Harvard’s Academic Programs Serve as Platforms for Anti-Israel Advocacy, Report Finds

A new NGO Monitor report reveals that Harvard’s ties to politicized nonprofits have undermined academic neutrality and fueled antisemitism, promoting anti-Israel narratives through these partnerships

Harvard University’s collaboration with politicized human rights NGOs has undermined academic neutrality and contributed to antisemitism, according to an investigation by NGO Monitor.

In the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre and Israel’s military response, NGO Monitor launched a research project focused on Harvard’s ties to advocacy NGOs. The resulting report, published in May 2025, details how key centers within the university—the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights, the Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and International Human Rights Clinic, and the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy—consistently align with and promote NGOs that systematically demonize Israel, often using unverified and ideologically driven sources.

NGO Activism Disguised as Academic Research

The report directly challenges the portrayal of NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, BADIL, and Al-Haq as credible sources of human rights analysis. These organizations are not independent fact-finders. Instead, they selectively compile accusations against Israel, often repeating unverified testimonies, while ignoring context, such as Hamas terrorism or the targeting of civilians.

Credit: NGO Monitor

Al-Haq and Addameer, both prominently cited and featured by Harvard-affiliated speakers and events, are explicitly designated by Israel as part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) network, which has itself been designated as a terror group by the U.S. and E.U. Al-Shabaka, which includes several Harvard-affiliated fellows, promotes open calls for dismantling the State of Israel and justifies violence as resistance.

FXB Center

The FXB Center for Health & Human Rights hosted a program with Birzeit University in Ramallah, whose student council is dominated by Hamas affiliates and which praised the October 7 attacks. The “Palestine Social Medicine Course,” part of that partnership, was described as focusing on settler colonialism and structural violence, not medicine or empirical public health. It was suspended in March 2025 after public pressure and internal review.

Advocacy course in the FXB Center’s Palestine Program that pushed the narrative of Israel being a “Settler Colonial” state. Credit: FXB Harvard

Visiting fellows at FXB include Yara M. Asi, formerly of Amnesty International and the Arab Center Washington DC, and Rania Muhareb, formerly of Al-Haq. Asi has published material accusing Israel of “structural racism,” and Muhareb shared an article on October 8 2023, that labeled the Oct 7 massacre as “Gaza’s breakout.”

Director Mary Bassett has personally advanced claims of Israeli genocide and indiscriminate bombing in Gaza without any independent or peer-reviewed evidence. Her public statements omit any mention of Hamas terrorism, hostages, or Israeli casualties, according to NGO Monitor’s report.

Law School Clinic Feeding the NGO Ecosystem

Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic is staffed by individuals with active or past ties to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Bonnie Docherty, a senior lecturer, authored a 2024 HRW report that accuses Israel of war crimes while omitting any reference to Hezbollah, Hamas, or terrorism. The report repeats unverifiable claims from local NGOs in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

In 2022, the clinic partnered with Addameer on a submission to a UN commission accusing Israel of apartheid. Addameer is officially designated by Israel as a PFLP front organization.

Senior instructors such as Aminta Ossom (formerly with Amnesty International) and associate director Anna Crowe (collaborated with the Norwegian Refugee Council and signed petitions opposing Israeli policies) shape the curriculum and mentor students for careers in advocacy NGOs. These networks are not incidental—the clinic explicitly promotes employment in these same NGOs as a career pathway.

Carr-Ryan Center

The Carr-Ryan Center at the Kennedy School has hosted multiple speakers with records of defending Hamas and justifying antisemitic violence. In February 2024, it featured Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, who has been condemned by U.S. and European officials for antisemitic statements and for calling the October 7 massacre a form of resistance.

The center also gave a platform to Milena Ansari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and former spokesperson for Addameer. Another speaker, Muhammad Shehada of Euro-Med Monitor, has shared Hamas propaganda, accused Israel of mass sexual assault without evidence, and described sexual violence against Israeli female hostages as “gaslighting.”

These events are presented as academic discussions, but they provide no alternative perspectives, no scrutiny of Hamas, and no acknowledgment of Israeli suffering. They are, in effect, propaganda forums under Harvard’s institutional banner.

Abandoning Academic Standards

The NGO Monitor investigation shows that Harvard’s elite status is being used to legitimize the output of organizations linked to terror, distortions of international law, and campaigns to delegitimize the State of Israel. The report calls for Harvard to sever ties with PFLP-linked NGOs, restore rigorous academic standards, and ensure that human rights education is based on verified evidence, not political activism.