Kenneth Roth, who spent some 30 years as the executive director of HRW before announcing his retirement in April, was offered to join the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard as a senior fellow but was later informed that his fellowship offer had been withdrawn, presstv reported.
Douglas Elmendorf, the Harvard Kennedy School dean, accused the HRW of “anti-Israel bias”. He also cited Roth’s tweets on Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories, which he said were of particular concern.
Roth, who is Jewish and says he was drawn to the human rights cause by his father’s experience living in Nazi Germany, described the incident in an article published on Friday by the American magazine The Nation as “crazy” and said Elmendorf had “no backbone whatsoever”.
The prominent human rights advocate also said he believes Elmendorf had bowed to pressure from donors who were strong supporters of Israel.
“I falsely assumed that the dean of the Kennedy School values academic freedom. Maybe I’m naive in retrospect, but I assume that criticism of Israel, as criticism of any other government, is just par for the course. That’s what a leading foreign policy center does,” Roth said.
Meanwhile, having been denied the fellowship offered by Harvard, Roth accepted a visiting fellowship position at the University of Pennsylvania.
The New York Times dubbed Roth the “godfather” of human rights in an article that noted how he had been “an unrelenting irritant to authoritarian governments, exposing human rights abuses with documented research reports that have become the group’s specialty”.
During Roth's 29-year-long tenure as the head of HRW, the organization was often taken to task for its statements and publications against the Israeli regime, including the release of various reports on Tel Aviv’s crimes and persecution of the Palestinian people.
Back in April 2021, HRW issued a report indicating that Israel was practicing a policy of apartheid towards the Palestinians, whose findings were echoed by Amnesty International in January 2022.
The Kennedy School’s decision over Roth was met with outrage among Harvard staff members, while pro-Israel lobbies and groups welcomed the decision.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds, which are all illegal under international law.
Israeli forces have recently been conducting overnight raids and killings in the Northern occupied West Bank, mainly in the cities of Jenin and Nablus, where new groups of Palestinian resistance fighters have been formed.
Over the past year, Israeli forces killed at least 200 Palestinians, including 47 children, in the West Bank, occupied East Al-Quds, and the Gaza Strip.
According to the United Nations, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank last year was the highest it had been in 16 years.
Local and international rights groups have condemned Israel’s excessive use of force and “shoot-to-kill policy” against Palestinians.