The Harvard Crimson's endorsement of BDS and journalistic neutrality on campus
When the Harvard Crimson announced its support of BDS it violated one of the fundamental tenets of journalism.
On April 29th, the Harvard Crimson, the student-run newspaper of the most prestigious university in North America and one of the most prestigious in the world published an editorial section on behalf of its Editorial Board avowing its support for the BDS movement. The editorial states that “Israel remains America’s favourite first amendment blindspot” and that they reject the 2002 statement by the Harvard Crimson Editorial Board that BDS as a whole failed to encapsulate “the nuances and particularities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. The editorial concludes by saying that “As a board, we are proud to finally to finally [sic] lend out support to both Palestinian liberation and BDS - and we call on everyone to do the same”.
There are many issues with this statement, the least of which is the timing of its publication on the day after Yom Hashoah. While it’s not possible to cover every problem with editorial here, there are a few that simply cannot be ignored.
The editorial references reports issued by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as being sources bolstering their proclamation of support for BDS. These reports both claim that Israel is an apartheid state and engaged in human rights abuses. But it’s important to understand the context of the organizations that produced these reports. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have spent an inordinate amount of time criticizing Israel, especially compared to the criticism they have failed to level against China, North Korea, Myanmar, and other countries that are actively engaging in real atrocities.
The author of the Human Rights Watch report. Omar Shakir, signed a pledge in 2015 to honour the BDS call. Human Rights Watch has additionally declined offers to engage in conversations about Antisemitism. Amnesty International has a long history of delegitimizing the Jewish state. Amnesty International officials have referred to Israel as a scum state and engaged in various Antisemitic rhetoric in addition to the outsized focus they place on Israel when they fail to condemn the actions of the Chinese government against the Uyghurs. These organizations are hardly unbiased when it comes to Israel.
The editorial then goes on to reference an Associated Press reporter who was allegedly dismissed because of her stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict and the “shunning” of students and others who engage in pro-Palestinian activism, as an indication of the power imbalance in discussions of the Israel-Hamas conflict. While there is so much that can be said about how little power students supportive of Israel have on, particularly liberal, campuses today, I digress.
The journalist in question is named Emily Wilder. Wilder was dismissed for violating Associated Press’ social media policy, however, it wasn’t explicitly because she was vocally supportive of Palestinian rights, and instead, because Associated Press felt that her social media activity was undercutting the safety of journalists in the region and threatening their reputation as an unbiased, fair, and credible news source. While most of the Twitter activity from that period has been deleted, reporting from then indicates that concerns around bias were somewhat legitimate, both because of Wilder’s references to Zionists as a problematic group, and her assertions that news media consistently used “Israel” to refer to the region and the term “war”, rather than “siege and occupation”, and that the use of these terms were “political choices”. Without getting too deep into the weeds on this one, Israel is the only nation-state recognized on that piece of land, so to refer to the area as anything else would be factually incorrect based on the current division of land. As an extension of this, a nation-state cannot be an occupier of land that is part of its own country, so again, it is grammatically and factually accurate to refer to the conflict as a war.
The shunning of students referred to in the editorial links to an article about the Canary Mission, and incorrectly states that it is used to shut down legitimate criticism of Israel. The Canary Mission, whose name comes from the expression “the canary in the coal mine”, is a compiled list of students, professors, professionals, and organizations that have engaged in Antisemitic behaviour. To end up on the list, you need to have done more than simply be critical of Israel. Individuals are added to the list because they have promoted violence against Jews in North America or Israel, organized and attended rallies that involved Antisemitic rhetoric, and signed statements that promoted BDS and legitimated violence against Jews in Israel. It is not a tool that is used lightly. There is an important conversation to be had about the student names added to that list because young people are growing and changing and often easily impressionable, but our actions have consequences and promoting violence against Jews should not be the exception to that.
The premise of the editorial is BDS, is that by endorsing BDS the Harvard Crimson is both supporting a movement for Palestinian liberation and also not engaging in Antisemitism. This is wrong on both counts.
