Harvard Rewarded Nine More Anti-Israel Activists With Prestigious Fellowships

Palestine protest as pipeline to Rhodes, Truman; “will pursue an MPhil in the Sociology of Marginality and Exclusion”

An anti-Israel protest at Harvard Law School, October 2023. Photo: The Editors.

The article here yesterday headlined “Harvard Law Review Gives $65,000 Fellowship to Anti-Israel Student Charged With Assault” attracted a query from a sophisticated reader of The Editors (a possible redundancy, as there are no non-sophisticated readers of The Editors). The reader asked for elaboration on the line that said “Harvard has a recent history of giving its own post-graduation fellowships to anti-Israel campus activists or of officially recommending the activists for competitive fellowships such as the Rhodes, Marshall, and Truman.”

I appreciated the request, as I had been meaning to do something on this. These fellowships function as rewards that Harvard bestows upon anti-Israel activists. Some of them are scholarships that Harvard awards itself. Others have external decisionmakers or funding yet are still driven by Harvard handpicking candidates to recommend effusively and to endorse officially via faculty letters and the Harvard fellowship office.

It is an important dynamic, because incoming and neutral Harvard students who haven't made up their minds on Israel-related issues see the social cues. They conclude that if you want a high-prestige, competitive fellowship, being a publicly known anti-Israel campus activist, even a disruptive one, certainly won’t hurt you and it may actually help you when it comes to getting Harvard faculty and fellowship office institutional support. There is a cumulative effect.

Here are some other recent examples other than the Harvard Law Review fellowship to Ibrahim Bharmal. I enumerate them here not to embarrass the students involved. The ones named below have a wide range of activities, from simply voicing foolish opinions to advocating a boycott of Israel to disrupting the activities on campus. Plenty of us make mistakes or have foolish political opinions in college. In almost all cases it shouldn’t be life-ruining. I mention these specific cases to fault the grownups at Harvard. They are the ones who are supposed to be in charge of these matters. They have jeopardized the university’s reputation and risked its federal funding by allowing the university to be hijacked by an anti-Israel, anti-America, and anti-capitalist mob that prizes a mission of activism rather than teaching, learning and research.

So here is this list of nine more recent fellowships to Harvard anti-Israel activists, in alphabetical order by last name of the fellowship recipient:

1) Tala Alfoqaha. Harvard’s website lists her as a winner of its Harvard Presidential Public Service Fellowship and notes that she “spent her summers working at the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.” The Crimson student newspaper has described her as an organizer with Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, a student group that isn’t officially recognized by Harvard and that’s been responsible for the disruptive protests.

2) Thomas Barone. He won a Rhodes scholarship. Writing for the Crimson, he asserted, “Israel is committing atrocities in Gaza” and asserted, “there is nothing innately radical about protesting the indiscriminate violence Israel is inflicting on the Palestinian people. It’s the opposite, actually — you would be hard-pressed to find an injustice more unambiguous, more immediately persuasive, than the live-time, live-streamed mass death of over 13,000 children.” He also wrote, “a bastion of antisemitism Harvard was and is not….I believe that the concerns about antisemitism are massively overstated.”

3) Suhaas Bhat. He won a Rhodes scholarship. According to the Crimson he also participated in the anti-Israel encampment protest in Harvard Yard.

4) Eva Frazier won a Truman scholarship. The Harvard announcement of it featured her wearing a keffiyeh. On another Harvard website she says, "I am also an organizer with the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Community."

5) Shraddha Joshi, a Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity organizer, was named a Harvard-UK Fellow, receiving the Paul Williams Scholarship at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

6) Nesrine Mbarek, reportedly the financial manager of Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus that signed the October 7, 2023 Israel-alone-is-to-blame letter, was named a Schwarzman Scholar.

7) Janna Ramadan, political action chair for the Society of Arab Students, and external director for the Harvard Islamic Society, won a Harvard Cambridge Scholarship. Ramadan also interned for Ayanna Pressley, an extreme anti-Israel Massachusetts congresswoman who is a member of the so-called “Squad.” Harvard announced, "At Cambridge, Janna will pursue an MPhil in the Sociology of Marginality and Exclusion as the Lt. Charles H. Fiske III Scholar at Trinity College."

8) Asmer Safi, an organizer with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, won a Rhodes Scholarship.

9) Eleanor Wikstrom, a Crimson editor active in that student newspaper’s endorsement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel, also won a Rhodes scholarship.