harry rakowski: donors should not fund harvard's antisemitism
harvard's alumni must show it that aggressively defunding the institution will cause more harm than woke students ever could
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a truck calling the president of harvard a disgrace drives around harvard university in cambridge, mass., on dec. 12.
joseph prezioso/afp
in july, claudine gay, a political scientist, became harvard’s first black president. her harvard biography states that her career has focused on american racial and ethnic politics, political behaviour and democratic citizenship. for someone so committed to equality, diversity and appropriate behaviour, it’s odd that she seems to believe that black lives matter, but jewish lives don’t. at a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses on dec. 5, gay was pointedly asked by rep. elise stefanik: “at harvard, does calling for genocide of jews violate harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” her response: “it can be, depending on context.”
what she repeatedly refused to say is that even if free speech has broad limits, hate speech does indeed clearly violate harvard’s code of conduct and is actionable.
harvard’s “student handbook” is pretty clear that, “discrimination based on race, colour, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, creed, national origin, age, ancestry, veteran status, disability, military service or any other legally protected basis is contrary to the principles and policies of harvard university.” how can there any ambiguity that hate speech and intimidation of other students is anything other than a violation of the school’s anti-discrimination policy?
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the response to her evasiveness and that of other university presidents who testified was harsh and immediate. white house spokesperson andrew bates said, “it’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country.” laurence tribe, a prominent liberal legal scholar, said that, “claudine gay’s hesitant, formulaic and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling.”
following the backlash, gay issued something of an apology, saying that, “words matter.” but words without action lack meaning. there have been numerous reports of antisemitic incidents at harvard in recent months, to the extent that the school has come under investigation from the u.s. department of education. most notoriously, harvard’s administrators failed to immediately distance themselves from a statement put out by 30 student organizations, which said that the horrific assault by hamas and its brutal murder of innocent israeli civilians wad justified and should be blamed entirely on israel.
when gay finally did speak out on the matter, all she could muster the courage to say was that, “no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for harvard university or its leadership.” lawrence summers, harvard’s ex-president asked, “why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of harvard statements after george floyd’s death or russia’s invasion of ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of israelis attending a music festival?”
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the recent acts of blatant antisemitism that have rocked harvard have been met with disturbing lack of action. very little has been done to limit the hate speech and the intimidation and nothing effectively has been done to impose sanctions on those who promote it. but something can be done to sanction the storied university itself.
in this year’s financial overview, harvard reaffirmed that its commitment to excellence could not be possible without the contributions of donors, past and present. this allowed it to have an annual budget of $6.1 billion and an operating surplus of $186 million. about $2.2 billion came from disbursements from its $50-billion endowment and about eight per cent of revenue came from current gifts.
this allowed harvard to fund a number of new initiatives and raise the income threshold for cost-free attendance to $85,000. despite this abundance of resources, however, financial challenges remain. spending increased by nine per cent, double the increase in revenue, a trend that is not sustainable. harvard’s financial stability is now at risk.
university administrators are allowing hatred and intolerance to fester on campus because they are fearful of highly politicized woke students aggressively protesting their actions. in 2019, harvard dismissed dean ronald sullivan, its first black faculty dean, for joining harvey weinstein’s legal team, after caving to student protests and sit-ins. the aclu argued that while sexual assault is abhorrent, everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty and entitled to adequate representation and that the decision sacrificed principles central to the legal system.
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if universities have excessive fear of protests by aggressive woke students, they now have something more to fear: business leaders and harvard alumni are now pausing or revoking hundreds of millions of dollars in financial pledges to harvard until the school actually stands up to antisemitism. if harvard administrators can’t find their moral compass, perhaps it’s time to have their valuable alumni show them that aggressively defunding the institution will cause more harm than woke students ever could.
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