quiet protection.

The HHS Notice of Violation documented this pattern extensively. Students who violated identical campus policies received wildly different punishments depending on which of Harvard’s 13 schools they attended. When even these minimal consequences faced faculty criticism, Harvard reversed suspensions and downgraded sanctions. The Palestine Solidarity Committee, which repeatedly violated campus rules, faced the same ineffectual temporary probation year after year, restrictions that barely limited activities during the academic year.

Real Consequences Arrive

Trust fund kids can’t be trusted to change. They double down on anything that maintains their fragile appearance of respectability among their peers. Harvard’s been prioritizing its fight against the Trump administration. It fights the Trump administration harder than it ever fought antisemitism.

The government’s Notice of Violation gives Harvard a choice: implement meaningful reforms or face US Justice Department intervention.

Given Harvard’s track record of broken promises and cosmetic changes, Federal enforcement may be the only opportunity for a new path. For an institution claiming to educate leaders, Harvard’s own leadership has been conspicuously absent when moral courage mattered most. Harvard would strengthen its case against government overreach if it had actually protected Jewish students instead of enabling their harassment.

Roni Brunn is a writer and advocate for Jewish life in higher education.