 Roth was the director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for nearly 30 years before stepping down last April. He was quickly invited to be a senior fellow at the Kennedy School, but then had the offer rescinded by Dean Douglas Elmendorf, who reportedly claimed that the reason was that Human Rights Watch was biased against Israel. No evidence to back up that accusation has been offered. The understated report that HRW published in 2021 -- "A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution" -- was a very long time coming, well-documented, and well-received. Not only has HRW been restrained in its criticism of Israel, but it has gone out of its way to report on the human rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, HRW has been severely criticized for years for its bias in favor of the U.S. government. RootsAction once launched a campaign demanding that HRW close the revolving door it had with the U.S. government, whereby HRW leaders frequently rotated in and out of top government jobs. In fact, HRW has often defended U.S. and NATO wars, while focusing much of its criticism on designated enemies of the United States. That record ought to put one in the good graces of the funders and deciders behind an elite U.S. university. But a bit of truth-telling about Israel is enough to unravel it all. Now Roth has accepted an offer from the University of Pennsylvania, and has publicly observed that Harvard's Dean Elmendorf "has no backbone whatsoever." So, it's not clear that Roth would like to be reinvited to Harvard. But we would like Harvard to apologize and to state publicly that holding the Israeli government to the same standards as other governments will no longer constitute grounds for shunning or firing at Harvard. Click here to quickly email Dean of Faculty Douglas Elmendorf; Harvard’s Board of Overseers President Paul Choi; executive committee Vice Chair Leslie Tolbert; and Harvard Kennedy School media relations office to tell them what you think. |
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