Harvard announces school leaders will stay out of hot-button political issues from now on

Harvard University announced on Tuesday that leadership will no longer make public statements on controversial issues, months after its president resigned following backlash over a statement she made on the Israel-Hamas war.

A faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group made the decision that leaders will not to “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

University President Alan M Garber accepted the recommendation, which was also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body, The Harvard Crimson reported. The policy will apply to administrators, governing board members, deans, department chairs and faculty councils.

“There will be close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether a given issue is or is not directly related to the core function of the university,” the working group said. “The university’s policy in those situations should be to err on the side of avoiding official statements.”

Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned from her post in January following a statement she made on Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In a statement, signed by Ms Gay and 17 other Harvard officials, administrators said they were “heartbroken by the death and destruction” caused by the Hamas attack. The administration was criticized by some who said the statement didn’t go far enough to condemn the Hamas attacks and antisemitism.

According to the student newspaper, the university is hoping to avoid a similar situation with the new guidelines. Mr Garber, the university’s new president, has also established groups to fight anti-Semitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias.

Going forward, the university should clarify that leaders who choose to speak out about current affairs do not speak on behalf of the university, the working group stated. There are concerns that conflicting viewpoints could cause communities within the institution to become alienated.

“Because few, if any, world events can be entirely isolated from conflicting viewpoints, issuing official empathy statements runs the risk of alienating some members of the community by expressing implicit solidarity with others,” the group said.

Harvard employees were notified of the changes in an email from Mr Garber and signed by 17 other top administrators on Tuesday.

According to the Harvard Crimson, the administration did not address decisions on divestment and investment.

Students across the country, including at Harvard, have built encampments and protested on campus in recent months, demanding that their universities divest from companies supplying the Israeli military in light of the war.

Hundreds of students have been arrested, including two Harvard graduate students who are facing misdemeanor assault and battery charges following a confrontation with an Israeli student at a pro-Palestine protest in October.