Harvard President Starts Academic Year With Talk of Talmud, Chutzpah

Anti-Israel protest at opening convocation as student paper urges boycott of Hillel

An anti-Israel protest at Harvard in March 2025 featuring one of the same banners used in roughly the same place on Monday of this week. Photo: The Editors.

With the federal government withholding billions in research funding from Harvard in part because of the university’s antisemitism problem, the opening days of the new academic year have offered a window into the approach Harvard is taking in handling the issue—and also into that approach’s limitations.