Harvard University announced two new partnerships on Monday that it says “promise to bolster the university’s academic engagement with Israeli institutions and create greater opportunities for students and researchers.”
The Ivy League university plans to start offering credit for study abroad at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the spring 2026 semester, and Harvard Medical School will award two- or three-year Kalaniyot postdoctoral fellowships in biomedical research to Israelis. The latter program is funded by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the Dorot Foundation.
Harvard University—long regarded by some as distant, even dismissive, toward Israel, particularly with a myriad of pro-Palestinian demonstrations taking place on campus—has taken a bold and affirming step: forging a new academic partnership and student exchange program with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Harvard’s collaboration with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev “is the latest in Harvard’s long and rich history of engagement with institutions of higher education across Israel,” stated Mark Elliott, Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs. “I have no doubt that it will contribute both to transformative experiences for students and to increased academic collaboration across the region in the coming years.”
Naama Kanarek, assistant professor of pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital and a faculty leader of the Harvard Medical School Kalaniyot program, stated that “we look forward to the benefits of academic exchange with these researchers, as well as the strengthened ties between HMS and researchers across Israel that will result.”
The Medical School fellowship — funded by the Blavatanik Family Foundation and the Dorot Foundation and backed by the Kalaniyot Foundation, which has a chapter at HMS — will support Israeli researchers in conducting two to three years of basic biomedical research at HMS or one of its affiliated hospitals in Boston.
Harvard Vice Provost for International Affairs Mark C. Elliott said the BGU partnership was the first step in “increased academic collaboration across the region in the coming years.”
“The collaboration with BGU is the latest in Harvard’s long and rich history of engagement with institutions of higher education across Israel,” he said.
The Monday announcements arrived half a year after Harvard agreed in January to form a new partnership with an Israeli university as part of a settlement with two groups that had sued Harvard over allegations that it failed to address antisemitism on campus.
The announcements were also made just weeks after Harvard reopened negotiations with the Trump administration, which has withheld nearly $3 billion in federal funding since April amid ongoing concerns of campus antisemitism.
Late last month, the White House issued a formal finding that Harvard had violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and demonstrated a “deliberate indifference” toward combatting antisemitism and anti-Israeli discrimination.
But in a confidential memo sent to Harvard on April 3 — which was made public in early July — the White House signaled its approval of the University’s commitment in the earlier settlement to partner with Israeli institutions and end its ties to Birzeit.
It remains unclear whether the partnership with BGU and the Kalaniyot Fellowship were direct responses to administration demands.
As campus tensions spiked following Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza, Harvard has faced calls to build the study of Israel, Palestine, and the region’s culture and history into its research and curricular offerings. The University has agreed to expand programs for the study of Hebrew and Judaic languages, as well as of antisemitism. But it has not made any public commitments to expanding Palestinian studies, Arabic language programs, or Islamic studies.
Harvard suspended its research partnership with a Palestinian university — Birzeit University in the West Bank — in April, bowing to longstanding calls from its critics to terminate the relationship because of accusations that Birzeit had ties to Hamas.
