The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center says its mission is to educate future leaders about human rights. Its treatment of Israel offers a different lesson: how an institution can advertise balance while applying scrutiny unevenly.

Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, center director Mathias Risse has overseen a series of programs on Israel and the Palestinians. The speakers have included several of Israel’s most severe critics, whose claims Risse has often accepted or amplified. Israeli legal and security specialists capable of challenging accusations of apartheid, the unlawfulness of Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian territories and genocide have been largely absent.

Risse’s July article, “Three Images of Israel: A Human Rights Assessment,” crystallizes the problem. He acknowledges Jewish self-determination and Israeli vulnerability, but his analysis subjects Israel to sustained structural indictment while treating Hamas and Palestinian governing institutions largely as background actors. The result is less a balanced human-rights assessment than a case study in selective scrutiny.

Risse largely ignores the substantial body of legal and historical scholarship that challenges his conclusions, leaving readers unaware that many of the gravest allegations remain vigorously contested.

The imbalance is apparent both in the center’s programming and in Risse’s own writing. Let’s start with the speakers the center selected – and the questions its moderators declined to ask.

Since October 7, Carr-Ryan has presented or co-sponsored at least 19 public events about Israel and the Palestinians, including six events that formed a spring 2026 series titled “From Pain to Hope?” Most centered on alleged Israeli wrongdoing or featured speakers strongly critical of Israeli policy. Only a handful featured participants prepared to defend Israel’s conduct or contest allegations of apartheid, genocide and unlawful occupation. Risse rarely challenged even the most consequential claims made by those guests. On several occasions, he accepted or reinforced claims that were false, inadequately supported or materially incomplete.

Risse hosted a virtual conversation with U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on February 12, 2024. Albanese, whose record includes antisemitic statements and Holocaust distortion, made several sweeping or inadequately supported assertions. She dismissed allegations of UNRWA employees’ involvement with Hamas as “outrageous,” repeated the Gaza Health Ministry’s claim that 70% of those killed were women or children, and described Israel’s blockade as having prevented food, water and medicine from entering Gaza for 16 years. Risse did not press her on the evidence, acknowledge uncertainty in the casualty data or distinguish restrictions on particular goods from a complete denial of food and medicine. In August 2024, UNRWA terminated the employment of nine employees and in June 2026 it terminated another 70.  Israel has provided evidence of UNRWA’s connection to Hamas, but UNRWA says it is still investigating those claims.

Instead, Risse reinforced Albanese’s position, asserting that the UN considered Gaza “occupied” before October 7 because Israel controlled its borders and airspace. However, Israel substantially tightened its restrictions only after Hamas seized power in 2007 and intensified rocket attacks.

Risse treats UN characterizations as neutral authority without considering documented concerns about the institution’s disproportionate focus on Israel. Risse presented the UN’s position – that Israel retained sufficient effective control for Gaza to remain occupied – as effectively dispositive. He did not explain Israel’s contrary argument that........

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