BDS stands for “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” of Israel. It is a campaign that arose around the time of the second Palestinian Intifada in 2000, and grew in prominence in 2001 following the Durban Conference. BDS was designed to somewhat emulate the campaigns against South African apartheid in the 1980s because of a belief that Israel is engaging in occupation and enacting apartheid against the Palestinian people. But the campaign rarely seems to be working towards the betterment of the Palestinian people. The founder of the BDS movement has stated that its goal is to see Israel dismantled as a Jewish state. Notably, BDS is firmly anti-peace. It rejects the adoption of a two-state solution and focuses on delegitimizing Israel’s right to exist and opposing normalization efforts that seek to resolve tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
Beyond attempting to interrupt positive work being done to resolve tensions in Israel, BDS actually does very little to negatively impact Jews in Israel or positively impact Palestinians. In fact, BDS movements in the United States have forced companies like Soda Stream, which was creating jobs in Palestinian territories, to move their plants to other parts of Israel because of the impact on their North American sales. The primary effect of BDS has been to make life really uncomfortable for Jewish students and student groups on campuses, by engaging in rhetoric and protests that threaten their emotional and physical safety.
While all of these elements are crucial for understanding the problems with the editorial, the reality is that publishing this statement, as a news outlet, was completely irresponsible and inappropriate, to begin with. This was not the Harvard Crimson Editorial Board’s first foray into vocalizing its support for BDS. In a February 2020 editorial disclaimed as representing the majority view of the Harvard Crimson Editorial Board, they stated their support for the founding of the Harvard Jewish Coalition for Peace and Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine clubs on campus, as well diving into the merits of the BDS movement. So the time seems more than apt for a little lesson on journalistic neutrality.
We all carry biases, implicit and explicit, and news organizations are in no way exempt from this. However, news organizations also have a duty to be impartial and to report the facts and the truth, to the greatest extent it is known. Part of this impartiality means not proclaiming their support for particular political candidates or social movements. By publicly stating their support for BDS, what the Harvard Crimson is saying is that they have chosen a side, and not only in an international conflict, but in how they will be reporting on issues that occur on campus involving Jewish students. This is already exemplified in their characterization of the Wall of Resistance as not being Antisemitic, despite the very first panel proclaiming that “Zionism is Racism, Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, Apartheid”. That statement is blatantly Antisemitic, and to so publicly turn a blind eye to that is to shout from the rooftops that Anti-Jewish behaviour at Harvard will not receive adequate or fair coverage in the campus newspaper.
There is a place in every newspaper for writing commentary, and position statements on different social and political movements. That place is the opinion section. This was an editorial, not an opinion. It was a statement by the Editorial Board of the Harvard Crimson that they have chosen a side, and that this choice will be influencing their editorial decisions moving forward.
Harvard faculty and administration should be paying attention because these are the young people you are responsible for moulding and sending out into the world.
Orlee Marini-Rapoport, the Editorial Chair of the Harvard Crimson tweeted out the editorial and stated that as a Jew she was proud of this decision.
I’m not here to call her “kapo” or to delegitimize her identity as a Jew, as I’ve seen others do on Twitter. In fact, I applaud her decision to leave the comments open on her Tweet and to take public vitriol like a champ. I’ve seen far more public people do much less.
But Orlee, I think you are really misinformed, both as a Jew and as a Journalist.
Absolutely, we need to be critical of government actions when we disagree with them. This without question, extends to the actions of the Israeli government. You are absolutely correct that we need to speak out against injustice in the world. But that’s not what BDS is. BDS is a movement predicated on eradicating the only Jewish state. You and I are lucky enough to have grown up in a world where Israel has always existed, and so it’s really easy for us to take the safety and security it provides for Jews the world over, for granted. It is easy for us to forget how much we have benefitted from Israel’s existence. This does not mean that you need to support the decisions of the Israeli government. I don’t, lots of the time and on lots of issues, many having nothing to do with the disputed territories. It is so important to understand the difference between being critical of Israel and BDS.
But even more, as a journalist and a student at Harvard, you should have known better than to allow your Editorial Board to make this kind of political position statement. Your duty is to be unbiased observers of what takes place on campus. If a student wishes to avow their support for BDS, they can write an opinion piece. As the leader of the Harvard Crimson, it was your responsibility to remind the Editorial Board about their duty to be neutral, and the importance of not engaging yourselves in political disputes, regardless of your personal feelings on the situation.
Wow Sadie!! This is such an important piece - I hope the Crimson Edit team sees this!
Bravo Sadie!