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In Focus: Arash Bordbar

28 January 2021

Arash Bordbar is an Associate Education Officer at UNHCR and the chair of the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, and the former co-chair of UNHCR’s Global Youth Advisory Council. He is also the Employment and Enterprise Officer at the Community Migrant Resource Center in Sydney, Australia. He was awarded the Young People Human Rights Medal for his advocacy on education and human rights. Arash has also been the Peace Ambassador for One Young World and a member of the Amnesty Refugee Advisory Group which works on refugee resettlement.

In each of his roles, Arash works to advocate for refugees, especially in higher education, and to provide youth with opportunities to connect with institutions of higher learning. A native of Iran, Arash and his family fled to Malaysia due to political persecution and were later resettled in Australia, where Arash completed his university education.

Arash spoke with REACH team member Sarzah Yeasmin about his personal and educational journey and the important role that higher education institutions play in creating welcoming communities and spaces of belonging for refugees.

What inspired you to work in the field of higher education for refugees?

I am originally from Iran and was a refugee myself with my mother and brother. We lived in Malaysia for five years and went through the entire asylum-seeking process. That is where it all started. When I was in Iran, I always had a passion for education and I excelled in my academics. But things did not turn out as expected. My family had to flee Iran due to political persecution. We left Iran within a day.

One moment I was in high school and the next I was in Malaysia, a country where I was not allowed to study. Malaysia did not sign the 1951 Refugee Convention, which means that, as a refugee, I did not have the right to education, employment, or health care. My mother found a way for me and my brother to finish our high school online at an Iranian school. She worked two shifts to pay for our studies. The challenges of obtaining an education online were tremendous. It was my first time studying by myself. I was managing my studies as I worked on the side. It felt like an empty space in my heart. There was also no pathway to university as we were considered illegal immigrants. Losing everything that I had worked hard for was difficult to take in as a 16-year-old.

After four and a half years in Malaysia, we received a call from UNHCR about resettlement. Australia was willing to take us. It was a big surprise. You never know if resettlement will happen. It was like winning a lottery. The first thing I did when we arrived was to work with the resettlement organization to find a way to access education. The first six universities I applied to rejected me because my high school degree was Iranian. But being quite persistent, I re-applied and the seventh university got me in through a college pathway. This was the beginning of my new journey. My passion for education led to my work with the UNHCR and my global advocacy work for higher education.

“ I did not want to be defined by what happened to me; I wanted to be defined by what I could do. ”

How do you ensure refugee students feel supported in your work as the Employment and Enterprise Officer at the Community Migrant Resource Center?

I focus on three pillars: education, employment, and community participation. When refugees come to a new country, they are inundated with many responsibilities including translating documents, navigating a new place, finding a house, and taking care of their families. When I first came to Australia, I was told not to bother about education, that I would fail if I start early. I was asked to take some time off. But because I made it, I can tell young refugees that it is possible and help them find pathways to higher education.

One of the programs we run is called Discovery Mentoring. Through this initiative we pay young refugees who have graduated to tutor and help other refugees. We have around 20 mentors helping refugee youth with challenges of being in new settings. This type of one-to-one support has been helpful as one young person connects with another young person.

In your role as the former co-chair of UNHCR’s Global Youth Advisory Board and now as the chair of Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, do you see any disconnect between the issues policymakers focus on and the issues experienced by refugee students in higher education?

Previously, refugees were only seen as beneficiaries and recipients of help. That is why many problems surrounding displaced communities have never been solved. Consultation, engagement, and meaningful participation by refugee youth were happening at marginal levels. As a result, policymakers had little understanding of what refugees thought about solutions. I see a shift in the policy world now. Refugees are coming up with recommendations and solutions and are part of the problem-solving process.

For instance, UNHCR is engaging with refugee youth and that is why we have the Global Youth Advisory Council. One of our biggest achievements as a Council was to provide input on the Global Compact for Refugees document. We increased the youth portfolio significantly to center the focus of the document on helping displaced youth around the world.

But we still have a long way to go. When young people emerge from a shocking experience, they might be living in a limbo for some time, but they still have their skills, experience, knowledge, and expertise. The international community has a lot of lost opportunities from not engaging with refugee youth.

What role do you believe higher education institutions have in creating welcoming communities for refugees?

