Harvard’s health center focused on human rights will be getting a new leader after the previous leader drew criticism for focusing too heavily on Palestinians.
Mary T. Bassett, who served as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, will step down after seven years, the university announced in a letter on Tuesday.
A Harvard task force on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias had cited the FXB Center for focusing "heavily on Palestinians in lectures," in lectures "which rarely presented Israeli points of view, except those of the state’s harshest critics."
Harvard did not give a reason for Bassett’s departure and a petition calling for her removal obtained more than 1,500 signatures as of Friday.
The petition said Bassett’s removal "sends a chilling message that critical scholarship on racial justice and Palestine is unwelcome," while the executive committee of Harvard’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors argued Bassett’s removal “continues a pattern at Harvard with grave implications for academic freedom, The New York Times reported.
The Trump administration has called for the university to hire an outside expert to audit the FXB Center for signs of antisemitism.
The center has recently adjusted its mission to focus on children’s health "during early development, when children are most vulnerable — and bring its unique, human rights perspective to this area of critical importance to public health," Harvard said in a letter obtained by the Times.
Bassett will remain a professor at the school, the university said.
The Trump administration has charged Harvard and other major universities with violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in their handling of campus demonstrations critical of Israel.
Federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Education, and the Department of Homeland Security, are also investigating the university.
The administration canceled hundreds of grants awarded to researchers at Harvard on the grounds that the school failed to do enough to address harassment of Jewish students on its campus.
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