Call to Withhold Participation in Amos Yadlin’s HKS Study Group

To the Harvard Kennedy School student body and other Harvard affiliates,

We, members of the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) campaign, strongly urge all accepted students to turn down their spot for MEI Senior Fellow Amos Yadlin’s Spring 2022 Study Group, entitled “Israeli National Security in a Shifting Middle East: Historical and Strategic Perspectives for an Uncertain Future.”

As a retired Major General of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Yadlin’s career has actively upheld Israel’s colonial and illegal occupation over the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel has been condemned by numerous Palestinian and international organizations for committing apartheid, a crime against humanity according to international law. Harvard’s willingness to invite Yadlin as a senior fellow not only normalizes Israeli war crimes, but also promotes the erasure of indigenous Palestinian narratives, by ignoring the past history and present reality of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism in Palestine. Furthermore, the “national security” framing of the study group sanitizes Israel’s violence as an occupier, and platforms a colonial military general in an academic space, leaving unquestioned how the language of 'national security' in Israel justifies the control and killing of Palestinians.  

The HOOP campaign calls on all students to withdraw from this study group, to deplatform Yadlin’s troubling presence and pressure Harvard to reconsider its support for institutions that promote harm and violence. More info on HOOP can be found here.