https://www.wsj.com/articles/slavery-anti-semitism-and-harvard-missing-moral-compass-israel-palestine-bacow-11652449740?mod=opinion_lead_pos6
A recent report, “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery,” notes that the university’s faculty, staff and leaders held more than 70 black slaves between 1636, when Harvard was founded, and 1783, when Massachusetts abolished slavery. In atonement, President Lawrence Bacow reports, the university intends to dedicate $100 million of its endowment to help address “the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society.”
A Harvard Crimson editorial speaks with even stronger moral conviction of the desire for rightful justice that spreads “like wildfire” when oppression strikes anywhere in the world. Moved to right past wrongs, the editors propose to help “free Palestine” by boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, which stands accused of pushing “Palestinians toward indefinite statelessness, combining ethnonationalist legislation and a continued assault on the sovereignty of the West Bank through illegal settlements that difficults [sic] the prospect of a two-state solution.”
Despite differences in literacy and purpose, the initiatives from Harvard’s president and Harvard’s students are eerily similar. Addressing genuine distress—of American blacks in one case, Palestinian Arabs in the other—both gestures misidentify the cause and, by misdirecting responsibility for the misery, make it impossible to ameliorate deplorable conditions.
Black Americans indeed still struggle to overcome the corrosive effects of slavery, but Harvard’s administration wouldn’t have insinuated itself into the problem by misappropriating guilt for deeds it didn’t commit in the past unless it means to obscure the wrongs it is committing in the present.
In the America we inherited, citizens bear responsibility for their actions, not blame for institutional history. For much longer than it housed slave-owners, Harvard did the hard work of transmitting the founding principles and texts of this country to those who must inspire and strengthen Americans of the next generation. A truthful inquiry would have featured professors who taught and students who fought to overcome slavery, 117 of them killed in that brave cause.
