The reports found that both Jewish students and Arab and Muslim students said their peers viewed them with suspicion, leading them to play down their identities.
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A task force on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias urged the school to expand academic offerings related to antisemitism and Jewish history and to train students to more constructively debate and disagree with each other.
The task force on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias asked Harvard to provide legal and technical support to students who have been outed online as pro-Palestinian and faced harassment. It also asked the university to define and denounce anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian bias.
Additionally, the reports contained the results of a survey that found that Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students felt more alienated from the Harvard community than their peers from other identity groups, and less comfortable candidly sharing their opinions.
Harvard released the pair of long-awaited reports at an especially fraught moment. The school is locked in a struggle with President Trump, who is wielding the full powers of the federal government to intervene in the affairs of elite universities, including Harvard. Facing more than $2 billion of funding cuts and demands to submit parts of the university to federal oversight, Harvard sued the Trump administration last week arguing that the government’s actions violated the US Constitution.