BOSTON (AP) – Harvard University was “complicit in enhancing the prestige of the Nazi regime” in the 1930s despite knowing Jews were being persecuted, a historian claimed Sunday at a Holocaust conference.

The administration of America’s oldest college welcomed one of Adolf Hitler’s closest deputies to a reunion, hosted a reception for German naval officials, and sent delegates to a celebration of a German university that had expelled Jews, Stephen H. Norwood claimed at a conference at Boston University.

“It is truly shameful that the administration, alumni and student leaders of America’s most prominent university, who were in a position to influence public opinion at a critical time, remained indifferent to Germany’s terrorist campaign against Jews and indeed on numerous occasions assisted the Nazis in their efforts to gain acceptance in the West,” he said.

Norwood, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, is writing a book about American universities’ response to the Nazis. He was the keynote speaker at a Holocaust conference hosted by BU’s Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies.

Other American universities struggled over how to respond to the Nazis, but Harvard had a social responsibility to lead, Norwood said.

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately return a phone call Sunday, but the school issued a brief statement to The Boston Globe.

“The university was then and is now repulsed by everything that Hitler represents,” the statement said.

After Norwood’s findings were described by a Globe reporter, a university spokesman said Norwood had mischaracterized the motives of school leaders or blamed the institution for the acts of individuals.

Norwood criticized former Harvard President James Bryant Conant’s failure to act or speak out despite numerous opportunities between 1933 and 1937. During that time, it was widely reported that Jews under the Nazi regime were segregated in schools, beaten in the streets, and purged from universities, and their businesses boycotted. Later, millions of Jews across Europe were executed by Nazis.

Social and political leaders in Boston also failed to speak out, Norwood claimed. In 1934, Massachusetts Gov. Joseph B. Ely and Boston Mayor Frederick Mansfield gave an official welcome to the Karlsruhe, a navy warship whose officers were treated to social functions.

“It wasn’t just prominent Harvard people,” Norwood said. “Boston (was) arguably considered the most anti-Semitic city in the United States.”

Norwood’s research focused on former Nazi Party foreign press chief Ernst Hanfstaengl, a Harvard graduate whose 1934 campus visit for a 25th year reunion sparked protest in the Jewish community.

“Conant could easily have denounced the visit but did not,” Norwood said.

Conant later rejected Hanfstaengl’s attempts to donate money to Harvard, according to Conant’s 1970 autobiography.

Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, a year after the Nazi Party gained majority power in the German assembly. He declared himself leader of Germany a year later.

Hanfstaengl fled Germany in 1937, after becoming disillusioned with the Nazi Party. He eventually was held in Allied custody but worked as an adviser to the U.S. government during World War II.

Conant also welcomed the crew of the Nazi warship the Karlsruhe to campus in 1934, Norwood said.

“A bodyguard of Harvard students escorted the Karlsruhe crew members to the Harvard campus where they were entertained at Lowell House,” a residential hall, he said.

Two years later, Conant sent a delegate to an anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg. Jewish faculty and students had been purged, Norwood said, and among the celebrants were prominent Nazis Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler.

The president of Williams College and all British universities, by contrast, declined the invitation, Norwood said.

Norwood was also critical of the student newspaper, The Crimson, for advocating for continued relationships with Nazi Germany.

The Crimson’s current managing editor, Elisabeth Theodore, was a panelist at Sunday’s conference and said the newspaper staff was much smaller then and not nearly as diverse as it is today. She said it’s unlikely the opinions of the 1930s Crimson staff was representative of the whole student body.

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was invited to the conference but did not attend, and did not send a representative.

Summers in a September 2002 speech said he was concerned about the increase in anti-Semitism on college campuses. His comments came after some Harvard professors advocated for the university to divest from investment interests in Israel.

“Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent,” said Summers, who is Jewish. “I would like nothing more than to be wrong.”

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