Harvard’s shameful moment
The menu last week at Harvard’s Quincy House included a salad bar with “Baby Arugula” and “Grilled Tofu” and entrees of “Cumin & Ginger Braised Beef” or “Saffron Chicken with Lemon & Olives.”
It’s easier to critique others when your belly is full.
How else can you explain the grossly insensitive statement by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups that read in part: “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.” Thirty-one groups signed on, including the Ivy League’s affiliate of Amnesty International.
The timing alone is unforgivable. Hamas terrorists have taken hostages and are threatening to execute them one at a time. Children, women and the elderly are part of this medieval equation.
The atrocities that have already taken place could be even worse in the days to come. The Harvard elitists blaming Israel are emboldening Hamas terrorists. What’s unfolding in the Gaza Strip and in Israel is war, not fodder for a term paper or a photo op.
Harvard President Claudine Gay waited until Tuesday to respond with a three-paragraph statement: “As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region,” she said.
“Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group—not even 30 student groups—speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.
“We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue,” she concluded.
It’s embarrassing to be in the same state as Harvard today. Another group at the Cambridge college is standing tall.
Harvard Hillel, in its statement, wrote members are “deeply pained that instead of finding solace and support among our Harvard community in the days following the bloodiest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, we encountered further hatred and antisemitism here in Cambridge.”
History will remember this moment and how Harvard did or did not rise to the occasion. So far, many of you are flunking due to a gross lack of humanity.