Head of Harvard’s Middle East studies center told to step down by end of year

Harvard University told Cemal Kafadar, the director of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, that he must step down by the end of the academic year, The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper, reported.

David Cutler, the school’s interim dean of social science, told both Kafadar, a Turkish studies professor, and Rosie Bsheer, a history professor who is associate director of the center, that they had to resign in the coming months, according to a faculty member “familiar with the situation,” per the Crimson. (JNS sought comment from Harvard.)

Kafadar has been on leave for the academic year. The Crimson reported that Salmaan Keshavjee, a global health professor who is the center’s interim director, will retain his post. Kafadar and Bsheer will remain in their faculty positions.

In an email, which the Crimson obtained, Cutler asked colleagues to suggest potential candidates for center leadership by April 16.

A report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance accused the Harvard department of demonizing Israel as the “last remaining colonial settler power embodying the world’s worst evils: racism, apartheid and genocide.”

David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple, a conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, Calif., and a former member of Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group, said that the change in leadership at the center was “good news.”

©️JNS