‘Offensive’: Harvard president criticizes student group’s pro-Hamas Oct 7 statement

Garber’s explanation for not commenting further alluded to Harvard University’s recently adopted institutional neutrality, which ostensibly means it will no longer take sides in polarizing political debates.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Harvard University president Alan Garber appeared to denounce a pro-Hamas student group which marked the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre by praising it as an act of revolutionary justice that should be repeated until the State of Israel is destroyed.

On Monday, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) issued a statement awash in antisemitic insinuations, saying, for example that, “Zionism seeks the complete erasure of anyone who dares to stand in the way of its colonial rampage” and referring to Israel numerous times as the “Zionist entity,” a demonizing phrase frequently used by Islamist terrorists to dehumanize Israeli civilians and justify mass casualty events.

Calling itself the “student intifada,” a clear reference to terrorism, it added that “Now is the time to escalate…As the people of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen persevere in the face of the genocidal Israeli state, we must learn from them. Resistance will ultimately break the shackles of the Zionist entity.”

Speaking to The Harvard Crimson earlier this week, Alan Garber hit back at the group, saying, “I would remind everyone that they speak for themselves.”

However, he cut the idea short, noting that while “there are aspects of [the statement] I find personally offensive — I am not about to make university statements about matters of public affair that are not part of the core of the university.”

Garber’s explanation for not commenting further alluded to Harvard University’s recently adopted institutional neutrality, which ostensibly means it will no longer take sides in polarizing political debates.

The idea was the final recommendation of a report issued by a faculty group which Garber, serving then as “interim” president, convened to study whether Harvard “should use its official voice to address matters of social and political significance.”

The committee agreed that it should not, explaining that Harvard’s “integrity and credibility” are “compromised” when it privileges one point of view over another and that doing so sometimes offends groups it aims to “comfort.”

Moreover, it stressed that Harvard’s business is education, not politics.

Monday’s momentary abeyance of the policy reflects its frailty as a guardrail against the proliferation and increasing intellectual respectability of antisemitism, an issue experts such as Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) have discussed with The Algemeiner before.

“These institutional neutrality policies sound wholesome in the abstract, but I fear they are often just attempts to by college administrators to avoid taking a stand against antisemites, communists, and other radicals who attempt to hijack the university’s credibility to advance their own agendas,” Wood, the author of several books and hundreds of articles on higher education, said during an interview in August.

“The ideal has proved delusional, and as a weapon it is easily used against reform as for it… Hamas’ massacre of Israelis [on Oct. 7] has stripped us of many illusions … We must say forthrightly what virtues we wish our universities to champion. And if we wish our universities to fight once more on the side of the angels, the swiftest way to that goal is to teach them how to speak with courage by speaking so ourselves.”

Even what Garber did say is wanting in principle and consistency, former Harvard president Larry Summers told The Harvard Crimson the following day. Summers, who has publicly criticized Harvard’s alleged indifference to pro-terror and antisemitic sentiment on campus, noted that Garber previously proclaimed that “antisemitism will not be tolerated at Harvard.”

“I am confused about how the PSC is a recognized university organization with access to university listservs, with potential funding through university fees,” Summers continued. “That seems like more than tolerating.”

Garber, however, has said more than former Harvard president Claudine Gay did when the same group praised the Oct. 7 massacre last academic year.

Gay declined to denounce them, setting off a series of events which ultimately led to her being outed as a serial plagiarist and resigning from office.

Despite this, his administration’s handling of campus antisemites has been ambiguous and described even by students who benefited from its being so as “caving in.”

During summer, The Harvard Crimson reported that Harvard downgraded “disciplinary sanctions” it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it suspended for illegally occupying Harvard Yard for nearly five weeks, a reversal of policy which defied the university’s previous statements regarding the matter.

Unrepentant, the students, members of the group Harvard out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP), celebrated the revocation of the punishments on social media and promised to disrupt the campus again.

“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said.

“Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”

Now, anti-Zionists and pro-Zionists at Harvard are demanding complete details of the university’s institutional neutrality policy, according to the Crimson. Garber has said that they are forthcoming, the paper added.

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