“Fight fiercely, Harvard! Fight, fight, fight. Demonstrate to us your skill.” Yes, show the world in your testimony before Congress of your skill at the Lie Direct, and the Lie Circumstantial, and the Reply Churlish. For the saga of deception and spin by Harvard continues.
More on the degringolade along the Charles can be found here: “‘Harvard Has Caved In’: Pro-Hamas Demonstrators Celebrate ‘Student Intifada’ After School ‘Downgrades’ Punishments,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, July 10, 2024:
Harvard University has “downgraded” the disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard and roiling the campus for nearly five weeks, The Harvard Crimson reported on Wednesday.
The shocking development will likely erase the good will Harvard regained by appearing to embrace an approach to discipline that would deter future unruly behavior as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hate incidents the protesters perpetrated throughout the school year, which damaged the reputation of the institution and prompted a slew of lawsuits and federal investigations.
Per the Crimson, “The most severe probation charge will last for just one semester, a remarkable change from the initial punishments which required at least one student to withdraw from the college for three semesters. Some students who were initially placed on probation in late May also had the length of their probations reduced.”
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — protesters had set up on campus, creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, interim president Alan Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated by essentially taking an early summer break to participate in the demonstration.
Harvard then began suspending the protesters following their rejection of a deal to leave the encampment, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before then, Garber vowed that any student who continued to occupy the section of campus would be placed on “involuntary leave,” a measure that effectively disenrolls the students from school and bars them from campus until the university decides whether they are allowed back. The disciplinary measures were levied one day after members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) created a sign featuring an antisemitic caricature of Garber as Satan, and accused him of duplicity.
During Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in May, reports emerged that some students had been banned from graduation and receiving their diplomas.
However, Harvard, as well as the organization responsible for the encampment, HOOP, always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters.
Unrepentant, HOOP on Wednesday celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered….
Shabbos Kestenbaum, one of the plaintiffs in the case, has vowed to see the litigation through to the end.
“Harvard’s meritless motion to dismiss our lawsuit only proves our point: It has never taken the concerns of us Jewish students seriously, and has no plans to start now,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to apply maximum pressure in both the court of law and the court of public opinion … We hope that donors and prospective students follow closely.”
Harvard, full of surquidry and swank, but squalid withal, needs to be put to shame, and in the discovery phase of the lawsuit by six Jewish students, a great deal of appalling information will come out. One hopes, and expects, that the redoubtable Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, will not let the pettifoggery of Harvard’s Office of the General Counsel put a spanner in her works.
OLD GUY says
Harvard can’t punish what it believes and supports at heart. The only way to clean up the Harvard problem is to clean house at Administration and Deans level. Don’t see that happening.
Walter Sieruk says
It’s rather obvious that those insidious stealth jihadists gaining power and influence of those high positions institutions of “higher education”, as Harvard, must, obviously , be accepting “gifts”, bribes, from persons from foreign oil rich countries.
Many universities and colleges across the United States have been thoroughly infiltrated and influenced by the insidious stealth jihadists.
There may be little doubt that those stealth jihadists are backed and funded by Qatar as well as oil rich Saudi Arabia and even Iran.
Walter Sieruk says
A large and terrible number of American universities, including Harvard and colleges across the United States are very anti -Jewish and likewise anti-Israel. Therefore those institutions of “higher education” are ,in essence, very un-American.
This is a very clear reminder that the former President, William Howard Taft, in a speech ,rightly and wisely, declared, “Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”