Jewish students at Harvard find themselves at the center of a storm.
For a year and a half, influential alumni, national politicians, the international media, and now the president of the United States have been pointing to Jewish students as the primary victims of what they see as the rot at the core of American universities.
In their telling, leftist ideology, and its antipathy to Israel, have created a breeding ground for rampant antisemitism that has forced many Jewish students to live in fear.
But many Jewish students at Harvard, including those concerned about antisemitism on elite campuses, say this political narrative distorts their experiences.
Interviews with more than a dozen Jewish students and recent graduates, and half a dozen Harvard alumni, faculty, and staff, found that many felt the climate has shifted significantly since the height of the Gaza war protests a year ago. Then, Jewish students were regularly confronted with offensive slogans and rhetoric around campus and online, experienced social shunning from peers, and reported incidents of bias and hate.
“It’s definitely a much more normal college experience,’’ said Charlie Covit, a Harvard sophomore, who raised the alarm about antisemitism at Harvard last year.
The reality of that shift hasn’t registered in the national discussion, and it’s at risk of getting drowned out by a long-awaited report Harvard says it will soon release. The report is expected to reflect testimony from students on campus last year during a surge of pro-Palestinian advocacy — a period that included a weeks-long encampment in Harvard Yard, and episodes of flagrant bigotry such as activists using antisemitic tropes and imagery, and the defacement of posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Many Jewish students interviewed said they don’t feel antisemitism much in their daily lives this year, and they are far more worried about how the Trump administration’s assault on higher education will affect them.
“The Jews that I know at Harvard are broadly disturbed by the Trump administration’s attacks on our school,’’ said Maya Bodnick, a junior. “He claims he’s trying to help Jewish students, but in reality, what he’s doing just weakens the university that we all go to.’’
The situation on the ground is more nuanced than many outsiders understand, according to the people interviewed. Antisemitism has not disappeared from Harvard’s campus; Israeli students especially experience social shunning. Students who consider themselves Zionists sometimes feel shut down in discussions with peers, and some believe that certain courses and academic programs are suffused with anti-Israel bias — a claim sharply contested by others in the Harvard community.
Harvard president Alan Garber is trying to navigate a careful course between dealing with antisemitism on his campus while fighting the Trump administration’s supposed remedies for it.
“We still have more to do, but we believe that we are making progress in addressing it,’’ Garber said in an interview Wednesday.
He’s found some pro-Palestinian advocacy, such as a letter posted on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, offensive. And Garber, who is Jewish, has been the target of antisemitism himself. The type of antisemitism he is most focused on is the shunning of “students who are Israeli or overtly Zionist, or in some cases overtly religious.’’
“That concerns me greatly. . . Shunning has a corrosive influence,’’ he said.
He’s tried to address the issue by updating and enforcing protest rules, adopting a definition of antisemitism promoted by some Jewish advocates, launching the antisemitism task force to study the subject and make recommendations, and promoting a more open environment for dialogue on difficult topics. And he’s under intense pressure to do more.
Garber is now locked in an extraordinary confrontation with President Trump over the government’s allegations of out-of-control antisemitism at the university.
The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force sent the school a list of demands on April 11 including directives to abolish diversity programs, change the way it recruits international students, and submit to audits of its hiring practices, among other measures. After Harvard publicly rejected the demands, the administration moved to freeze more than $2 billion in federal research funding. On Monday Harvard sued, arguing the government’s actions were unconstitutional.
“Attacking our research enterprise in the name of attacking antisemitism really gives rise to skepticism about what the goal is here,’’ Garber said.
“The real threat to higher education comes when places like Harvard let their students’ civil rights get trampled in a spineless attempt to coddle pro-Hamas activists,’’ said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields. “President Trump is standing up for every student denied an education or safe campus because left-wing universities fail to protect their civil rights.’’
Those interviewed overwhelmingly expressed the sentiment that Trump’s campaign will not help the environment on campus.
Some feared it could even make life harder for Jewish students.
Trump’s “threats to international students include threats to Jews,’’ said Maia Hoffenberg, a junior. Foreign students, including many Jews, “are living in a state of fear right now,’’ she said.
More than 100 Jewish Harvard students signed an open letter in recent weeks that voiced opposition to the Trump administration’s steps “being taken in the name of protecting us,’’ the letter said.
“In reality, the vast majority of Jews at Harvard do not support his efforts, and they see what he’s doing as an attack on academic freedom, and on us,’’ Bodnick said.
