Who Is Rosie Bsheer?
Rosie Bsheer is an associate professor of history at Harvard University, where her clear personal bias in shaping institutional programming has negatively affected her own professional standing within the university. In her free time, she uploads YouTube videos under Harvard’s banner with antisemitic tropes such as labeling Israel an “imperialist country,” as well as being a co-editor of Jadaliyya. Jadaliyya, an online pro-Palestine publication, has published articles with themes such as painting direct testimony from Israeli rape survivors of October 7th as Israel “attempting to generate global sympathy,” and is also co-edited by Noura Erakat, a pro-Palestinian attorney and faculty member at Rutgers University who has eulogized known members of Hamas, as well as justified Hamas’s actions on October 7th.
What is Rosie Bsheer’s Professional Bias?
From 2022 until March of 2025, Bsheer served as the associate director of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). During her time in its leadership, CMES became a point of controversy for hosting panels and circulating materials that narrated antisemitic sentiment while excluding dissenting perspectives, even as the violence of October 7th unfolded. In fact, while serving as associate director in November of 2023, Bsheer signed an open letter that detailed why terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” were not antisemitic in nature and supporting the use of the phrase, “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.”
In fact, due to the overwhelming bias of CMES, both Bsheer as associate director and Cemal Kafadar (professor of Turkish studies) as director were removed from its leadership by Harvard in March of 2025, with Bsheer being placed on general academic leave for the 2025-2026 school year. Harvard president Alan Garber admitted in January of 2026 that the university “went wrong” in allowing faculty activism and stance to dictate classroom discussion.
Disturbingly so and despite her previous dismissal from Harvard’s CMES, in January of 2026, Columbia University informed its history department that Bsheer was a finalist for the tenured position of Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies. In March of 2026, Columbia faculty officially recommended her for the role.
The role itself comes with a long history of controversy as its previous occupant, Rashid Khalidi (served 2003-2024), was noted by the New York Times in 1982 to have “close contacts in the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership.” Khalidi himself responded to the events of October 7th, 2023 by saying that Hamas’s “armed resistance” was instigated by Israeli “colonization.”
What Is Rosie Bsheer’s History of Public Statements and Activism?
- November 2020: Bsheer hosted an interview with Rashid Khalidi on behalf of the Harvard Divinity School where she referred to Khalidi as her “mentor” and highlighted his book calling Israel a “colonial settler state”
- October 2023: Supported and defended students involved in illegal, anti-Israel encampments at Harvard following the October 7th attacks
- November 2023: Signed an open letter defending the use of terms such as “apartheid”, “genocide”, and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
Conclusion: Rosie Bsheer Raises Accountability Concerns
Rosie Bsheer is a part of a larger pattern which has seen academic authority being used to normalize antisemitic narratives in universities. Her time in leadership at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies only served to advance excusing organizations such as Hamas, and more notably so, their actions on October 7th.
Her subsequent consideration for the Edward Said Chair highlights a lack of meaningful accountability or consequence, even as universities like Columbia publicly pledge reform or settle lawsuits in the wake of scandals.
