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“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” tweeted Harvard professor and former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers on October 9, when he learned that 34 Harvard student organizations had signed a statement saying that they “hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence” in the Middle East and added that Israel “is the only one to blame.” The students’ statement was a direct response to Hamas’s murderous attack on Israeli civilians the day before, which has claimed more than 1,000 civilian lives, injured many more, and saw some 150 Israeli hostages carried off into captivity.
Presumably, Summers felt even worse than he did on February 21, 2006, when he was literally “alienated” from his post as Harvard’s president, resigning amid criticism for having suggested that women inherently might have less scientific aptitude than men. Summers apologized for those remarks, which he made based on empirical data that he said he hoped would be disproved. That did not save him from Harvard’s social-justice warriors, including a majority of Harvard’s faculty, who voted no confidence in his leadership. Instead, Summers’ downfall emboldened his critics, and led him and his successors to make identity politics central to Harvard’s mission.
More than a decade and a half later, only Summers can say whether he is truly surprised that hundreds of Harvard students would blame Israeli children, babies, grandmothers, and hundreds of others—among them at least 14 Americans now confirmed dead—for their own murders, injuries, and kidnappings. Despite his stated outrage, Summers has shown no interest in ending his affiliation with Harvard, as a principled person with such sentiments and bearing some responsibility for the climate at the school might have done.
Current Harvard president Claudine Gay confirmed that such statements are acceptable at what supposedly is the nation’s most prestigious university. Writing after 48 hours of silence, she declared that “our students have the right to speak for themselves,” even if “no student group—not even 30 student groups—speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”
After massive public criticism, including from many Harvard affiliates, Gay amended her statement to declare, “I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.” She nevertheless qualified her condemnation of Hamas’s “abhorrent” actions, leaving space and consideration for “whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the [Middle East] region” might be. Harvard’s best purpose, Gay continued, would “be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. . . . I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue.”
