A Harvard task force released a scathing account of the university on Tuesday, finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.

A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, also released on Tuesday, found widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well, with 92 per cent of Muslim survey respondents saying they believed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions.

The findings, conveyed in densely packed reports that are hundreds of pages long, come at a delicate time for the university. Harvard is being scrutinised by the Trump administration over accusations of antisemitism, and is fighting the administration’s withdrawal of billions of dollars in federal funding. Harvard has sued the Trump administration in hopes of restoring the funding, the first university to do so.

In a letter accompanying the two reports, Dr Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, apologised for the problems that the task forces revealed. He said the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023 and the war that followed had brought long simmering tensions to the surface, and promised to address them.

“The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful,” Dr Garber, who took office in January 2024, wrote in the letter. “I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community.”

New York Times News Service