The cartoon was included in a social media post Sunday by two Harvard student activist groups — the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the African and African American Resistance Organization — as part of a graphic about historical ties between the Black civil rights movement and pro-Palestinian advocacy.
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Additional student groups and a pro-Palestinian faculty and staff group later posted the graphic on their own accounts.
“The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic,” Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, wrote on social media Monday after a group called Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine posted the image online. “Is there no limit?”
The cartoon appears to have originated from a 1967 newsletter published by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a major player in the 1960s civil rights movement. According to a New York Times article at the time, the two men depicted with ropes around their necks are boxer Muhammad Ali and then-president of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser.
According to the Times article, the SNCC newsletter condemned what it described as atrocities committed by Zionists against Arabs. The Times quoted a then-director of the Anti-Defamation League saying the newsletter, which included the cartoon, “smacks very heavily of antisemitism.”
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The graphic posted by the Harvard groups noted the “historical roots of solidarity” between the “Black liberation movements and Palestinian liberation.” It included the words, “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee likened Zionism to an imperial project. . .” beside an image of the cartoon.
A number of the Harvard organizations that posted the graphic, including PSC, AFRO, and the faculty group, later took it down. The faculty group apologized for posting it.
On a campus that has been riven by reports of resurgent antisemitism since Oct. 7 of last year, the posts provoked an uproar over the weekend.
University spokesperson Jason Newton called the social media posts “despicable.” Jeffrey Flier, a Harvard professor and former dean of Harvard Medical School, said in a social media post that there was “[n]o debate about this [cartoon] being antisemitic.” Harvard Chabad, a Jewish group, called it “Reprehensible. Bigoted. Hateful.”
“At a time when antisemitic incidents are at an all-time high and Holocaust denial is spreading both in the U.S. and abroad, Harvard faculty and students must understand and be held to account for the tremendous consequences of proliferating insidious tropes,” the Harvard Jewish Law Students Association said in a statement.
Newton said the matter is being referred to the Harvard College Administrative Board, which handles disciplinary proceedings for students and sanctioned student groups, such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee.
On Tuesday, Garber, who is Jewish, condemned the posts. “Perpetuating vile and hateful antisemitic tropes, or otherwise engaging in inflammatory rhetoric or sharing images that demean people on the basis of their identity, is precisely the opposite of what this moment demands of us,” he said in the message emailed to the Harvard community.
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“The University will review the situation to better understand who was responsible for the posting and to determine what further steps are warranted,” he added.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee is the same group that published a statement on Oct. 7 last year — the day of the Hamas-led attack on Israel — that plunged the university into turmoil after critics denounced it as justifying terrorism. “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the statement said. The group later said the statement was not a justification for violence against civilians, but rather sought to place the Hamas attack in the context of the long, violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Monday afternoon, as the backlash mounted, the two student groups took down the original graphic and replaced it with a new one that did not include the offensive cartoon. In a caption accompanying the new post, the groups said they had “inadvertently includ[ed] an image that played upon antisemitic tropes” and that the cartoon “was not reflective of our values as organizations.”
“Antisemitism has no place in the movement of Palestinian liberation, and we wholeheartedly disavow it in all its forms,” the groups said.
The faculty group removed the post from its Instagram account and issued a statement. “It has came to our attention that a post featuring antiquated cartoons which used offensive antisemitic tropes was linked to our account,” the group said. “We apologize for the hurt that these images have caused and do not condone them in any way.”
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As of Monday morning, the faculty group listed more than 100 signatories on its website under a statement describing the group’s goals. They included faculty and staff from Harvard’s law school, medical school, college, and school of public health.
One of the group’s leaders was Walter Johnson, a professor of history and African and African American Studies, who was, as of last week, also the faculty adviser to PSC. He has since resigned from both groups, according to messages seen by the Globe.
In a statement Tuesday, Johnson said, “I was surprised and saddened by the posting of the images, as I know many others were, but I am no longer in a position to speak on behalf of any organization.”
At some time on Sunday or Monday, the faculty group removed the names of all signatories from its website, according to archived versions of the site. A spokesperson for the group did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The social media posts were widely condemned over the weekend, including by critics from beyond Harvard’s walls. Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus who has led an activist campaign against Harvard over what he describes as runaway campus antisemitism, described the groups’ sharing of the cartoon as “grim” in a post on X, the social media platform.
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The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, a congressional committee investigating Harvard over antisemitism allegations, wrote on its X account: “This repugnant antisemitism should have no place in our society, much less on Harvard’s faculty.”
That congressional investigation entered a new phase on Friday when chairwoman Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said she was subpoenaing Harvard leaders, including interim president Garber. The subpoenas, reviewed by the Globe, would force Harvard to turn over a wide range of documents including disciplinary records, minutes of board meetings, and internal communications.
Foxx has contended Harvard has failed to create an environment for Jewish students free from discrimination and harassment. Separately, several Jewish Harvard students are suing the school over similar allegations.
Garber, who took over the presidency after former president Claudine Gay’s resignation last month, has convened two task forces to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia, which students say have gotten worse since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip.
Hilary Burns of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.
