On Harvard FAS Survey, Most Faculty Say There Is Not ‘Systemic Antisemitism’ on Campus

A majority of respondents to The Crimson’s annual Faculty of Arts and Sciences survey said they did not observe “systemic antisemitism” at Harvard for the second year in a row, even as the federal government uses antisemitism allegations to justify its campaign against the University.

The Trump administration has frozen nearly $3 billion in federal funds and attempted to revoke Harvard’s certification to enroll international students. In both cases, the White House said its actions were prompted by Harvard’s failure to address campus antisemitism.

Harvard has said it has taken serious steps to combat antisemitism, which University President Alan M. Garber ’76 is “present on our campus.” But the University has also maintained that the Trump administration is using charges of anti-Jewish hate as a pretext to coerce and punish Harvard.

What is clear is that antisemitism fears spiked after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and widespread student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Meanwhile, Arab and Muslim students — as well as pro-Palestine activists — feared doxxing, blacklisting, and harassment.

Nonetheless, in response to The Crimson’s survey, fewer than half of faculty members said they thought Harvard was home to systemic discrimination against either Jewish or Arab, Muslim, or Palestinian affiliates.

Around 21 percent of respondents said they believe there is systemic antisemitism on campus, while 63 percent of respondents said they “somewhat” or “strongly disagree” with the claim. A larger share, at 46 percent, said that there is systemic anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, or anti-Palestinian bias on campus, with 35 percent disputing its presence.

These figures roughly align with the responses to last year’s FAS survey, which found that nearly 60 percent of faculty respondents said they disagreed that there was systemic antisemitism at Harvard and more than 40 percent said the same for Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.

A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. An FAS spokesperson declined to comment.

The Crimson’s FAS survey was distributed to more than 1,400 faculty members, including both tenure-track and non-tenure-track faculty, with names collected from the FAS’ public masthead. Faculty were polled on demographic information, politics, and campus issues.

The email survey had 406 responses, with 260 fully completed and 146 partially completed. The survey was open for three weeks, from April 23 to May 12.

This is the fourth installment in a series on the survey results. The preceding pieces focused on faculty approval for Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration, the University’s governance, and academic freedom at Harvard. This installment covers faculty perspectives on bias towards Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian affiliates.

Bias at Harvard

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused Harvard — in grant termination notices and in court — of failing to combat actions that endanger the Jewish students on its campus. Last month, the administration formally accused Havard of violating federal civil rights law by failing to protect Israeli and Jewish students. And during oral arguments for Harvard’s funding lawsuit, a Department of Justice lawyer justified multibillion dollar cuts to the University’s federal funding by pointing to antisemitic incidents on campus.

But when asked whether they believe systemic antisemitism exists on campus, just 6 percent of faculty answered that they “strongly agree” and 15 percent said they “somewhat agree.” A plurality said they disagreed with the claim: 36 percent said they “strongly disagree” and 27 percent said they “somewhat disagree.”

Though the Trump administration has focused almost entirely on antisemitism, the proportion of faculty respondents who believed that Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students faced systemic discrimination at Harvard was nearly twice as high.

Around 17 percent said they “strongly agree” and 29 percent said they “somewhat agree.” Just 19 percent said they “somewhat disagree” and 16 percent said they “strongly disagree.”

Facing heightened tensions over the war in Gaza, Harvard has also tried to directly measure how many students feel impacted by discrimination. In early 2024, the University launched two task forces, one focused on combating bias against Jewish and Israeli students, the other aimed at bias against Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students.

The two groups released reports in April that described widespread hostility and exclusion on campus and found that 26 percent of Jewish students and 56 percent of Muslim students feared for their physical safety at Harvard.

The reports also included anonymous accounts of bias experienced by Harvard students, faculty, and staff. Jewish and Israeli students reported being excluded by friends or student organizations and complained that some instructors and curricula were unfairly critical of Israel. Muslim affiliates also reported facing verbal and physical abuse on campus, and many students faced doxxing, harassment, and blacklisting over their association with pro-Palestine activism.

Efforts to Combat Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Facing pressure from both Washington and its own campus, Harvard has made changes aimed at curbing bias on campus. The University formalized its protest policies, issued nondiscrimination guidance that focuses closely on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and expanded its academic offerings on Jewish and Israeli history. It has also issued new guidance on doxxing and online harassment.

Faculty respondents were split over whether these initiatives have been effective. Around half of respondents were satisfied with efforts to combat antisemitism: 18 percent were “very satisfied” and 31 percent were “somewhat satisfied.” A 32 percent share said they were “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied” and just 18 percent said they were “somewhat” or “very dissatisfied” with Harvard’s initiatives so far.

Faculty were less satisfied with Harvard’s efforts to tackle anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias. Just 8 percent of respondents said they were “very satisfied” and 24 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied” with the University’s response to these forms of discrimination, while 16 percent reported being “somewhat dissatisfied” and another 16 percent “very dissatisfied.”

