I Teach Computer Science, and That Is All

On Oct. 8, 2023, I was on the steps of Harvard’s Widener Library, taking part in a vigil for the victims of Hamas’s terrorist attack. I’m an Israeli American tenured professor, and I felt it was my duty to stand up for Jewish and Israeli students. I helped organize an open letter denouncing antisemitism. I am a member of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. I have written numerous blog posts and opinion articles on this matter.

In my classroom, I have not discussed these issues at all. I am a professor of computer science, and students take my courses to learn the fundamental capabilities and limitations of computing devices. Students in my class have been on both sides of the campus divide. Two of them asked for more leniency in academic assignments because of their involvement in campus activism, one with a Jewish organization, the other with a Muslim one. I refused them both.

Why does this matter? An assignment about Boolean circuits is clearly less important than combating campus antisemitism, let alone the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. But the value I want to encourage is professionalism. When we erode the boundaries between the academic and the political, we ultimately harm both.

As recently as a decade ago, a majority of Republicans said they had “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence” in higher education, according to a Gallup poll. This share was down to 20 percent last year. Trust in higher education also declined among Democrats. This is a tragedy, because we need fact- and science-based policymaking for topics such as public health and climate change, artificial intelligence and economics.

Nothing justifies the unwarranted attacks by the Trump administration on universities as a whole and on my institution in particular. I am proud of Harvard’s leadership for resisting the impossible demands made of it. I also believe these attacks are enabled by the lack of popular support for universities. We academics should look at how we contributed to this erosion of trust by allowing the blurring of the lines between scholarship and activism.

In recent years the mantra of bringing your whole self to work has replaced the old notion that you should leave it all at the door. This movement has had some positive outcomes. Ensuring everyone feels included and has access to mentors and role models can be crucial to attracting and retaining talent.