The disgusting hypocrisy behind elite schools defending the campus celebrations of Hamas’ terror attack.
“Our university embraces a commitment to free expression,” declared Harvard president Claudine Gay, in support of the disgusting pro-Hamas protests on the university’s campus. “That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, but that is a far cry from endorsing them.”
All of which is disingenuous claptrap.
Ironically, it’s been Harvard’s singular LACK of commitment to free expression that I find objectionable and outrageous.
Because, just five weeks ago, the same Harvard was named America’s worst school for free speech.
Not second, or third, or 154th … no, the WORST in the entire country.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, in releasing its annual college free speech rankings, dubbed the Ivy League school’s record in this area “abysmal.”
Harvard received a 0.00-point free speech ranking on a 100-point scale — a full 11 points behind the next-worst school.
And incredibly, FIRE said this score of zero was “generous” and Harvard’s actual score was -10.69 because nine of its professors and researchers faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written — and seven of the nine were indeed professionally disciplined.
“I thought it would be pretty much impossible for a school to fall below zero, but they’ve had so many scholar sanctions,” said Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at FIRE.
Right.
So, to be clear, Harvard’s “commitment to free expression” is not just diabolical but statistically non-existent.
Unless, apparently, you’re a dumb-ass student there who decided the appropriate way to respond to the evil Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7 was to sign a letter blaming it ALL on Israel, the victims of the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust.
That’s what more than 30 Harvard student organizations combined to do within hours of babies being shot in their cribs, grandmothers being murdered, women being raped and kidnapped, and 260 people at a music festival being massacred.
Shame on those students for their despicably tone-deaf reaction to one of the most vile and indefensible terror attacks of modern times.
But even more shame on their president who let them do it without punishment, and then preposterously tried to claim it’s because Harvard’s such a bastion of free speech when in reality it’s been the complete opposite!
Of course, it’s not just Harvard.
At the University of Michigan, a business professor smirked in photos as he ripped down posters with names and photos of some of the 199 people whom Hamas took hostage.
And at Cornell, a laughably named “diversity and inclusion” officer took to his social media to celebrate the Hamas attacks as “resistance.”
Other such revolting garbage occurred at the University of Virginia, Stanford, George Washington University, Swarthmore, and a host of other elite schools.
All of which have become leading lights in the cancel-culture war on people being free to express opinions the woke mob doesn’t like.
But now, they’re facing pushback for their moral cowardice where it will hit hardest: their overstuffed bank accounts.
Take the University of Pennsylvania, which excelled by recently allowing antisemitic speakers, including Pink Floyd moron Roger Waters, to attend a pro-Palestinian literary conference on campus, and then made a pathetically muted response to the Hamas atrocities.
UPenn alumnus Jon Huntsman, a former governor of Utah and United States ambassador, emailed Penn president Liz Magill over the weekend to say his family would “close its checkbook” and no longer make donations (which have totaled tens of millions of dollars over three generations).
In a stinging indictment, he wrote: “To the outsider, it appears that Penn has become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable. Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option. The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate.”
It’s the double standard that’s so sickening.
When George Floyd was murdered, then-Harvard president Lawrence Bacow couldn’t wait to issue a 567-word personal statement about the “senseless killing” and harangue leaders for not bringing people together.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bacow issued another statement raging: “The deplorable actions of Vladimir Putin put at risk the lives of millions of people and undermine the concept of sovereignty. Institutions devoted to the perpetuation of democratic ideals and to the articulation of human rights have a responsibility to condemn such wanton aggression.”
He concluded: “Today the Ukrainian flag flies over Harvard Yard. Harvard University stands with the people of Ukraine.”
Seventeen other top US universities also issued statements condemning the invasion, as they did with Floyd’s death.
Yet when it came to Israel’s darkest day, involving acts of terror that can rightly be compared to the Nazis, the initial response of most of these same institutions was either silence, prevarication, caution, or tolerance of pro-Hamas rhetoric spewed by their students.
It’s been repellent to watch.
Little wonder that their most illustrious students were outraged.
Lawrence H. Summers, the ex-Treasury secretary and former Harvard president, condemned the university’s leadership for not denouncing the pro-Palestinian letter. “In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation,” he posted to X, formerly Twitter, “I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today. Harvard’s silence, coupled with the student coalition letter, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel. When you fly the Ukrainian flag over Harvard yard, when you issue clear, vivid, and strong statements in response to the George Floyd killing, you have decided not to pursue a policy of neutrality.”
He’s right.
And the hypocrisy is not just blatant but also very revealing.
Places like Harvard have spent the past few years brazenly and proudly denying free speech and canceling anyone who deviates from their hard-left worldview on political or social issues, from the Ukraine war to Black Lives Matter and transgender ideology.
The only reason they didn’t do so over the Hamas terror attacks in Israel, or the fact that 199 people are being held hostage, is because they’ve become hostages themselves to the insidious “progressive” mindset that dictates that Jewish lives just don’t matter quite as much as others.