Higher education can bring different stakeholders together. Higher education institutions not only provide resources but could also play a vital role in the peacebuilding process. Universities are places of unity and diversity and are respected by the private sector and the government. They represent the youth of the country. Universities need to be held accountable on their social impact and responsibility to support youth and include youth. I envision that institutions of higher learning will take a prominent role and be proactive in creating inclusion, and I am interested in exploring how we can use higher education to support the humanitarian sector.

When I started university, I felt I was not only getting a degree for myself: It was for the many refugee youth with dreams. I did not want to be defined by what happened to me; I wanted to be defined by what I could do. I am hopeful about tackling narratives surrounding refugees as more and more refugee youth become doctors, engineers, and nurses and contribute to their host communities. I am also hopeful as I see refugees playing a stronger role in contributing to their own solutions.

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Nonie K. Lesaux

Nonie K. Lesaux is the Juliana W. and William Foss Thompson Professor of Education and Society at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  She leads a research program that focuses on promoting the language and literacy skills of today’s children and youth from diverse linguistic, cultural and economic backgrounds. Her research has included longitudinal studies investigating reading and language development among diverse children and youth as well as experimental evaluations of strategies to increase literacy learning opportunities for children and adolescents. This program of research has been supported by research grants from several organizations and agencies, including the Institute of Education Sciences, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The practical applications of this work are featured in numerous publications, including, “Making Assessment Matter: Using Test Results to Differentiate Reading Instruction,” a guide for instructional leaders and “Cultivating Knowledge, Building Language,” an instructional guide for educators serving English language learners.  She is the author of a widely circulated state literacy report, “Turning the Page: Refocusing Massachusetts for Reading Success,” that forms the basis for a Third Grade Reading Proficiency bill passed in Massachusetts. The legislation established an Early Literacy Expert Panel, which Lesaux co-chairs, charged with developing new policies and policy-based initiatives in a number of domains that influence children’s early literacy development.  In July 2015, Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker appointed Lesaux as the chair of the Commonwealth’s Board of Early Education and Care.

Lesaux recently served on the U.S. Department of Education’s Reading First Advisory Committee and the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council’s Committee on the Science of Children Birth to Age 8. She is a recipient of the William T. Grant Scholars Award and of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor given by the United States government to young professionals beginning their independent research careers.  A native of Canada, Lesaux earned her doctorate in educational psychology and special education from the University of British Columbia.

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The House Committee on Education and the Workforce released a 42-page report Thursday morning that detailed an internal battle between former Harvard President Claudine Gay and the antisemitism advisory group she established in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The report, released as part of the committee’s investigation into Harvard, revealed that five of the advisory group’s eight members threatened to resign en masse less than 10 days after Gay announced the group’s formation .

“The goals and steps outlined in the document are meaningful recommendations that would have had a substantial impact on Harvard’s antisemitism problem had they been implemented,” the report stated. “Unfortunately, Harvard’s leaders failed to follow the roadmap drawn for them by their own chosen experts.”

Harvard spokesperson Jason A. Newton criticized the committee’s report as “an incomplete and inaccurate view of Harvard’s overall efforts to combat antisemitism last fall and in the months since.”

“It is disappointing to see selective excerpts from internal documents, shared in good faith, released in this manner,” Newton wrote. “Harvard has demonstrated its focus and commitment and attentiveness to combating antisemitism, and these efforts are reflected in the many voluminous submissions to the committee.”

The report relied heavily on submissions to the committee from the University, which included the previously unreleased recommendations from Gay’s advisory group, and a transcribed interview with Dara Horn ’99, a member of the group.

While the committee’s report comes more than four months after Gay’s resignation , interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 emerged relatively unscathed. While Horn expressed frustration with the formation of Garber’s task forces to combat antisemitism and anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bias, the committee report almost entirely focused on Gay and her response to the advisory group’s recommendations.

Gay did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The resignation warning, sent on Nov. 5, included a series of ultimatums from the five members who demanded that Gay publicly condemn certain slogans chanted by pro-Palestine student protesters, ban masked protests on campus, and launch a confidential investigation into the Harvard Medical School’s dean of students for allegedly not confronting antisemitism at an event he attended.

