


Harvard University has created a task force to fight antisemitism on campus — and the effort is already embroiled in controversy.
The co-chair of the school’s newly appointed Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism once declared “veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization,” according to his 2023 book.
“Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians from their land and oppression of those who remain have made it one of the most disliked countries on the planet,” Jewish history professor Derek Penslar claimed in his tome, “Zionism: An Emotional State,” in which he wrote, “Jewish culture was steeped in fantasies (and occasionally, acts) of vengeance against Christians.”
The task force, announced Friday, comes as the university continues to roil in the fallout from recently ousted president Claudine Gay.
“Reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic acts on our campus have grown, and the sense of belonging among these groups has been undermined. We need to understand why and how that is happening—and what more we might do to prevent it,” Harvard’s interim president Alan Garber said in a statement announcing the new initiative.
In the days after Gay’s resignation, Penslar publicly downplayed the campus antisemitism he is now charged with investigating, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency outsiders had “exaggerated” the issue.
In August 2023, Penslar signed onto a letter from a group called Academics4Peace, in which Israel was derided as a “regime of apartheid,” guilty of “Jewish supremacism.”
The letter, which was signed by 2,900 people, also accused the country of attempting to “ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.”

Harvard’s most ferocious critic, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, slammed the decision to appoint Penslar to the task force.
“@Harvard continues on the path of darkness,” Ackman said.
“Harvard is going to double down on its anti-Semitism. Firing Gay was just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. The problem remains the racist and anti-Semitic DEI ideology,” added Ted Frank, director of litigation at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a non-profit law firm.
Harvard has faced a raft of antisemitic incidents since the Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. The university’s response has sparked donor revolts and a full scale congressional inquiry.
Reps or Harvard and Penslar did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post.