A debate over Harvard University hiring policy erupted this week after former department chairman Sidney Chalhoub accused the program of operating as a “white male affinity group” in the early 1990s while celebrating its demographic transformation today. Chalhoub made the claims in a Wednesday opinion article in the Harvard Crimson, framing the department’s past through race and gender rather than scholarly output.
“When I was about to become chair of the History department in 2022, I tried to gather information about its past,” Chalhoub wrote, concluding that in the early 1990s the department had “more than thirty tenured professors, two of them female.” He added, “The department felt like a white male affinity group,” while praising that the department now has “faculty native to more than fifteen countries around the world.”
Chalhoub argued that claims of politicized teaching lack merit, writing, “I haven’t seen evidence to support the contention of faculty activism in class.” That assertion clashes with findings from Harvard’s own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias, which cited “partisan and one-sided pedagogy” and referenced programs calling for “the urgent need to dezionize Jewish consciousness.”
The article also comes as several prominent historians depart Harvard. James Hankins, who recently announced his exit, warned of declining enrollment, noting, “Our numbers today, in 2024, are about one half of what they were in the ’90s.” He also recounted being told in 2021 that admitting a white male student was “not happening this year.”
Chalhoub concluded by advocating new faculty lines in Palestinian Studies, stating, “Dehumanization needs to be countered with education.” The controversy underscores a broader reckoning over whether Harvard prioritizes academic rigor or ideological direction as it reshapes its identity.
