As Harvard faced Trump's antisemitism claims, a program on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict collapsed

Former staff of Harvard Divinity School's Religion and Public Life program say it encouraged a healthy dialogue, but critics accused it of antisemitism.

On a hot day in Jerusalem, Kevin Keystone found his way to the synagogue within Yad Vashem, Israel’s national monument to victims of the Holocaust, and took a moment to reflect. It wasn’t his first visit to Israel, but this time was different. This 2022 trip included a mix of places and voices, encouraging him to engage more deeply with the region’s history and politics than he had growing up, he said, in a Jewish community that had unquestioningly supported Israel.

“The trip was so poignant and powerful and important,” he said. “It really unpacked so many things.”

Keystone’s experience aligns with what the founders of Harvard Divinity School’s Religion and Public Life program described when they launched it five years ago with the lofty goal of advancing the “public understanding of religion in service of a just world at peace.” As part of that mission, the program ran annual trips to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where students like Keystone met with politicians, farmers, artists and human rights groups. Several students told NBC News it was the reason they joined the divinity school.