Some Harvard affiliates have criticized the University’s two task forces for not taking sufficient steps to address anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias. At a rally in May, affiliates claimed that neither group’s report made real efforts to tackle “systemic anti-Palestinian bias.” The group then delivered over 450 discrimination complaints, detailing reports of a “hostile” campus climate, to Massachusetts Hall.

As the White House upped its attacks at Harvard over antisemitism, University leaders also initiated major overhauls at academic centers accused of imbalanced programming on Israel and Palestine and canceled a partnership with a Gazan university. Harvard officials dismissed the leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, closed the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative at the Harvard Divinity School, and cut ties with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Roughly half of faculty respondents took issue with the decision to dismiss the CMES leaders, with 36 percent reporting that they “strongly disagree” and 13 percent reporting that they “somewhat disagree” with the move. Another 13 percent “somewhat agree” and 14 percent “strongly agree” with the decision.

Before the dismissals, the center had drawn criticism from some affiliates, who alleged that its events platformed antisemitism. After word of the dismissals emerged, others condemned the move as an affront to academic freedom. Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors blasted the firings in a statement, writing that they infringed upon academic freedom. And at a packed faculty meeting that same week, faculty grilled FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra on the decision.

In March, the Divinity School announced it had suspended RCPI — part of the Religion and Public Life program, whose leaders left abruptly or were pushed out this spring — amid accusations that its curriculum presented a one-sided view of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

When asked whether they agreed with the decision to suspend the initiative, nearly half of respondents took issue with the move: 37 percent answered that they “strongly disagree” and 11 percent that they “somewhat disagree.” Roughly 26 percent said they either “somewhat” or “strongly agree” with the suspension.

A plurality of faculty respondents also disagreed with the decision to end Harvard’s research partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank. Of the respondents, 28 percent said they “strongly disagree” and 11 percent said that they “somewhat disagree” with the move. A slimmer proportion agreed with the decision: 15 percent said they “strongly agree” and 9 percent said they “somewhat agree.”

The move came after longstanding calls to end the collaboration from critics who noted that many Birzeit students supported Hamas — the militant group that has also been Gaza’s governing party since 2006. Last summer, HSPH launched an internal review of the center linked to Birzeit, Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, and subsequently decided to pause the partnership.

The shakeups by Harvard have all drawn criticism from some faculty as attempts at preemptive acquiescence to the Trump administration. The centers at issue — CMES, the FXB Center, and the RPL program — were all named in an April letter laying out demands from the Trump administration. The letter urged Harvard to audit the programs because they “reflect ideological capture.”

Nearly 90 percent of respondents to The Crimson’s FAS survey disagreed with Trump’s proposal to audit the programs.

Methodology

The Crimson’s annual faculty survey for 2025 was conducted via Qualtrics, an online survey platform. The survey was open from April 23 to May 12.

A link to the anonymous survey was sent via email to 1,425 faculty in the FAS and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The list comprised all faculty named on the FAS masthead for the current academic year, which also includes FAS department and standing committee affiliates whose appointments are in other Harvard schools.

In total, 406 faculty replied, with 260 filling the survey completely and 146 partially completing the survey.

To check for response bias, The Crimson compared respondents’ self-reported demographic data with publicly available data on FAS faculty demographics for the 2024-2025 academic year. (Unlike The Crimson’s survey, this data only includes faculty with FAS appointments.) The demographic data of survey respondents generally match these publicly available data.

Sixty percent of respondents said they hold a tenure or tenure-track position, according to the survey. According to the FAS Dean’s 2024 Annual Report, 56.81 percent of FAS faculty are tenured or on the tenure track.

Forty percent of respondents who identified their gender on the survey said they are female. Thirty percent of respondents who reported their race did not identify themselves as white. (Another 13 percent of respondents did not identify their gender, and 23 percent declined to identify their race).

These figures compare to 39 percent of FAS faculty who identify as women and 28.8 percent who are not white, according to the FAS Dean’s Report.

Among respondents who said they hold a tenure or tenure-track position, 34.5 percent belong to the Arts and Humanities division, 26.7 percent to the Sciences division, 32.8 percent to the Social Sciences division, and 6 percent to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

That means Arts and Humanities faculty were overrepresented and SEAS faculty were underrepresented among survey respondents. According to publicly available data for the 2023-24 academic year from Harvard’s Faculty Development and Diversity Office, the most recent year for which data is available, 26.4 percent belong to the Arts and Humanities division, 27.9 percent to the Sciences division, 32.5 percent to the Social Sciences division, and 13.2 to SEAS.

The Crimson could not find public FAS data on the distribution of non-ladder faculty across the divisions.

Survey responses were not adjusted for selection bias.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.