Harvard’s Capitulation to Anti-Israel Mob Is Latest Sign Its Interim President Must Go

When an anti-Israel mob with megaphones entered Harvard classrooms and disrupted classes of Jewish professors in November 2023, the college let them get away with it. When the same mob took over the main reading room in Harvard’s Widener Library for an anti-Israel protest in December, the college let them get away with it.Over the past 20 days, the same mob, accompanied by faculty members, has taken over Harvard Yard, flying Palestinian flags from University Hall, draping a Yasser Arafat-style keffiyeh on the John Harvard statue, and self-appointing “marshals” in neon vests to follow and glower at Jewish students and Harvard employees. Harvard chose Israel Independence day to announce that the college would let them get away with that, too. Minor tinkering in Harvard’s management ranks — President Claudine Gay has been replaced by an interim president, Alan Garber, who had been provost — has been insufficient to fix the underlying issues.A student leader at Harvard Chabad, Josh Kaplan, was quoted in the Times as saying, “Harvard capitulated to the protesters.” He said, “I don’t see how Harvard will be able to enforce any of their rules in the future.”That’s a warning for commencement. Harvard hoped that clearing the Yard of the encampment would allow commencement to proceed unimpeded, but there’s no clear or public commitment from the anti-Israel activists to refrain from disrupting commencement the same way they have disrupted the rest of the academic year.The anti-Israel mob’s social media account was advertising an escalation, planning to block Cambridge streets for a “Nakba Day” protest on Wednesday May 15. Meanwhile, Harvard’s reputation deteriorates. At Duke’s graduation ceremony, Jerry Seinfeld made fun of it. “You’re never going to believe this: Harvard used to be a great place to go to school,” he said.The chief executive of Tikvah, Eric Cohen, gave a major speech earlier this week encouraging Jews to go elsewhere. “‘Wow Harvard!’ should give way to ‘Why Harvard?’” he said. The university’s defenders note that the recently admitted Class of 2028 will include a total of 10 students with Israeli citizenship.One of the Jewish professors whose class was disrupted by the protesters called each one individually, encouraging them to accept the offer of admission. I wish the incoming students well. Doubtless they’ll increase the chances of Harvard improving.Yet I hope they are, in economics terms, equipped with complete information about what they are getting into. If patterns hold, when those Israelis arrive on campus they’ll be ostracized by their peers and greeted at a freshman convocation ceremony by protesters pushing the “Israel apartheid” Zionism-is-racism lie.The graduate students grading their papers and serving as resident assistants in their dormitories, even the professors teaching their classes, may be vocal public advocates of an academic boycott of Israel that would bar them from campus.Dr. Garber’s letter makes it sound like the anti-Israel activists deserve to be heard out, as if it were an academic discussion about the optimal cholesterol range for which to aim. “In keeping with my commitment to ongoing and reasoned dialogue, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and I will meet with students to hear their perspectives on academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East,” he said.He added: “There will continue to be deep disagreements and strongly felt emotions as we experience pain and distress over events in the wider world. Now more than ever, it is crucial to do what we do at our best, creating conditions for true dialogue, modeling ways to build understanding, empathy, and trust.”This anti-Israel mob set up shop on Passover to lodge a false accusation of “genocide” against Israel, an echo of ancient blood libels. It released a music video with language that made a coarse reference to the police. It’s the same mob that started the anti-Harvard backlash with a statement on October 7 itself that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Claudine Gay, a black woman, was blamed for the bungled response to that original message, but at least one Harvard Corporation member says that it was Dr. Garber and the dean at the time of Harvard Law School, John Manning — the two Jewish men — who “had the pen” in drafting the October 9 “statement from Harvard University Leadership.”That statement — with its language about “fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy” and “widely different views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” — suffered from the same both-sides-ism and stunning lack of moral clarity that afflicted Dr. Garber’s latest message.One of Dr. Garber’s first moves as interim president was to elevate Mr. Manning to interim provost. One of his next moves was to appoint as co-chair of an antisemitism task force a professor, Derek Penslar, who dismissed antisemitism concerns as exaggerated and signed a public letter calling for new restrictions on U.S. military aid to the “apartheid” regime in Israel.One of his next moves after that was to keep Mr. Penslar as co-chair of the task force despite his being clearly a terrible choice for the job. In December, I wrote, “any genuine change of leadership would have to extend beyond Ms. Gay.“It could also,” I continued, “have to include the departure of the provost, Alan Garber, who was sitting behind Ms. Gay at last week’s disastrous congressional hearing; the exit of the university’s executive vice president, Meredith Weenick; and the firing of the outside law firm, WilmerHale, that prepared Ms. Gay for the congressional hearing. Harvard paid the same law firm millions of dollars to lose the case over affirmative action in admissions.”Dr. Garber and Ms. Weenick are using WilmerHale to defend against a lawsuit brought by Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum, who, with other students, is suing Harvard for the pervasively hostile antisemitism on campus. Mr. Kestenbaum responded to the news of Harvard’s capitulation to the protesters by saying it had left him disillusioned. “The only way Harvard will ever change is sustained outside pressure,” he said.That could come from Congress calling the Harvard Corporation members to testify about what they have wrought. Or it could come from a Trump administration, which might cut off Harvard’s approximately $600 million a year in federal funding as punishment for discrimination against Jews and Asian-Americans. It would be a fine assignment for a Vice President Stefanik. There’s already quiet speculation about Harvard’s Boston-based medical faculty abandoning the Cambridge-based pro-Hamas professors. The doctors might save their NIH grants by moving themselves and their research dollars en masse to MIT or Brandeis. As for the rest of the university, the longer the Harvard Corporation sticks with the Garber-Weenick-WilmerHale team, the more remote are the chances of a successful turnaround.

Harvard’s Capitulation to Anti-Israel Mob Is Latest Sign Its Interim President Must Go

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