My sister stood with a few other students in the dim light of the old lampposts in the Harvard yard, smoking and chatting casually. "Oh, are you Palestinian?" one of them asked as he leaned over to light the cigarette at hers. “My cousin is in the Israel Defense Forces (Israel Army).

Then he put the cigarette backward in his mouth, burning the ends between his teeth. "That's how my cousin smokes when shooting Palestinians at the border," he said. "So those idiots can't see the flame."

That night, my sister shook, and my sister called our parents and later reported the incident to her resident mentor. She looked for a way to file a formal complaint, but found nothing. Arabs are not considered “protected classes.” In the political climate of accusations in late 2001, such hate speech was not only tolerated—it was invisible.

Twenty years later, there has been little change. In April 2025, Harvard President Task Force described a report on combating anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias among Muslim and Arab students, faculty and staff. The report notes that the signs of campus climate are “uncertainty, abandonment, threats and isolation.” Nearly half of the Muslim students surveyed said they were physically unsafe at Harvard, while 92% of all Muslim students revealed that they were concerned about the professional or academic consequences of expressing personal or political views.

Harvard has shaped himself as a free speech fighter on the national stage because he refused to negotiate with the Trump administration its demands for diversity, equity and inclusive measures for colleges and punish student protesters.

But within the Harvard campus wall, we have seen President Alan Garber overseeing the systematic erasure of teaching, research and scholarships about Palestine, when more than 51,000 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands were imposed on displacement under Israel’s ruthless Israelis. Before Harvard escaped hostile takeover from our billionaire president, it conquered the demands of its billionaire donors in terms of student discipline, campus speeches and academic freedom.

To please its right-wing donors, Harvard has adopted a unilateral conceptualization of campus security, where opposition to Israeli violence against Palestinians is considered threatening. As a result, university administrators are eager to deal with anti-Semitism on campus, but they have also reviewed and reviewed Israeli criticism rhetoric and scholarships in the name of fighting anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, there are fewer ideas about anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia than afterwards. University administrators remain silent as students, faculty and staff experience. They have shared information about international students with the Department of Homeland Security as students on nearby campuses have been kidnapped, detained and deported by masked immigration and customs law enforcement officers (ICE) officials in an effort to oppose Israel's international law violations.

In addition to turning a blind eye to intimidation and abuse, the university’s leaders often take action to eliminate speeches, scholarships, advocacy and perspectives in Palestine.

Last year, Harvard, the university’s unelected governing body, vetoed faculty and staff and banned 13 seniors from graduating in protest of genocide in Gaza and breaking in with decades of disciplined precedent. The university banned the only Palestinian University advocacy group by inconsistently implementing the university’s ambiguous and “evolving” incident co-sponsorship policy twice, a warning from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that “raises the ghost of discrimination.” Starting in January, the U.S. Department of Education conducted a lesser-known Chapter Six settlement from January, finding that Harvard failed to meaningfully investigate or adequately respond to 125 cases of discrimination and harassment reported through its anonymous report hotline, especially those “based on Palestinian, Arab, Arab and/or Muslim shared ancestors.” Although President Gaber has said that Harvard should condemn “hateful speech” based on institutional voice policy, this does not apply to the horrible “joke” that Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, once bothered by student bombings to disrupt a speech at Harvard Business School in March 2025.

A handful of teaching and research programs for Harvard Palestinian teachers to learn about Palestine have been reviewed, eliminating or being threatened by phase-out. In a matter of months, Harvard canceled a panel of Palestinian children in Harvard Medical School in Gaza, ended its sole partnership with the University of Palestinian and canceled the Religious and Public Living Program at Harvard Theological Seminary, which targets Israel/Palestine as a case study. According to the New York Times, Harvard also rejected the leadership of the Center for Middle East Studies, which was "the dedication of critics."

Given that all universities in Gaza have been demolished and more than 80% of schools have been destroyed or damaged, it is particularly chilling to eliminate Harvard University plans on Palestine, with professors, teachers and students in Gaza having systematically attacked. The United Nations calls this “academic agent” – a systematic erasure through destruction of educational infrastructure, arrest, detention or killing students, faculty and teachers.

The erasure and elimination of knowledge production by the Palestinian and Palestinian speeches at Harvard University on the defense of the U.S. Palestinian human rights has therefore had a significant impact on the security of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

This time last year, unprecedented mobilization of campuses across the United States in support of Palestinian freedoms has brought overwhelming public opposition to the Israeli attack on Gaza. Ultimately, opposition to Israel’s actions against the Palestinians became so voiced that then-President Joe Biden was an ardent supporter of Israel – threatening an arms embargo on Israel if the humanitarian situation in Gaza does not improve.

Today, Harvard and other universities have curbed protests against Israel’s all-out war against Gaza, and in the United States, Palestine’s suffering and death are increasingly silent. As public and media attention deviates from Gaza, the pressure from U.S. leaders to intervene (even admitting the scale of the crisis) has almost disappeared.

The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recently announced: "The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now probably the worst situation in 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities." Jonathan Whittall, local director of OCHA, stressed that what is happening in Gaza is no longer similar to conventional wars. "People in Gaza told me they felt it was intentional to demolish Palestinian lives," he said. Malnutrition is surging as Israel has sealed its borders into food, medicine and all humanitarian aid for more than two months. Meanwhile, the scenes that should shock the world - the explosion of the body of a child who was blown up, the family burned to death - have become what Whittle calls "a everyday atrocities."

Both the Trump administration and Harvard University billionaire donors have a clear understanding of the important role that universities play in shaping American society and public opinion. When Harvard leaders announce their commitment to “diversity of perspectives,” we can rest assured that we will hear more from speakers like Jared Kushner, who spoke at Harvard Kennedy School last year about his plan to “get the job” and develop “valuable seaside property” in Gaza, rather than Palestinian kid-friendly friendly friendly people that would make us uncomfortable or uncomfortable.

Excitingly, hundreds of university presidents signed a letter against President Trump's attempt to take over American higher education. But for decades, their institutions have been eager to succumb to the will of billionaire donors. Over the past year and a half, these donors have shaped everything from campus speeches to student discipline and even course courses. In this corrupt bargaining, the concept of “school security” has been weaponized to curb so-called genocide rhetoric from the United Nations and other human rights groups. Anti-discrimination language has been distorted to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs – Harvard’s own DEI office is now quietly renamed the Office of Community and Campus Living.

This moment cannot be separated from the broader history. It echoes the 1971 Lewis Powell memorandum, which outlines how companies can penetrate U.S. institutions, especially universities, to align them with corporate interests. Today, the “Palestine exception” has become a key entry point in the ideological capture of higher education for decades.

For Harvard and his peers, resisting the federal excessiveness, and surrendering to oligarchic donors simply does not resist - it is surrender. If we don't fight together, we may not be able to fight soon. As President Gaber wrote, “the fearless and unrestricted pursuit of truth liberates humanity”, then he and all of us must demand liberation without exception. For each of us.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own views and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.