Harvard Kennedy School Revokes Fellowship to Human Rights Activist, Saying Offer Was Premature

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights offered a fellowship to Columbia University professor and Human Rights Watch staff member A. Kayum Ahmed — and then, weeks later, withdrew the offer.

Ahmed was notified on Tuesday that his fellowship was revoked after the Kennedy School realized it made the offer without completing a full review process. But he alleged online that the revocation was retaliation for his pro-Palestine beliefs.

The dispute plunges the Kennedy School’s fellowship programs back into debates over campus free speech — just three years after a former Human Rights Watch director alleged that his own Carr Center fellowship offer had been pulled over his criticisms of Israel.

According to HKS spokesperson Daniel B. Harsha, Ahmed’s offer — for an unpaid, non-resident position at the Carr-Ryan Center — was extended “prematurely without going through Harvard Kennedy School’s full review and vetting process.”

Once the dean’s office completed the review process, HKS chose to reverse course and withdraw the fellowship offer, Harsha said.

Ahmed, who teaches on public health and is a vocal critic of Israel, accused the Kennedy School in a LinkedIn post of withdrawing his offer under “pressure from pro-Israeli groups — because of my vocal and principled support for Palestinian liberation.”

Harsha emphatically denied Ahmed’s allegations in a statement to The Crimson, writing that the school does “not disqualify candidates because of their views or because they are controversial.”

“This process is independent, and we do not under any circumstances take direction on appointments from outside groups,” Harsha wrote.

Ahmed was offered the fellowship on April 3. On Monday, less than three weeks later, Carr Center faculty director Mathias Risse notified Ahmed that the fellowship offer had been extended prematurely.

“As a result of this mistake – for which I take responsibility, and which by itself does not turn on the content of your application – there needs to be another level of review at the level of the dean’s office,” Risse wrote in an email shared with The Crimson.

A day later, Risse informed Ahmed by email that his fellowship offer had been withdrawn.

Risse did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

The reversal comes after a series of personnel shakeups — including the dismissal of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ director last month — drew accusations that Harvard was trying to protect itself from the Trump administration by clamping down on pro-Palestine speech.

Those allegations have faded from the spotlight as Harvard mounts a historic challenge to the White House, but Ahmed’s rescinded fellowship could draw them back to the fore.

And the situation drags HKS Dean Jeremy Weinstein — who has been a popular leader among faculty during his first months on the job — into the same kind of controversy that dogged the end of his predecessor’s tenure.

In 2022, Risse planned to offer former executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth a Carr Center fellowship, only for former HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf to veto the proposal several weeks later. Roth alleged that Elmendorf had blocked the offer because Roth had been critical of Israel, and the move drew accusations of censorship and calls for Elmendorf’s resignation.

Elmendorf eventually reversed course and allowed the Carr Center to extend an offer to Roth. He also appointed a faculty committee to evaluate fellowship appointments — an apparent attempt to head off similar fiascos in the future.

But this April, Risse extended the fellowship offer to Ahmed without approval from that very faculty committee.

Ahmed left his position at Columbia in July 2024 after a public health course he taught at Columbia — and his activist approach to teaching — became the center of a high-profile controversy.

In lecture recordings obtained by the Wall Street Journal and described in a March 2024 article, Ahmed identified Israel as a settler-colonial state and used the experiences of displaced Palestinians as an example of how colonialism harms the health of indigenous populations.

The article included accusations from some students that Ahmed’s course was “indoctrination.” Ahmed responded, in a statement to the Journal, by deriding them as “a handful of privileged, white students” unused to examining how they benefit from white supremacy and capitalism.

Shortly after the article’s publication, Ahmed was removed from the teaching team for Columbia’s Core Curriculum, and his health and human rights course was canceled. His contract at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health was not renewed past the end of 2024.

Both Risse and the Carr Center have supported pro-Palestine scholarship at Harvard — a fact which has not gone unnoticed in Washington. The Carr Center was named in Trump’s April 11 letter to Harvard as among a list of University groups that allegedly “fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”

Risse has defended the Center, rebuking claims that Carr is “hyperfixated” on Israel in a recent letter to the editor. The Center’s work spans from researching mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo to training LGBTQ rights activists, and includes programming on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Correction: April 25, 2025

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Carr Center faculty director Mathias Risse offered former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth a fellowship before it was revoked by then-HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf. In fact, Elmendorf blocked a proposal to give Roth the fellowship before an offer was extended.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.

—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.