Harvard Employee Was Fired For Celebrating Jewish Holiday, He Says

School told him he couldn’t file discrimination complaint because he was no longer a current community member

Former Harvard employee Daniel Lilienthal in Newton, Massachusetts, September 26, 2025. Photo: The Editors.

A former Harvard employee says the university fired him for observing the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana.

The former employee, Daniel Lilienthal, filed a complaint in July 2025 with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, charging Harvard with “unlawful discriminatory practices relating to his employment based on religion, as well as retaliation.”

He says that when he tried to report discrimination through Harvard’s own channels, specifically its Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying policy, he was told that the discrimination complaint process was only open to “current community members” and that, because he was already fired, he was not eligible to file a discrimination complaint with the university.

Lilienthal started work September 23, 2024, as Associate Director of Finance and Grants Administration at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in the Center for Biostatistics in AIDS Research. He took October 3 and 4, 2024, off for Rosh Hashanah. When he returned to work after the holiday, he says his supervisor reacted negatively and was critical of his absence. The following week he was abruptly fired on a Zoom call in which, according to Lilienthal, his supervisor told him that he was not a “fit” for the role.

“I was a fit until I took off for a Jewish holiday,” Lilienthal told The Editors in an interview.