Co-Chair of Harvard University’s Anti-Semitism Task Force Resigns After About a Month

The other co-chair faces skepticism after signing a letter that described Israel as “a regime of apartheid.”

A general view of Harvard University campus is seen in Cambridge, Mass. on April 22, 2929. Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

The co-chair of Harvard University’s task force on anti-Semitism has resigned, marking yet another high-profile departure from the advisory group assembled to address the Middle Eastern war’s fallout on the Ivy League school campus.

Raffaella Sadun, a professor at Harvard’s business school, was appointed to lead the task force as a co-chair in January by Alan Garber, who took over as interim Harvard University president after Claudine Gay resigned amid intense scrutiny over alleged plagiarism and her handling of the rise in anti-Israel activities at the school in the wake of last October’s terrorist attacks on Israel.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity to help advance the vital work to combat antisemitism and believe that President Garber has assembled an excellent task force,” Ms. Sadun said in a Feb. 25 statement to student newspaper Harvard Crimson. “I will continue to support efforts to tackle antisemitism at Harvard in any way I can from my faculty position.”

Mr. Garber has also confirmed the professor’s decision to step down from her post on the task force, saying that she “has expressed her desire to refocus her efforts on her research, teaching and administrative responsibilities” at Harvard Business School.

“Her insights and passion for this work have helped shape the mandate for the task force and how it can best productively advance the important work ahead,” he said in a statement to Crimson.

Harvard’s Jewish chaplain, however, said Ms. Sadun resigned because she did not have confidence in where the task force is headed.

“Basically her conclusion is that she didn’t feel confident or satisfied that she could lead and influence this process in a way that made sense to her,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, a prominent member of Harvard’s Jewish community, told The New York Times, noting that he had spoken with several people with knowledge of Ms. Sadun’s thinking.

Other Co-Chair Faces Skepticism

Ms. Sadun’s resignation comes as another co-chair, history professor Derek Penslar, draws skepticism from both within and outside of Harvard because of his opinion on Israel’s Palestinian policies.

A historian specializing in modern Israel and the Zionist movement, Mr. Penslar last August signed alongside hundreds of academics an open letter condemning Israel’s “illegal occupation” of Palestinian land, vowing to “overhaul educational norms and curricula” for Jewish students in order to provide a “more honest appraisal of Israel’s past and present.”

“As Israel has grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda, young American Jews have grown more and more alienated from it,” the letter stated. “Meanwhile, American Jewish billionaire funders help support the Israeli far right.”

“There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid,” it declared.

Mr. Penslar, who has written books about the history of Israel, previously said he believes that “evidence-based criticism of Israel’s past or present actions are not, on the face of it, anti-Semitic.” He also opposed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, although not because of its inherent anti-Semitism.

Many remained skeptical, if not clearly opposed to Mr. Penslar’s appointment to the task force.

“We don’t know what’s in Mr. Penslar’s heart, though we wonder what’s in his head,” the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote in an entry last month. “It seems obvious that he can’t lead a credible investigation into campus antisemitism if he equates Israel with apartheid.”

Opposition to Mr. Penslar, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Bill Ackman, a billionaire Harvard alum who played a leading role in the successful campaign against Claudine Gay.

“Harvard continues on the path of darkness,” Mr. Ackman wrote on social media platform X in a repost questioning Harvard’s pick of leader to make recommendations on fighting anti-Semitism on campus.

The Only Rabbi Resigned

In December, the only rabbi on the anti-Semitism task force stepped down, saying that the ideology fueling the hatred against Jews by categorically labeling them as “oppressors” is too deeply rooted at Harvard for just one advisory group to tackle.

“The system at Harvard, along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil,” wrote David Wolpe, a rabbi from California and visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School.

“Battling that combination of ideologies is the work of more than a committee or a single university,” he added. “It is not going to be changed by hiring or firing a single person, or posting on X, or yelling at people who don’t post as you wish when you wish, as though posting is the summation of one’s moral character.”

“This is the task of educating a generation, and also a vast unlearning.”