Harvard Replaces Leader of Health Center Said to Have Focused on Palestinians
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The center at the university’s public health school was also a focus of the Trump administration after having been examined in a Harvard antisemitism report earlier this year.
Harvard’s public health school is changing leaders at a center focused on human rights, which had been targeted by the Trump administration as part of a broad campaign to pressure the university over allegations of antisemitism.
Mary T. Bassett will leave her role as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, or FXB Center, which she has led for seven years. Andrea Baccarelli, dean of the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, made the announcement in a note to the school community on Tuesday.
The FXB Center was cited last spring in a report by Harvard’s task force on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias for allegedly focusing “heavily on Palestinians” in course offerings and guest lectures, “which also rarely presented Israeli points of view except those of the state’s harshest critics.”
Dr. Baccarelli’s note praised FXB’s “high-impact work” under Dr. Bassett, but did not explain the change in directors. The change in leadership has led to criticism by some on campus, including a petition to reinstate Dr. Bassett.
The center became part of the Trump administration’s focus on Harvard early this year, as government officials targeted the school over allegations that it had not done enough to combat antisemitism on its campus.
In a letter to Harvard in April, the Trump administration demanded that the university hire an outside expert to audit the FXB Center for signs of antisemitism, along with other centers and programs. The demand was part of a longer list that included asking Harvard to overhaul hiring and admissions practices, discontinue diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and revamp student discipline policies. Harvard refused and filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration instead.
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