Harvard is set to offer a course at a Palestinian university that has deep ties to Hamas’s terrorism, as anti-Israel sentiment abounding from the prestigious American campus grows strong enough to send its students to the heart of the conflict in the Middle East. 

The “Palestine Social Medicine Course” will be held this summer at Birzeit University at the West Bank in partnership with Harvard’s school of public health and the World Health Organization. Although focused on researching Palestinian health, the program is riddled with anti-Israel teachings like “settler colonialism and its manifestations in Palestine.” 

One might expect the embattled New England campus to tread cautiously on subjects of Israel and the Palestinians in light of the political turmoil the school has found itself in since pro-Palestinian protests took over its campus this fall. Yet Harvard administrators appear to be embracing an educational partnership with Birzeit, which is a Hamas-endorsed university that lauded the October 7 terrorist attacks and whose students have been arrested for suspected terrorist activity.

“The FXB Center’s Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights has two primary goals,” a spokeswoman for the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Stephanie Simon, tells the Sun. “To contribute to the improvement of Palestinian health through rigorous research and scholarship and to build capacity among the next generation of public health and medical practitioners through education and training.”

The program is currently open for applications, but Harvard could be reconsidering it. “We regularly evaluate the collaboration with Birzeit,” Ms. Simon says. “In terms of potential changes to the course for the upcoming year, that is under evaluation.” She made clear that “leadership at Harvard Chan School and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University unequivocally condemn Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel and its taking of hostages.”

The three-week intensive course, which was held for the first time last year, will focus on “social medicine.” This was defined in a 2023 overview of the course as “a progressive framework to critically explore the social and structural determinants in Palestine through engaging with the political, historical, and social underpinnings of health.”

Co-developed with and co-funded by the World Health Organization, the curriculum’s core topics include “Self-awareness and structural humility,” “Health and racism,” and “Settler colonialism and its manifestations in Palestine.” Participants will visit various holy sites throughout the West Bank, attaining “the historical, political, and social context to understand Palestinian health.”

Ms. Simon defended the Palestinian university as politically independent. “The oldest university in the West Bank, Birzeit is a public institution governed by an autonomous Board of Trustees with no political, religious, or sectarian affiliation,” she says. “Scholars from the FXB Center’s Palestine Program have collaborated in particular with scholars from Birzeit’s Institute of Community and Public Health.”

The school describes itself on its website as “the most prestigious Palestinian university.” It purports to be “a national, non-profit, pluralistic, independent university, dedicated to producing leaders, and knowledge in service of humanity and of all Palestinians everywhere.” Yet the links between Hamas and Birzeit are copious. On October 10, the school’s X account wrote in a post, “Glory for martyrs, recovery for wounded ones, and freedom for the captives.” 

In September, eight students, including the president of the student government, Abdulmajid Hassan, were arrested by the Israeli Defense Forces for allegedly planning a terrorist attack. They were said to be recruited by Hamas operatives at Gaza and received weaponry for an attack in the immediate future. Israeli officials said some of the students confessed to the allegations.

The co-director of the Harvard program, David Mills, appeared to take the side of the arrested students during a presentation on the experiences of past participants posted on YouTube in October. “We condemn the Israeli raid of Birzeit University on September 24th and stand in solidarity with our colleagues at Birzeit University,” he said. “These raids violate the right of Palestinians to education, freedom of speech, and freedom of association.”

Birzeit’s student population has voted into power a Hamas-affiliated bloc, the Islamic Bloc. The Bloc said that the victory shows students support “the option of resistance” against Israel and disapprove of the Palestinian Authority’s policies. The head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, said it represented an “extension” of the group’s “unbreakable” presence at the West Bank. 

University elections are seen as a barometer of political leanings of Palestinians at the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has not held national elections since 2006.

There are other links between Hamas and Birzeit. In 2022, Birzeit student activists were arrested for helping funnel money to Hamas terrorists in Turkey. The year prior, students wearing Hamas’s banner broke into a university building and beat up security guards in celebration of Hamas’s 34th anniversary. 

Alumni include Yahya Ayyash, who is lauded as “the Engineer” for his work producing suicide bombs that helped kill nearly 100 Israeli civilians, as well as a founder of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fathi Shaqaqi, and a terrorist behind a 2001 bombing of an Israeli pizza shop, Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi.

The Harvard course at Birzeit will take 30 students, of which 10 will be U.S.-based, with preference given to Harvard students, in August 2024. For a sign of what participants will glean from the experience, look to the praise from prior participants. One student, who described herself as non-Palestinian, said the course last year encouraged her “to move beyond the current employment of a purely biomedical framework, a clinical framework,” to one that is “more politically-oriented.” 

Another Palestinian student said that visiting Jerusalem during the trip taught her about “a lot of ways of how people resisted the occupation and what was going on.…” A doctor with the WHO based in Israel, Benjamin Bouquet, said the course inspired him and students “to support Palestinians and their right to health.”