Harvard Values

"Our values"

Like many universities across the country, Harvard is under fire for tolerating anti-Semitism on its campus. On December 5, Harvard president Claudine Gay testified before the House of Representatives and took a grilling from Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Gay was specifically asked about speech recently heard at Harvard about "intifadas" and "From the river to the sea....," which is basically a call to cleanse all of Israel of Jews and rename it Palestine. No matter how hard Stefanik pressed, Gay could not commit to saying anything other than she disapproved of anti-Semitic speech and to prattle on about "Our commitment... values of Harvard," blah blah blah. Standard university garbage.

Fox News has a video of the exchange.

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stefanik-grills-harvard-president-students-calling-intifada-rampant-antisemitism-campus

Any talk about Harvard makes me recall an event I attended at UC Irvine in 2012  when I was teaching there. The background was the 2010 disruption of a speech by Michael Oren, then Israeli ambassador to the US at UC Irvine. The disruptors were members of the Muslim Student Union (MSU) at UC Irvine. In all, 11 students were charged for the disruption, 8 from UCI and 3  from UC Riverside, if I recall correctly.  They were all convicted and given no jail time, basically community service or probation.

In 2012, during the annual May week of events bashing Israel, 4 of the so-called "Irvine 11" returned to speak at UCI. What was interesting was not the fact that they expressed no regret for their actions,. which I did not expect them to do, but one student in particular who had gone on to Harvard Law School told the audience that the Harvard dean had told him that he had noted the student's participation in the "Irvine 11" incident, which the student apparently included in his application. The implication, according to the student, was that this incident was a positive factor in his being accepted. My postings about that 2012 event can be viewed here and here.

Presumably, Harvard Law subscribes to the idea that it is perfectly OK to deprive others of the right to speak.