Jewish students interviewed largely said that their personal experiences at the university have been mostly positive, and this year especially has been less stressful and chaotic than the months following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
Alex Bernat, a senior, remains concerned about campus antisemitism, including academic programs and events he believes are biased against Israel. He said, though, that Jewish life remains “very active,’’ at Harvard, which gives him hope. He attends Shabbat dinners every week, and often sees hundreds of people gathered under a tent at Chabad, even on cold days.
“That is really maybe a bit underreported,’’ Bernat said.
Many Jewish students spoke about searching for jobs, studying for exams, and securing summer internship plans. The topic of antisemitism is much less a part of the daily discussion, said senior Lauren Perl, than it was last year when she and many peers worried about incidents of violence and antisemitism at campuses around the country.
“We were seeing at all these other schools the violence that was arising from the encampments, and we were seeing not violence arise from our encampment, but certainly rhetoric that I found concerning,’’ Perl said.
This year, Perl said, a “dramatically smaller cohort’’ of students is participating in pro-Palestinian protests at Harvard.
“It is so much less visible, so it feels significantly less threatening,’’ Perl said.
Participants in the encampments, including many Jewish students, said slogans like “Globalize the intifada’’ were not antisemitic, but calls for Palestinian liberation.
But many heard something else, a call for violence against Jews that referenced suicide bombings during the Second Intifada, as well as the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Pro-Palestinian activists and their allies have also argued that anti-Zionism is too often conflated with antisemitism, and that the university has targeted their movement and sought to limit their political expression.
In the interview Wednesday, Garber said Harvard’s rules concerning speech are “content-neutral,’’ meaning they apply to all political viewpoints and “are not selectively enforced.’’
There is debate within the Harvard Jewish community about the severity of antisemitism on campus, and where to draw the boundaries between hostility toward Jews and legitimate criticism of Israel, between bigotry and the kinds of clashes and misunderstanding that can occur in a multicultural community.
Some Jews at Harvard view antisemitism at the university as a relatively minor concern that rarely if ever affects their daily lives. Others say it is a pervasive problem that dates back well before Oct. 7 and was exacerbated last year.
At the height of the Gaza war protests, Jacob Miller, a student and former president of Harvard Hillel, urged Harvard’s senior leaders to respond more decisively to what he viewed as rising antisemitism and a hostile environment for Jews created by the pro-Palestinian movement.
Now he says the public perception of campus antisemitism is “a bit sensationalized.’’
“Depending on what media you listen to, people have a very twisted sense,’’ he said. Antisemitism “certainly exists, but it’s not like it gets in the way of anyone’s daily lives.’’
The egregiousness of some of the antisemitic incidents last year, including a protester’s poster featuring Garber with horns and a tail, leaves some worried that even if antisemitism is less visible on campus this year, the issue might not be permanently resolved. Recently a library employee tore down posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
“I do see the protests are not as disruptive [this year] and I’m really happy to hear’’ that Jewish students say the situation has improved, said Roni Brunn, a spokesperson for the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance. “But the conditions that allowed these protests to take over, the conditions that create the ostracism, they’re still there.’’
Jason Rubenstein, the executive director of Harvard Hillel, said in an interview that he tells prospective students’ parents that if a student is a Zionist, or perceived to be a Zionist, “you should expect social discrimination against you.’’
“It’s not like roving bands waving flags and shouting and Jewish students like hiding in libraries — that’s very rare,’’ Rubenstein said. “But the social discrimination is much more pervasive than people understand.’’
Richard Glazunov, a junior, said his Israeli friends have learned to hold back from telling classmates where they’re from. “When they do share that they’re from Israel, people will take a step back and not want to associate with them at all,’’ he said.
Barak Sella, an Israeli-American researcher who graduated from Harvard Kennedy School last year and is now a nonresident fellow there, says a similar dynamic can play out in classroom discussions, as well. As a student last year, he said he sometimes found himself debunking false claims about Israel or pushing back against inflammatory statements, such as comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany.
“If you ask any Jewish or Israeli student about this, they’ll tell you that whenever there are conversations in class about Jews or Israel, they become extremely charged, extremely toxic, and you feel targeted and ostracized,’’ he said.
Still, he said, he believes “things are moving in the right direction. There have been concrete steps taken.’’
Sella said some parts of the Trump administration’s antisemitism agenda are legitimate, but “the type of demands they sent are extreme government overreach.’’
“This is not primarily about antisemitism. This is about the Trump administration exercising power over universities,’’ he said. “It’s very clear.’’
Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns. Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.