The about-face only came after public pressure had grown steadily: Harvard University is now offering Israel critic Kenneth Roth a research stay after all.
Douglas Elmendorf, dean of the Kennedy School, announced this in writing.
The 67-year-old Roth, former director of Human Rights Watch, is a well-known critic of Israel's settlement policy. Under his leadership, the human rights organization accused Israel of "apartheid" for its treatment of the Palestinians.
That is said to have been enough for Elmendorf last summer to withdraw Roth's invitation to a fellowship at the Carr Center for Human Rights.
This process only became known recently, and it wasn't long before about a thousand Harvard alumni and other observers protested against the decision with an open letter and other statements.
There was a suspicion that Harvard was not very particular about academic freedom when it came to not upsetting conservative donors.
Elmendorf now explained that neither donors nor discussions about human rights “in other countries” played a role in his decision.
Rather, the selection process for the fellowships must be “generally improved” and made more thorough.
In the case of Roth, however, he, Elmendorf, had exchanged views with many colleagues in the past few days.
He came to the conclusion that he had "made a mistake".
At first it was unclear whether the human rights activist would now accept the invitation.
On Twitter, Roth expressed gratitude for the interventions of colleagues and the public – without them, the turnaround would not have happened, he suspected.
Despite Elmendorf's assurances that his decision was not about donors, he, Roth, still wanted to know who advised the head of the faculty.
The Dean's statement still lacks clarity.
Roth demanded that the university should also explicitly guarantee academic freedom to those people who are “less visible” than he is.
Meanwhile, the American media largely welcomed the turnaround from the “Ivy League”.
The Boston Globe, for example, commented on Elmendorf's decision as necessary and emphasized that an apology and about-face like this in his position was a rarity.
In the university's own magazine "Harvard Crimson", on the other hand, the student Natalie Kahn wrote that the discussion about Israel had to take place in a differentiated manner - to "wail that you can't add another voice to the anti-Irael echo chamber" would not bring the university any closer to its goals .