The threat, alongside the series of demands, prompted Gay and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 to call an emergency meeting with the advisory group on Nov. 6, in which Gay sought to persuade the group to not resign en masse.

“Areas of common ground have come attached with an ultimatum, one that if interpreted literally leaves me with 24 hours and puts me and the University in a terrible position,” Gay told the group, according to a transcription of the meeting published in the committee’s report.

“You serving is to be helpful, and you’re trying to be helpful; resigning en masse if you don’t get these things in 48 hours would be explosive, and would make things even more volatile and unsafe,” she added.

Gay, however, made clear concessions to the group following the emergency meeting.

Just three days after the emergency meeting, Gay sent a University-wide email that explicitly condemned the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” by pro-Palestine protesters and announced the University would implement antisemitism training and education for Harvard affiliates.

Members of the group were also frustrated that the scope of their responsibilities remained vague, weeks into the formation of the task force. At the Nov. 6 meeting, Gay told the group she apologized for “not giving you my time that you deserved” and for “thrusting” the advisory group into the roles “before they were defined, staffed, and supported,” according to the meeting minutes.

Horn said that the advisory group soon began to hear from many Jewish students reporting instances of antisemitism, but lacked clear direction from Gay and the administration.

The advisory group reported that there were Jewish students who said they were afraid to eat in Harvard dining halls, followed home and harassed, and at least one who had been spat on for wearing a yarmulke.

Some of the report’s harshest criticisms of the University stem from the Harvard administrators allegedly not implementing the advisory group’s recommendations.

Newton wrote that Harvard’s “community and campus are different today because of the actions we have taken, and continue to take, to combat hate and to promote and nurture civil dialogue and respectful engagement.”

“Harvard has and will continue to be unequivocal – in our words and actions – that antisemitism is not and will not be tolerated on our campus,” he added.

The advisory group’s recommendations included reevaluating the Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and “investigating the potential influence of ‘dark money’ from Iran, Qatar and associates of terrorist groups on campus.”

A member of the advisory group was concerned that the organization American Muslims for Palestine – which they characterized as an entity “linked to terror finance” – funded the “PalTrek” that brought Harvard affiliates to visit the West Bank and “was involved” in the Arab Conference at Harvard in April.

Garber said that the Office of the General Counsel would look into the funding and the OGC later reported “no issues were identified.”

The committee did not specify how Congress will proceed with its investigation of antisemitism at Harvard and other college campuses, but the report indicated that the committee is not done with Harvard just yet.

“The Committee will continue investigating the activities happening on campus at Harvard and at other universities, including the responses by university administrations to recent unlawful campus encampments,” the committee wrote.

—Staff writer Emma H. Haidar can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on X @HaidarEmma .

—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles .

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Harvard repeatedly and continuously sidelined and ignored antisemitism working group, house committee finds.

A House Education and Workforce Committee report details the inner deliberations of Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group and its conflicts with Harvard’s leadership

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People walk through Harvard Yard at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 12, 2023.

A new report released on Thursday by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce suggests that Harvard University continuously and repeatedly sidelined its Antisemitism Advisory Group and its recommendations, a situation that at one point prompted a majority of the working group’s members to threaten to resign en masse.

The report, based on internal communications and notes as well as a transcribed interview with advisory group member Dara Horn, details the work of the first of two antisemitism task forces the school has launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel.

The House committee, investigating campus antisemitism, found that the working group provided recommendations to Harvard’s leadership in mid-December, which went largely unaddressed, that the working group identified severe antisemitic harassment and marginalization of Israeli students and that Harvard’s senior leadership sidelined the working group — including failing to consult with the group before the former Harvard president testified to the House committee.

The report highlights a series of incidents of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus for which the school could not point to any specific response or disciplinary action it had taken. It says that the working group itself found a similar pattern of unaddressed antisemitic harassment.

It also outlines a messy and unclear process for transitioning from the working group into the school’s new Antisemitism Task Force.

“The Committee’s report proves that former President Gay and Harvard’s leadership propped up the university’s Antisemitism Advisory Group all for show,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said in a statement. “Not only did the AAG find that antisemitism was a major issue on campus, it offered several recommendations on how to combat the problem — none of which were ever implemented with any real vigor.”

