Islamophobia

A Harvard task force released a scathing account of the university on Tuesday, finding that antisemitism had infiltrated coursework, social life, the hiring of some faculty members and the worldview of certain academic programs.

A separate report on anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian bias on campus, also released on Tuesday, found widespread discomfort and alienation among those students as well, with 92 percent of Muslim survey respondents saying they believed they would face an academic or professional penalty for expressing their political opinions.

Harvard University President Alan Garber has apologised following the release of internal reports into antisemitic and anti-Muslim prejudice at America's oldest university.

The reports included testimony from students who described feeling alienated and pressured to conceal their identity from their peers and educators.

Harvard president Alan Garber apologized for the university’s failure to address both antisemitic and anti-Muslim/Arab tensions on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.

On Tuesday, Harvard University released reports from its presidential task forces on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, as well as anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. In a letter to the university, Garber expressed his gratitude for the teams’ work and lamented the rise of bigotry and "sometimes violent clashes" occurring on campus.

Calls to make Islamophobia a specific crime in the wake of riots threaten free speech, MPs have warned.

There is no single agreed definition of anti-Muslim hatred but Labour has previously signalled its support for one.

Left-wing Labour MPs and Muslim groups have urged Sir Keir Starmer to take a stronger stance on Islamophobia after a far-Right mob attacked a mob in Southport last week.

But opposition backbenchers warned any new legislation would only serve to stifle criticism of religion and freedom of expression.

It took Hisham Awartani some time to realize he'd been shot after falling to the ground during a walk near his grandmother's house with two friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad.

"I didn’t quite process the fact until I, like, looked at my phone and I saw my phone had blood on it," said Awartani, who along with Abdalhamid, spoke exclusively with NBC News about that night. "I was like, 'Oh, I’ve been shot.'"

Almost everyone has been piling on that pitiful troika of elite university presidents after their congressional testimony on Tuesday. A few other folks, people I know and respect like Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times and Jay Michaelson of The Daily Beast, have added some valuable nuance, arguing that in context, the position the presidents were defending actually had merit.

Leaders of elite educational institutions are now desperately trying to contain the fallout from the explosive hearing earlier this week at which the presidents of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania failed to reassure Congress that they were sufficiently concerned about antisemitism on campus.

I wish more of the people who are so obsessed with campus speech could actually focus on the kind of speech that really matters for college students and those of us tasked with educating them.

In a world driven by sound bites, social media, secret recordings of professors and students and even elected officials demanding yes/no answers, suspicion and division are building, rendering it seemingly impossible to have the difficult conversations in the classroom that always, in my experience, lie at the core of any great education.

Bipartisan concern about violence against Jews in U.S.; wide partisan gap in concerns over violence against U.S. Muslims

The man accused of shooting three college students of Palestinian descent in a possible hate crime was arraigned in Vermont on Monday morning and pleaded not guilty.

Jason J. Eaton was charged with three counts of 2nd degree attempted murder.

Eaton is being held without bail in connection with Saturday's shootings of Kinnan Abdalhamid, Tahseen Ahmed and Hisham Awartani in Burlington.

Jason J. Eaton, 48, lived in an apartment building at the shooting scene.