Harvard and Yale are often held up as two of America’s most “elite,” “prestigious” and “diverse” institutions of higher education. Not so much.
I don’t intend to criticize all current students or alumni of those schools. (In full disclosure, my nephew attends Harvard and plays on the football team). What I do mean is to highlight the fact that racism and bigotry are just as deeply embedded in human nature at these “enlightened” institutions as they are anywhere else in America.
What am I referring to? Regarding Harvard, “anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head at Harvard. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of some 1,400 Israelis, Jewish students there have reportedly been bullied, intimidated, spat on and, in at least one case, physically assaulted. Student-led protests call for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people with chants of “Intifada! Intifada! Intifada!” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free!” (Corcoran, R. Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2023). This chant refers to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, where the current state of Israel is located. Thus, this chant refers to the genocide of the people of Israel, and the complete annihilation of the Jewish state. Regarding Yale, I refer to “Jewish Students Meet Hostility at Yale.” (Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2023): The authors witnessed “a university-backed event promoting denial and justifications of Hamas’s atrocities.” The two Jewish students explain that “when we found out about Monday’s anti-Israel event at Yale, ‘Gaza Under Siege,’ we scrambled to produce fliers offering some context. They detailed Hamas’s atrocities, its anti- Jewish charter, its use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. Our classmates awaiting the event weren’t interested. They yelled “don’t take the paper!” and tore it up or threw it back at us.”
These students further noted that “organizers refused us entry because we weren’t registered but waved others through who also weren’t on the list.” Listening from outside “what we heard was two hours of denial, lies and incitement.” The event’s speakers “referred to atrocities of Oct 7 in the sanitized language of ‘civilians killed,’ not beheaded, raped or kidnapped.”; however, none of the inflamed speakers mentioned “the Hamas charter’s call to ‘fight Jews and kill them’ but made sure to include the assertion that “Israel aims to inflict as much harm, damage, and death as possible.”
These courageous Jewish students concluded “after the speeches ended…we entered the hall. Our stomachs dropped at the sight of nearly 200 fellow students, some of whom we had regarded as friends, along with professors we had looked up to in esteem. We asked the moderator and two of the speakers if they were willing to denounce Hamas unequivocally. All three turned their backs on us. So has our university.” (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2023) Wow. This, unfortunately, is where we are with the Woke American Left. There can be no dissenting thought. There can be no genuine exchange of ideas. Rather, on the “elite” Harvard and Yale campuses you are either Woke, or you are silenced. Censored.
A few institutions have pushed back including New College school president Richard Corcoran in his article New College Is a Haven for Harvard Refugees: “Our school…refuses to ostracize certain groups at the expense of others in the name of “diversity, inclusion, and equity”—a misnomer for offices whose purpose typically is the opposite of what their name suggests.” Harvard’s Office for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) says in its “DIE Commitment Statement” that it welcomes “people of color, women, persons with disabilities, people who identify as LGBTQIA, and those who are at the intersections of these identities.” In other words…Jews and others not on the list need not apply— unless they fit one of the delineated identity buckets. An organization truly dedicated to “diversity” and “belonging” shouldn’t establish such narrow parameters for inclusion. This regrettably is typical of DIE office charters, which often signal which groups are “worthy” of membership. We don’t tolerate that at New College. In February we dismantled our DIE office to ensure that no group is singled out for punishment or preferential treatment.”
Free speech in the context of genuine academic freedom is largely discouraged in American higher education. Many of us have observed this academic censorship for years but the virulent antisemitism we are currently witnessing on college campuses is a stark and disturbing reminder.
