Human Rights Watch Ken Roth
Human Rights Watch Ken RothAnthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images

Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf reversed course Thursday and granted a fellowship to former Human Rights Watch Director Kenneth Roth more than six months after denying Roth the fellowship.

Roth had recently began a campaign accusing the school of giving in to pro-Israel donors who opposed him for his criticism of Israel. Critics of Roth lauded Harvard's original decision to deny him the fellowship, citing his obsessive focus on Israel which has crossed the line into antisemitism and accusing him and his supporters of engaging in an antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jewish money and power in his campaign against Harvard's decision.

In his announcement Thursday, Elmendorf said: "Let me emphasize that my decision was not influenced by donors. Donors do not affect our consideration of academic matters. My decision also was not made to limit debate at the Kennedy School about human rights in any country. As a community we are steadfastly committed to free inquiry and including a wide range of views on public policy, and the appointment of a Fellow is never an endorsement of the views of that individual nor a refutation of other views. My decision on Mr. Roth last summer was based on my evaluation of his potential contributions to the School."

He added: "In the case of Mr. Roth, I now believe that I made an error in my decision not to appoint him as a Fellow at our Carr Center for Human Rights. I am sorry that the decision inadvertently cast doubt on the mission of the School and our commitment to open debate in ways I had not intended and do not believe to be true. The broader faculty input I have now sought and received has persuaded me that my decision was not the best one for the School. I have spoken now with a colleague at the Carr Center, and we will extend an offer to Mr. Roth to serve as a Fellow. I hope that our community will be able to benefit from his deep experience in a wide range of human rights issues."

Roth wrote in response to Elmendorf's decision to reverse course: "i am thrilled that Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf has rescinded his decision to block the fellowship for me by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. I have long felt that the Carr Center, and the Kennedy School, would be a congenial place for me to work on the book that I am writing. I look forward to spending time with colleagues and students."

He demanded that Elmendorf reveal the identity of the people who allegedly convinced him not to grant the former Human Rights Watch chief the fellowship beforehand. "Full transparency is key to ensuring that such influence is not exerted in other cases."

"The problem of people penalized for criticizing Israel is not limited to me," he added. "How is the Kennedy School, and Harvard, going to ensure that this episode conveys a renewed commitment to academic freedom rather than just exceptional treatment for one well-known individual?"

Roth led Human Rights voices for 30 years, during which he was accused of politicizing the once-prestigious human rights NGO and bringing antisemitism into the organization. A 2022 report by NGO Monitor accused Roth of legitimizing antisemitism under the guise of human rights.

In 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, then Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman accused Roth of engaging in a "“a classic anti-Semitic stereotype about Jews” after Roth that “an eye for an eye – or, more accurately in this case, twenty eyes for an eye – may have been the morality of some more primitive moment."

In 2009, Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein wrote an Op Ed in the New York Times criticizing the direction the organization he founded had taken under Roth's leadership.

Bernstein wrote that Human Rights Watch issued far more condemnations of Israel than it did of “authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records.”

"Recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state," he wrote. "Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide."

"Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism," Bernstein said.