A professor of Middle Eastern studies has invited Dalal Saeb Iriqat, an extreme anti-Zionist and open supporter of Hamas and its October 7 attack to speak at the Kennedy School: “Harvard University Faces New Antisemitism Controversy with Invitation of Pro-Hamas Speaker,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, February 7, 2024:
…[Tarek Masoud] added, “For too long we haven’t done this work because we were more concerned with psychological safety rather than education. What I want is for our community to transcend emotions when confronted with ideas or speakers that we dislike, bring our best selves and strongest arguments to the table, and have it out.”…
What “community” is that? Does Masoud mean the students at the Kennedy School, who are classmates, nothing more — to “transcend emotions” and listen respectfully to an invited speaker? But he has never spoken out about the behavior of pro-Palestinian students at Harvard, or around the country, actively drowning out and suppressing the speech of others. These pro-Palestinian mobs have been surrounding and hazing Jewish students, entering classrooms while a class is on, waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans loud enough to drown out the lecturer, slogans that call for the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab one. For that is the meaning of “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free.”
Harvard did not try to stop, nor to punish afterwards, the pro-Palestinian mobs who created an unsafe environment for Jewish students, instead claiming that those menacing mobs were only exercising the freedom of speech. But these protests have been menacing affairs, a kind of frenzied mini-Nuremberg-rally of non-stop chanting, rather than any kind of reasoned exposition of an opinion or an idea. These protests are not meant to enlighten, but to frighten Jewish and other pro-Israel students into silence.
In a January letter requesting documents relevant to the committee’s investigation, Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) cited numerous widely reported antisemitic incidents that occurred at Harvard last semester, including the mobbing of a Jewish student by a throng of anti-Israel activists — one of whom was the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review — screaming “Shame!” into his ears as he tried to get away. Students there have also chanted openly “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which are widely interpreted as calls for violence against Jews and the destruction of Israel….
“Globalize the Intifada” is a call for murdering Jews everywhere — that’s what “globalize” means. The “Intifada” refers to the Palestinian terrorist campaign that lasted from 2000 to 2005, when suicide bombers were much in evidence, and over 1,000 Israelis were murdered. That is what these mobs want to see repeated, all over the world. Should that sentiment be protected by the First Amendment? Would the First Amendment protect those who came to the Harvard campus to shout “send the blacks back to Africa”? Wouldn’t the campus police be right to shut them down? How does calling for the destruction of the Jewish state and the murder or expulsion of Israeli Jews differ in kind or in degree from that anti-black demand? It doesn’t.
The string of controversies ultimately led to the resignation as president of Claudine Gay, who told Foxx’s committee in December that her determining whether calling for a genocide of Jews violates school rules would depend “on the context” in which the statement was uttered.
Can you imagine a “context” where calling for the genocide of Jews could ever be acceptable? No, nor can I. Nor did Congresswoman Stefanik.
Harvard Kennedy School told The Harvard Crimson in a statement that Dean Douglas Elmendorf “personally finds abhorrent the comments by Dalal Saeb Iriqat quoted in the press that justify and normalize the horrific terrorist attack by Hamas” and that “an invitation to speak at the Kennedy School never implies an endorsement of a speaker’s views by the Kennedy School or members of the Kennedy School community.”
Elmendorf’s statement is not quite correct. He, and the rest of the Harvard administration, may think that inviting Iriqat to speak does not constitute an endorsement. But Iriqat will put on her Facebook page the glad news of her having been “invited to speak at Harvard University,” which will endow her with a specious prestige: she must be taken seriously, some will deludedly believe, if she’s been asked to speak at Harvard. That’s what many in the wide world will think. Her appearance at the Kennedy School’s speaker series is not an endorsement of her views, but it constitutes a recognition of her importance.
And inviting Dalal Saeb Iriqat to speak after she has praised Hamas’ scarcely believable atrocities on October 7 takes tolerance to a whole new and unspeakable level. To repeat: not all speech is protected. For example, the Supreme Court has held — in the Brandenburg decision — that speech that would tend to create “imminent lawless violence” can be banned. In a similar vein, speech that endorses, praises, and promotes the murder or mass murder, of an entire people, should not be entitled to the speech protections of the First Amendment. Letting Iriqat squirt her poison at the Kennedy School will not provide anything useful to her listeners, but in the outside world will give her a cachet, as a speaker at Harvard, to which she is not entitled. Tarek Masoud should think again.
Augusto Perez says
So… considering the Brandenburg decision and that the Islamic objective is to convert everybody, or enslave them via Jizzya, or to kill them… it should make that an unwelcome/banned religion in the US?
OLD GUY says
Thats what common sense tells you, put they don’t teach or want common sense at Harvard, or the freedom of speech from opposing their opinions.
James Lincoln says
Harvard University is now Hamas University.
maria says
Yes. Close Harvard, confiscate all the money, houses and send the people from Harvard to Africa
No Harvard and its staff should be allowed in Europe, USA, Australia, New Zeeland , South America, Canada and Africa
Send them to Arctic
mgoldberg says
You’d think that Harvard would be able to discern what ‘From the River to the Sea’ actually points to for each side. For the muslims it’s the tyranny of muslim rule, and the absolute ending of any jewish presence in the land of … Israel. Tyranny and subjugation.
For the Jews of Israel, and everywhere, the muslims/arabs live in Israel, are under no Apartheid, and no genocide and yet the above tyrants of Harvard would nurture and believe that this is so, and have no desire to see the differences except in allowing the muslim/arab one to parade unchallenged
Rick Gordon says
It’s embarrassing for what is considered the peak of American higher education to descend to such low standards. It’s as though Harvard has forgotten the values of western civilization and our country’s history. I respect diversity and want different points of view debated but not prejudice and hatred.
My grandchildren will not be attending.