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ZOA joins the widespread outrage at Harvard for appointing Professor Derek Penslar to co-chair Harvard’s new Presidential Taskforce on Combating Antisemitism. Penslar promotes the same vicious, defamatory, antisemitic, anti-Israel accusations of “apartheid,” “occupation,” “ethnic cleansing,” “Jewish supremacism,” etc. that are at the root of the antisemitic attacks on Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard. Penslar is not equipped to combat the antisemitic anti-Israel ideology that he agrees with himself. Accordingly, Harvard must rescind Penslar’s appointment, or Penslar must resign from the taskforce.
Penslar’s statement to JTA on January 5, 2024, that Harvard’s antisemitism problem was “exaggerated” also bodes ill. [Penslar claimed: “Yes, we have a problem with antisemitism at Harvard, just like we have a problem with Islamophobia and how students converse with each other. The problems are real. But outsiders took a very real problem and proceeded to exaggerate its scope.”] The harassment and frightening antisemitic environment that Harvard’s Jewish and Israeli students are subjected to needs to be taken far more seriously.
Moreover, Penslar harshly criticized the widely-accepted helpful International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition on antisemitism and accompanying examples, and instead helped dangerous alternate definitions. Penslar served on the “Nexus Document” definition taskforce and signed, embraced and defended the dangerous, so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (“JDA”), along with anti-Zionist co-signers such as Peter Beinart who seek to dismantle Israel.
As the ZOA has explained, the JDA and Nexus definitions shield antisemites who try to mask their hatred of Jews by expressing it as hatred for the Jewish state.
Among other things, the JDA definition declares that the following are NOT antisemitism:
- “opposing Zionism” [i.e., denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination];
- arguing for alternative “arrangements” “between the river and the sea” [meaning, dismantling Israel or endangering Israel’s continued existence];
- accusing Israel of “systemic racial discrimination,” “settler colonialism” and “apartheid” and “compar[ing] Israel with other historic cases of settler colonialism and apartheid” [all of which are false, antisemitic comparisons];
- anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions;
- excessive criticism of Israel; and
- employing a “double standard” against Israel.
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