Rabbi David Wolpe Resigns From Harvard’s Antisemitism Committee

Rabbi David Wolpe, the rabbinic fellow for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, announced that he had resigned from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard University early Friday morning in a post on X.

1/3 Resigning, a Hanukkah Message: As of today I have resigned from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard. Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members of the committee, the short…

— David Wolpe (@RabbiWolpe) December 7, 2023

"Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members of the committee, the short explanation is that both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped," wrote Wolpe.

The rabbi stressed that he still believes Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, is a "kind and thoughtful person" and that the university is "still a repository of extraordinary minds and important research."

"However, the system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil. Ignoring Jewish suffering is evil. Belittling or denying the Jewish experience, including unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe. Denying Israel the self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil," wrote Wolpe.