Harvard President Finally Starts Making Sense

No doubt it was both the threat of deep-pocketed alumni withholding donations, and the realization of just how far the antisemitism had spread on campus, where pro-Hamas students have defended the atrocities committed on October 7 as legitimate “resistance,” that led Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, to issue her latest, belated statement on anti-Israel and antisemitic acts on campus and how she proposes to deal with antisemitism on campus. It’s quite a different tone from her statement a few weeks ago, when she said that the members of 31 student groups who signed a statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s terror attack should not be punished, citing the university’s “commitment to free expression.” More on her latest statement can be found here: “Harvard University President Condemns Anti-Israel ‘From the River to the Sea’ Chant,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, November 10, 2023:

Harvard University President Claudine Gay on Thursday condemned the widely used anti-Israel phrase “from the river to the sea” while elaborating on plans to combat antisemitism on campus amid outcry that the school is not doing enough to ensure the safety of Jewish students.

“Our community must understand that phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea’ bear specific historical meanings that to a great many people imply the eradication of Jews from Israel and engender both pain and existential fears within our Jewish community,” Gay said in a statement. “I condemn this phrase and any similarly hurtful phrases.”

The slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” has been widely used as a call for the destruction of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Anti-Israel activists have argued that opposition to the phrase is meant to suppress free speech — an argument noted by Gay.

“I have heard concerns from some about how this important work relating to antisemitism will bear on Harvard’s vital commitment to free expression,” she said. “Combating antisemitism and fostering free expression are mutually consistent goals. We are at our strongest when we commit to open inquiry and freedom of expression as foundational values of our academic community.”…

But wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that Gay was insisting that the 31 groups on campus that blamed Israel for Hamas attacks should not be sanctioned because that would infringe on “free expression”? My, what a difference a dozen deep-pocketed angry alumni can make.

Gay’s statement came amid mounting concerns that Harvard has been allowing antisemitism to proliferate on campus under the guise of protecting free speech and expression. After Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, the university waited days to condemn the Palestinian terrorist group’s mass slaughter and rape of civilians. The administration also declined to censure 31 student groups, led by the school’s Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), who blamed Israel for the attack and accused the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza, despite the Israeli military having fully withdrawn from the territory in 2005.

Harvard’s response has angered major donors to the university. On Oct. 15, the Wexner Foundation, a prominent philanthropic organization, announced that it was terminating a longstanding partnership with the school. Other reports, first disclosed by JewishPhilanthropy, said that Harvard alumni and other major donors, shocked by the university’s response to the Hamas atrocities, were also considering ceasing their financial support for the university….

In Thursday’s statement, Gay, who was appointed as Harvard’s first black president last December, said “antisemitism has no place at Harvard” and provided additional details about a recently formed Antisemitism Advisory Group.

The group, she explained, plans to implement several reforms, including a historical examination of the roots of antisemitism at Harvard, educational programming highlighting the antisemitic origins of anti-Israel rhetoric, raising awareness of anonymous reporting of antisemitic incidents, forging relationships with external groups, and for the first time ever incorporating Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish American Heritage Month into the school’s calendar….

Still, it will take much more than setting up committees to study the history of antisemitism at Harvard, and the antisemitic roots of anti-Israel rhetoric, and putting a Holocaust Remembrance Day on the Harvard calendar. Here are the things that Harvard should be doing:

First, identify and expel from the university any students who are found to have taken part in the incident in which a Jewish student was surrounded, prevented from leaving, and screamed at in a threatening manner.

Second, defund all groups at Harvard that have called for the destruction of Israel, beginning with Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia and UPenn have just done this. Brandeis has gone further, having banned the SJP from its campus. Why should Harvard not do the same? SJP makes no secret that it supports the goal of “from the river to the sea/Palestine shall be free.” To be clear, that means their goal is the disappearance of the only Jewish state and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab one. At SJP rallies, there have been cries of support for Hamas and the atrocities on October 7 described as an “historic win” which, SJP members insist, was the understandable result of “oppression” by Israel. Isn’t that enough for Claudine Gay not just to defund, but to ban SJP altogether from the Harvard campus?