Rescinded job offers, public outcry, and doxxing. After a joint statement was released by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) and the Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine in response to the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel and co-signed by over 30 other student organizations, the Harvard community and its students have been increasingly under the public eye, with many criticizing the organization and the students who signed it for its message as well as the University’s response to campus turmoil.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the statement began. Additionally, the statement calls on the “Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.” The statement was met with varied backlash, leading to several organizations retracting their initial signature. A later statement reaffirmed that the “PSC staunchly opposes all violence against all innocent life and laments all human suffering.”
However, one outside group’s public condemnation of the students involved with the letter has grown increasingly controversial both on campus and internationally. Accuracy in Media (AIM) has since placed a billboard truck, or “doxxing” truck on Harvard’s campus, displaying the names and faces of the students that the organization has associated with the campus groups that signed the statement.
The truck has caused much debate amongst Harvard’s community, leading to discussion regarding student safety, free speech, and campus protections. However, Adam Guillette, President of Accuracy in Media, stands by his decision to bring the truck to Harvard’s campus, as he explained in an interview with the Harvard Independent.
An article published by The Guardian exposed that Accuracy in Media’s largest identified donor is the Informing American Foundation, or IAF, which has donated “at least $8m to rightwing nonprofit and for-profit organizations,” since its founding in 2021. According to their mission statement on their website, they aim to support “investigative journalists and journalistic entities or other organizations engaged in the similar dissemination of public interest, accountability and policy information.” According to public records, the IAF donated $166,666 to Accuracy in Media in 2022.
In his interview, Guillette had called The Guardian article “factually inaccurate.” Guillette said that the IAF was only ever tied for their second largest donor, not their first, though he recognizes anonymous support as a factor for his organization. He also denounced AIM being labeled a “conservative group.” “The Informing America Foundation isn’t our biggest donor and we’re not a right-wing organization … I was surprised to see an output like The Guardian get a fact like that wrong.”
In a statement to the Independent, The Guardian affirmed the facts they presented in the article. “We stand fully behind our reporting, which is based on extensive public documents and official government filings—including those made by AIM itself,” they said.
Interestingly, IAF’s biggest donor, the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, was also revealed in the article, as according to public documents. The foundation is named after its President, Diana Davis Spencer. She is also a board member of IAF and an honorary board member of Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, named after her parents Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center “upon receipt of a generous pledge from the Davis family,” as the Center states on their website. Her foundation had donated $1,500,000 to IAF in 2021, and according to The Guardian article, is a “longstanding funder of rightwing causes.”
Spencer’s affiliation with IAF, the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, and the Davis Center seemingly draws a conflicting connection between Harvard’s Davis Center and the IAF-funded Accuracy in Media, which placed the truck. However, a spokesperson from the Davis Center explained in a statement to the Independent that the “Davis Center has not received funding from Diana Davis Spencer or the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation. Neither Diana Davis Spencer nor her foundation play a role in decision-making at the center.”
“Diana Davis Spencer is an honorary member of the Davis Center’s Advisory Board; she has not attended any Advisory Board meetings. The Davis Center’s Advisory Board is not a decision-making body and has no fiduciary responsibility; it is a consultative body,” they wrote. However, no direct answer was received as to whether or not Spencer would remain in her honorary board position despite her connection with IAF.
Similarly, AIM president Adam Guillete emphasized the sovereignty of Harvard from the doxxing truck. “Harvard was involved in no way in funding this truck, and none of our missions really come at the explicit direction of donors. Donors support our work because they like what we’re doing. We don’t do work because a donor tells us to do something,” he shared, before assuring that supporters of the organization tend to agree with its purpose. “I don’t imagine many people donate to groups that don’t advance a mission they agree with.”
Moreover, The Davis Center condemned the vilification of those partaking in free speech. “The Davis Center as an institution strives to uphold the ideals of great universities—including their role in frank exchanges of views—and does not support persecution or actions that put students in harm’s way.”
The idea for the truck came “immediately,” as Guillette explained, and it quickly made its way to Harvard’s campus. Since then, the truck and AIM have been thrusted into the public eye, with its critics saying it calls for the harassment, intimidation, and doxxing of student activists.
“We think that hate and the support of violence against civilians has no place in polite society. And, we think it’s incredibly important for people to know who the anti-Semites are in their community and on their campus,” he said. “They made a public proclamation supporting terrorism, and I think it’s very important for people to know who the public leaders are behind the public proclamation.”
Disagreeing with the use of the term “doxxing” truck, Guillette explained that he received his information from outlets like the Harvard Crimson and other public profiles. “News outlets are calling our truck a doxxing truck even though we’re merely sharing information that was published by the Harvard Crimson, and I don’t believe the Harvard Crimson to be a doxxing site … it’s really sad that the state of journalism in America is that journalists write headlines that are knowingly inaccurate simply for [Search Engine Optimization] purposes.”
However, the truck and the doxxing of students continues to incite fear within the Harvard community. “We are scared to be Palestinian at this university,” said one anonymous source in an interview with the New Yorker. The PSC shared in their October 11th statement that they were “forced to postpone” their vigil due to hate speech and death threats. “The targeting of Palestinian, Black, brown, Muslim, and international students specifically should be extremely concerning to all parties,” they wrote. To address the issue, Harvard has recently created a task force to support students impacted by doxxing or harassment.
With the truck still circling Harvard’s campus and criticisms toward Harvard and its students continue to rise, the coming weeks will be a true testament to the Harvard community and its strength. Student activists remain committed to the cause at hand, scheduling protests and fundraising efforts for humanitarian relief overseas. Additionally, students and community members alike will continue to mourn the lives lost due to the escalating conflict in Israel and Palestine. Now more than ever will it be time for the Harvard community to come together to show support, raise awareness, and work toward a peaceful resolution.
Layla Chaaraoui ’26 (laylachaaraoui@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.