On Oct. 8, 2023, I was on the steps of Harvard’s Widener Library, taking part in a vigil for the victims of Hamas’s terrorist attack. I’m an Israeli American tenured professor, and I felt it was my duty to stand up for Jewish and Israeli students. I helped organize an open letter denouncing antisemitism. I am a member of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. I have written numerous blog posts and opinion articles on this matter.
In my classroom, I have not discussed these issues at all. I am a professor of computer science, and students take my courses to learn the fundamental capabilities and limitations of computing devices. Students in my class have been on both sides of the campus divide. Two of them asked for more leniency in academic assignments because of their involvement in campus activism, one with a Jewish organization, the other with a Muslim one. I refused them both.
Why does this matter? An assignment about Boolean circuits is clearly less important than combating campus antisemitism, let alone the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. But the value I want to encourage is professionalism. When we erode the boundaries between the academic and the political, we ultimately harm both.
In recent years the mantra of bringing your whole self to work has replaced the old notion that you should leave it all at the door. This movement has had some positive outcomes. Ensuring everyone feels included and has access to mentors and role models can be crucial to attracting and retaining talent.
Some have taken it too far, letting the personal and political overtake the professional, which has led to pressure on businesses to take positions in matters outside their domain. Makers of business software weighed in on elections. Google employees staged a sit-in over Gaza. Right-wing activists began a boycott of Bud Light after it was featured in a transgender influencer’s promotional social media post. The result is that people who disagree with one another find it hard to work at the same company or buy the same products, increasing the problem of polarization.
A vast majority of faculty members do not attempt to pursue a political agenda. They are busy doing the work of education and research that has made American universities the envy of the world and the engine of our prosperity. Unfortunately, a few faculty members can have a disproportionate influence on how universities are perceived and provide ammunition to those who want to see them destroyed.