It is the elite universities — Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, UPenn — that are the worst. It is there that the pro-Palestinian student groups are free to celebrate Hamas, to chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free” and to shout their hatred of those who live in the “settler-colonial apartheid state” of Israel. And it is at those elite institutions that the responses by the administrations to the Hamas atrocities, and to those on campus who celebrate them, have been either mild, or nonexistent. David Deavel proposes ways to fight back against this state of affairs: “It’s Time To Downgrade Elite Academic Institutions,” by David P. Deavel, AMAC, October 15, 2023:
It’s a very bad sign when the editors of Playboy have better moral judgment than Harvard. But that’s precisely what we’ve seen in the last week. American higher education, particularly its most elite precincts, has shown the nation that it is not only tolerating but promoting toxic hatred that will excuse the most brutal terrorism. It isn’t news to those paying attention. But it should be a wake-up call to all that parents, alumni, and our government need to stop supporting these institutions.
Playboy ended their business relationship with performer Mia Khalifa for her full-throated support not just of “the Palestinian people,” but of Hamas itself. She described one photo of terrorists as a “Renaissance painting” and requested that they film their brutality better: “Can someone please tell the freedom fighters in Palestine to flip their phones and film horizontal.”
Meanwhile, even though a letter signed by members of 34 Harvard student groups blamed Israel entirely for Hamas’s attacks, Harvard initially had no official response to last weekend’s terroristic acts by Hamas. Given Harvard’s quick response declaring what “justice” is with regard to public issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the two-day silence led former Harvard president Larry Summers to lament that “Harvard is being defined by the morally unconscionable statement apparently coming from two dozen student groups blaming all the violence on Israel.” He added, “I am sickened. I cannot fathom the Administration’s failure to disassociate the University and condemn this statement.”
Harvard president Claudine Gay finally responded on Tuesday, October 10, with a brief letter that at least had some clarity: “I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.” But despite declaring that student groups can’t speak for Harvard, it was odd that her statement was simply a first-person one—“I condemn.” Three days after that brief letter, Gay released a video message in which she finally clearly declared that “our university” condemns terrorism, while adding that those approving of the Hamas actions wouldn’t face any action. “Our university embraces a commitment to free expression,” she intoned. “That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views.”
This commitment to “free expression” is pretty selective. As Zachary Marschall observed at Campus Reform, in 2018 Harvard investigated one professor for “microaggressions,” whether “verbal or non-verbal.” And in 2022 Harvard students were instructed in one university training session that “failing to use a person’s preferred pronouns could be a violation of the university’s sexual misconduct and harassment policies.” That these are not simply isolated deviations can be shown by the fact that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) rated Harvard as the worst school in the country for free expression, with a score of zero out of a possible 100 points.
That Harvard suddenly discovered this commitment to free expression only when their students were caught supporting terrorists is a pretty good sign that they didn’t discover it at all. As Steve McGuire of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni posted on X (Twitter): “I don’t buy it at all. She’s just trying to save face.”
When the smoke clears, and probably before, Harvard will be doing exactly what it’s been doing all along. They are tolerating the support of terrorism and antisemitism while teaching students to call Republicans “Nazis.” As always, the Babylon Bee summed up the situation perfectly with its headline, “Harvard Student Leaves Lecture On Microaggressions To Attend ‘Kill The Jews’ Rally.”
Of course, Harvard isn’t alone in selective commitments to free speech and defense of basic human rights. Yale “American Studies” professor (there is some joke in there) Zareena Grewal, who describes herself as a “radical Muslim,” was posting in support of the Hamas attacks. She defended the murder of Israeli civilians by saying, “Settlers are not civilians.” Grewal was herself one of the instigators trying to get professors Nicholas and Erika Christakis fired for defending free speech a couple years ago. At Stanford, an “instructor had Jewish students raise their hands, made them move away from their belongings before saying his point was to show what Jewish people were doing to Palestinians.” According to some students, the instructor also belittled the Holocaust by suggesting that Israel had killed more Palestinians. At least Stanford officials had the good sense to stop the instructor from teaching and investigate.
That Stanford instructor, separating the Jewish students from the rest of their classmates, apparently thought he was making a valid point against Israel for its “apartheid.” But Israel doesn’t keep its Arab citizens separate from Jewish citizens; they serve on the Supreme Court, in the Knesset, as ambassadors; the chairman of the largest bank in Israel is an Arab; Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories, are treated in the same hospitals by both Jewish and Arab medical personnel; Jews and Arabs play on the same teams and in the same orchestras; Jews and Arabs own businesses together, everything from restaurants to high-tech startups. That instructor’s little lesson fueled by his anti-Israel animus was misdirected. He ought better to have had his students act out the Hamas atrocities against other students — pretending to rape, torture, and murder them — had he wanted to be true to what happened this past week.
If you are a student, try not to be overly impressed by the elite schools. Morally and intellectually, many of them are running on empty. The parents of a student at one of these schools should monitor the classes that are offered, the subjects of student protests on campus, and the response of the administration to these campus protests. What kind of political views are favored or shunned by the faculty? If you are an alumnus or alumna, express your anger with administrative pusillanimity, such as a failure to condemn Hamas, by withholding your donations. Appeals to morality do not sway college administrators; what gets their attention — see the example of Harvard president Claudine Gay, who finally came round to denouncing Hamas after some deep-pocketed alumni made their displeasure with her insufficient response known — is the threat that donations will be withheld. Money is the only language that the administrators understand.