AhlulBayt News Agency: More than 400 Harvard affiliates have criticized the American university for its decision to remove pro-Palestine professor Mary T. Bassett from her role as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights.
The petition, which has garnered over 1,000 signatures, including support from public health and medical faculty at Columbia University, Brown University, and the University of Chicago, condemns Harvard's recent decision as “politically motivated” and calls for Bassett's reinstatement, according to the Harvard Crimson.
This decision comes amid ongoing political pressure regarding the center’s work related to Israel and Palestine, as reported by Harvard's student newspaper.
The signatories stated, “This targeted dismissal follows a series of politically motivated terminations of leaders at Harvard’s scholarly centers that address Palestine.”
Earlier this year, Harvard also dismissed the faculty directors of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies and chose not to renew the contract of the leader of the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, a Divinity School program focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The petition argues that Bassett's removal, particularly as a Black leader, “signals that both Black leadership and principled human rights scholarship are expendable when they challenge institutional comfort.”
Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors also warned against the decision.
Bassett’s dismissal had “grave implications for academic freedom,” it warned in a statement on Thursday.
“The University’s lack of forthrightness about the basis for these actions, as well as its disrespectful treatment of the affected faculty and staff, directly undermines the culture of intellectual vitality and viewpoint diversity Harvard says it seeks to promote,” the AAUP chapter wrote in a press release.
According to the statement, the circumstances of Bassett’s termination “echo” the removals at CMES, as well as the suspension of the FXB Center’s partnership with Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank and the dismantling of Harvard Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life program, which houses the RCPI.
“Especially in this moment of concentrated external attacks on our university’s fundamental values, our university’s scholars should be defended by Harvard’s leaders, not treated as collateral damage or sacrificial offerings,” the AAUP chapter wrote.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has launched a widely condemned crackdown against top US universities, including Harvard, over pro-Palestinian campus protests.
Academic institutions in the United States and Europe witnessed widespread protests against Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, which began on October 7, 2023, devastating the besieged Palestinian territory.
Israel has so far killed at least 70,373 Palestinians since launching the genocidal war on Gaza in 2023 following the al-Aqsa Storm operation, before a ceasefire deal was reached in the strip last October.
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