After Hamas attack, universities should not be excusing terrorism
In the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in Israel by Hamas on Saturday, there were two markedly different responses from students at Harvard University, my alma mater.
Members of Harvard Chabad gathered Sunday for a candlelight vigil on the steps of Widener Library, holding each other and singing. Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi tearfully told Harvard students that “there is no excuse for terror, there is no excuse to rape young girls, there is no excuse to murder innocent civilians. It’s simple, it’s not complicated.”
Others complicated it. Students in over 30 Harvard student groups signed onto a letter saying they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and that the “apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
Even by the standards of radical-chic campus progressivism, it was a shockingly cruel statement. Similar blame-the-victim statements were released at other elite campuses. At Columbia University, students wrote that “the weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the US government” and called for Columbia to sever ties with “apartheid Israel.” At the University of California, Berkeley, Bears for Palestine wrote “glory to our martyrs.”
At Harvard, where university leaders in the past have been notably quick to denounce other traumatic events and hateful speech, it took two days for the administration to respond.
But if the student letter, or the university’s apparent reluctance to criticize its message, surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been happening on college campuses over the past decade. Pro-Palestinian groups are seemingly able to peddle anti-Israel sentiments with impunity, going so far as to excuse terrorist attacks on innocent civilians. Leaders of elite universities, apparently hesitant to be seen as criticizing those who claim the mantle of an oppressed group, have been too quick to look aside when these organizations endorse outright evil acts.
Enough is enough. Universities have a responsibility to defend students’ rights to express even loathsome views and should encourage open debate about contentious issues. But they can also point out when right and wrong are deeply and repeatedly conflated. When students start to excuse terrorist acts against civilians, universities have a duty to step in and be the adults in the room.
Late Monday night, after two days of heated criticism, Harvard’s leadership released a lukewarm statement expressing heartbreak for the “death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas that targeted citizens in Israel this weekend” and pledging “as much support to our students and colleagues as possible.”
What took them so long? Sam Meyerson, a former classmate and a current Harvard Law student who served as vice president of community relations for Harvard Hillel, feels the statement came too late. Israelis were killed “SS-style,” and there was “silence for 48 hours … the only thing I had heard from the university was 31 student groups telling me that it was justified,” Meyerson said in an interview. “I felt unwelcome, and I felt that I didn’t have a place in school for the first time.” Rabbi Zarchi told me he was dismayed that leadership’s statement didn’t come out sooner with more decisiveness: University leadership “could be confused or feel pressured by voices that intimidate them.” Jake Auchincloss, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts and an alumnus of Harvard, is upset that there is “still no condemnation of the student groups.”
It shouldn’t be complicated to chastise students who rationalize rape, killing, and the desecration of civilians’ bodies. “This is not hard,” Auchincloss said. “The terrorists dragged Jews from their homes and executed them. … The most traumatic day in Israel’s history.” The university can, and should, both defend students’ rights to free speech while making its own moral clarity known.
Why the ambiguity, then? “The administration is scared of its own students,” Auchincloss said. “Part of the job of faculty and administration is to educate, and to educate does mean to take a position about what is right and wrong,” he said. “We are failing in the moral education of students.”
Of course, it’s quite possible to criticize Israel without excusing terrorism and without trying to silence Israel’s supporters. Colleges that value both free speech and basic humanity might strive to teach their students how. Instead, universities across the country have let the loudest and most aggressive voices on campus shape the way the conflict is discussed. Naive student organizations feel pressured to fall in line to maintain their good standing in a social environment governed by mindless virtue signaling. If you want proof of this performative reality, just take a look at the original list of signatories on the Harvard letter: What dog did Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo — a cultural group that puts on an annual South Asian dance show — have in this fight? And by the way, who’s going to tell progressive students what Hamas thinks about homosexuality and equal pay?
It’s important to note that the organizations signed to these letters don’t represent the majority of the student body or even their members. Ghungroo apologized for its cosignature on Instagram, saying it stands with “both Israeli and Palestinian victims,” apologizing for “the insensitivity of the statement” and for the “misrepresentation of student views from this organization.” Some students in the signed organizations were not aware of the letter until it was released. That’s telling of the state of hubris among certain students; this small group of students think they have the moral authority to speak for their peers.
They are the kind of students who demand emotional safety when they encounter different viewpoints. But when there is a threat to the safety of other students and their families — in this case those who are Jewish and/or Israeli — this kind of sympathy vanishes. According to Zarchi, among their peers are various Israeli Jewish students who “have loved ones, family and friends, who were either missing or in some cases, murdered.” One of his students had to fly out to report for duty with the Israel Defense Forces in Israel.
Often, educators are complicit, making their biases obvious. At Columbia this week, after the deaths of over 1,000 Jews, professor Joseph Massad expressed “jubilation and awe” at the “innovative Palestinian resistance.” This issue isn’t just confined to colleges, either. Superintendents at various Massachusetts schools are getting harsh pushback after sending letters addressing the conflict in Israel but failing to outright condemn Hamas’s violence.
Without the support of the university — or school — pro-Israel Jewish students feel isolated. Though Meyerson describes himself as “progressive,” he said, “it feels like I have to check my support for Israel at the door if I want to participate in other progressive advocacy. … The functional impact of this is freezing me out of all campus political organizations that I would otherwise be involved in.”
This problem goes further than just constricting debate. Antisemitism is also rising nationally but especially on college campuses. According to a 2021 study by the AntiDefamation League and Hillel International, 32 percent of Jewish students on campus reported an antisemitic experience, with 19 percent reporting offensive comments or slurs.
Jewish students are left wondering why administrators pontificate on some issues over others. “After Russia invaded Ukraine, I remember President [Lawrence] Bacow responded immediately,” Meyerson said. “We flew the Ukrainian flag next to the American flag above the John Harvard statue. After George Floyd was murdered by the police, the administration … responded immediately with a really powerful statement about police brutality and America’s history with violence against Black people.”
Perhaps universities have finally awoken to the moral decay. On Tuesday, Harvard’s new president, Claudine Gay, issued a strong statement condemning “the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by
Hamas,” adding that “students have the right to speak for themselves. … No student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.” Over 100 Harvard professors signed an open letter that says “the events of this week are not complicated. Sometimes there is such a thing as evil, and it is incumbent upon educators and leaders to call it out.”
Some students are having second thoughts. The Harvard Nepali Student Association is among the many groups that are retracting their signatures from the student letter, joining Ghungroo, Harvard South Asia Caucus, and others. Leaders of the Nepali group said they “regret” that a decision “to call attention to historical injustices against Palestinians” was seen as support of the attacks on Israel. “We deplore the attacks that have taken the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians including 10 Nepali students in Israel.”
Yes, these attacks were evil. It’s not complicated.