Harvard Student’s Thesis Alleges That Israelis Face Discrimination on Campus

Harvard University student Sabrina Goldfischer, who previously served as the president of the university’s Hillel, has published a thesis paper alleging that Israelis have faced discrimination on campus.

Goldfischer explained in an April 22 Times of Israel blog that the course of her investigation for her 110-page thesis––which examined the state of antisemitism on campus––revealed “the most acute examples of discrimination involved Harvard’s Israeli students.” “One student faced backlash for his involvement with Israel Trek, an Israeli student-led trip to Israel for Harvard students who do not identify as Jewish,” Goldfischer wrote. “He reached out to organizers of the anti-Trek movement on campus, hoping to begin a dialogue and potentially incorporate their feedback. They refused to speak to him. The Harvard Crimson published an article about the outreach effort, and quoted a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee, Harvard’s primary pro-Palestinian advocacy group, who had suggested, were they to meet with the Israeli student, that their physical safety might be jeopardized. He was shocked that The Harvard Crimson was willing to publish what felt like a personal attack.” She also recounted instances in which an Israeli student was allegedly told, “I can only imagine the war crimes you have committed” and another student who was barred from a “social organization” on campus due to being Israeli.

Goldfischer told the Journal that it was “shocking” for her to learn “the amount of the brunt of antisemitism and anti-Israeli discrimination that the Israeli community on campus has to bear.” “The stuff that Israeli students go through at Harvard … it’s outright discrimination that I don’t think would be tolerated for any other group on campus.” She added that she has heard even more “stories that I wish I could include” since finishing her thesis. “It’s really disgusting what Israeli students face on campus,” Goldfischer said, asking how it became this bad on campus and if it’s happening on campuses elsewhere.

Goldfischer took on the thesis after witnessing a spike in antisemitism on campus during the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas as well as the dispute over the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Goldfischer, who headed Harvard Hillel at the time, heard from Jewish students about how “a lot of their peers were posting stuff on social media being intensely critical––sometimes into antisemitic territory––of Israel, using tropes” on social media. “‘How can I be a student on Harvard campus when there’s such hatred towards a cause and community that I really care about?’” Goldfischer recalled hearing from students at the time.

Another factor that inspired Goldfischer to take on the thesis was out of concern for the fact that certain progressive spaces on campus reject Zionism. “A lot of people see being a progressive Democrat and being a Zionist to be contradictory views,” she said. “I view them as very much mutually enforcing of each other.” She added that “particularly in left-wing spaces, I felt some of that issue of bringing my full self and for me, my Zionism’s a part of me, my full Jewish self.” Having experienced “right-wing antisemitism” growing up in upstate New York, Goldfischer was interested in seeing how antisemitism “manifest at college campuses.”

Starting with a small list of people she had cultivated from heading Harvard Hillel, Goldfischer conducted 45-minute interviews––both in-person and over Zoom––with Jewish students at Harvard and at nearby campuses as well as Hillel staff members. Goldfischer aimed to make sure the various sects of Jewish community were represented, but told the Journal that “the real value of my thesis lies in the anecdotal work.”

One of the ways that Harvard can ameliorate the issues highlighted in the thesis is by “understanding how Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts [can] better serve and include Jewish students on campus,” Goldfischer argued, recounting how some students she interviewed told her it was the first time they had ever spoken about what happened to them on campus. “This is serious stuff that impacted their mental, academic, social health,” she said. “I should not be the first person to hear about [it]. There should be ways for them to feel like they can record this, have someone to talk about it and understand it. That should be institutionally based within the college.”

A spokesperson for the university told the Journal they couldn’t comment on current students’ work.