“The University is grateful for the important work of the Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG). At a critical time during the fall semester, the AAG contributed thoughtful perspectives and recommendations which helped establish the groundwork for ongoing efforts to combat antisemitism,” Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton said in a statement to Jewish Insider .

Newton insisted that “our community and campus are different today because of the actions we have taken, and continue to take” to address hate. He also accused the committee of “offering an incomplete and inaccurate view” of Harvard’s work by releasing “selective excerpts from internal documents.”

The committee revealed that a majority of working group members threatened to resign on Nov. 5, less than two weeks after the working group first met, unless the university committed to a series of concrete steps, some of which the group members demanded the university take within 48 hours. 

Horn, the author of a critically acclaimed book on antisemitism, told committee investigators they issued that threat because Harvard “didn’t seem to be responding to in any meaningful or public way” to a high-profile antisemitic incident, and “it didn’t seem like the deans at the various schools were taking this particularly seriously.”

From the beginning, Horn said the working group members’ role and responsibilities were never well-defined or publicized, and they were “inundated with… concerns from students” that they were unsure how to handle.

The members’ threat prompted a meeting between the working group’s members, former Harvard President Claudine Gay, then-Provost Alan Garber (who now serves as the school’s interim president following Gay’s resignation) and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker , during which Gay apologized and warned that a group resignation would worsen the environment at Harvard.

That meeting was the only time any member of the Harvard Corporation, the school’s ultimate governing body, met with the working group.

Gay also issued a public statement and set up an email hotline for the committee. But Horn told investigators that she “continued to be frustrated with some of the lack of responses,” including the university’s continued failure to publicly clarify the working group’s role and responsibilities.

Horn said that she again considered resigning — as Rabbi David Wolpe did — after Gay’s testimony to the House committee , about which the working group was not consulted. She said that Harvard leadership internally sought to brush off the testimony and never explained why the working group wasn’t consulted.

According to the report, Harvard’s deans only met with the working group once, and did not provide any opportunity for the working group members to provide feedback and suggestions. Horn described their presentations as “disturbing” because she felt that the deans “didn’t really seem disturbed by the things that were happening” and seemed “perplexed by the situation.”

Working group communications and notes say that Jewish students felt that they had no clear authority to whom they could report their concerns, and that Harvard was not taking their concerns seriously or responding in a substantive manner.

They also indicate that working group members and Harvard leaders believed that many campus incidents fell within existing non-discrimination and bullying policies, but those were not enforced.

Harvard subsequently set up a second Antisemitism Task Force to replace the working group. According to Horn, the university never provided clarity about when, how and why the transition would take place, and did not inform working group members at the outset of their work that they would eventually be replaced.

“It seemed quite clear that there was an interest in getting our recommendations and moving on,” Horn told investigators, adding that she was concerned when told the working group would be replaced.

Horn specifically said she was disturbed by the selection of professor Derek Penslar , who had questioned the seriousness of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, to lead the successor task force.

Recommendations put forward by the working group included enforcing existing rules to prohibit class disruptions and minimize protests inside buildings; banning masked protests; strictly enforcing of school policies on student group activity; sharing more information on disciplinary consequences; reviewing academic programs; reviewing and replacing “structural approaches to inclusion and diversity that may have inadvertently encouraged antisemitism”; and providing better education on antisemitism, Israel and the Jewish people. 

Internal notes also suggest concern about the potential influence of “Hamas funding” on Harvard’s campus, as working group members noted alleged links between groups backing campus pro-Palestinian activism and groups that had previously funnelled money to Hamas. They also indicate that at least one working group member was concerned that “student demonstrations [are] not organic but seeded.”

Harvard told the committee, in general terms, that it had investigated foreign donations from Middle Eastern nations and found “no issues.”

Addressing concerns about the “ostracization of Israeli students,” working group records identified a significant pattern of such behavior. They highlighted the student-led First Year International Student Orientation Program as a particular problem, “organized to platform an extraordinary amount of strident anti-Israel material,” according to minutes from one working group meeting.

The group also highlighted concerns about the “dramatic decline” in the Jewish undergraduate population at Harvard.

Working group members, in internal communications, blasted the school’s rapid move to set up a doxxing task force, without consulting the working group, primarily supporting students who had signed an Oct. 7 letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack.

One group member described the move as “handing out milk and cookies to antisemites.”

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