A member of the Dean’s Council at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government has stepped down from his position. This decision follows a lawsuit filed last week by almost 200 family members of Americans who lost their lives in a terrorist attack carried out by Hamas on Israeli concert attendees on October 7, 2023.
The lawsuit alleges that Bashar Masri, a wealthy Palestinian American, played a role in supporting Hamas by assisting in the construction of tunnels and rocket launch sites for the terrorist group. Additionally, he is accused of providing access to his properties in Gaza for senior Hamas leaders.
Masri has resigned from his role at Harvard in response to these accusations. The Kennedy School of Government has confirmed his resignation via an email to Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Palestinian businessman Bashar Masri stands among attendees during the event in Qasr ar Rawabi, Palestine, on April 5, 2025. (Mohammad Nazal/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty)
Masri is the man behind the $350 million Rawabi project, an effort to create the first modern industrial area in the West Bank. The lawsuit alleges that that project was mostly funded by a Qatari state-owned real estate investment firm.
“In 2018 he established and currently funds the graduate Rawabi Fellowship for Leaders from Palestine at the Harvard University Kennedy School. This fellowship program provides tuition, health insurance, and stipends for Palestinian graduate students at Harvard,” the lawsuit says.
The Gaza Industrial Estate (GIE), is described as the “crown jewel” of Masri’s developments, which the lawsuit says was financed through Masri’s companies with money from USAID, the United Nations, the European Union, and more recently, the International Finance Company (IFC) in Washington.
“In developing the GIE, Masri and the other Defendants worked directly, openly, and knowingly with senior Hamas leaders, including, in the months before the October 7 Attack, the Hamas official in charge of the development of Hamas’s military-industrial base in Gaza,” the lawsuit says.
A view of the encampment in Harvard yard. The “Liberated Zone” had several signs decrying genocide and calling for divestment from Israel. (Nikolas Lanum/Fox News Digital)
According to the lawsuit, while GIE appeared to be a totally legitimate company that manufactured products to meet the needs of ordinary people, it was very closely tied to Hamas terror, saying that “…Masri and the companies he controls worked with Hamas to construct and conceal an elaborate subterranean attack tunnel network which Hamas used to burrow under the border into Israel, to attack nearby Israeli communities, and to ambush Israeli military personnel.”
The suit claims that GIE was used to “probe the border fence and test the IDF’s response times and countermeasures in the lead up to the October 7 Attack,” and that “Hamas even installed an anti-tank battery in one of the GIE’s water towers facing the border.”
Masri’s office called the complaint “baseless.”
“He was shocked to learn through the media that a baseless complaint was filed today referring to false allegations against him and certain businesses he is associated with,” his office told Fox News Digital. “Neither he nor those entities have ever engaged in unlawful activity or provided support for violence and militancy.”
