With the class of 2025 graduating tomorrow, there seems to be significantly more attention than typical this spring at Harvard… albeit not on the actual commencement in Cambridge. Allow us to respectfully unpack the issue…
As the nation witnessed, between 2023 and 2024, antisemitic incidents on college campuses increased by 84%. According to CNN, most of these incidents were classified as harassment and second most were acts of vandalism toward Jewish people or people perceived to be Jewish. Many of these incidents occurred between mid-April and mid-May 2024 in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Two months after the Israel-Hamas war began, three Ivy League college presidents testified before Congress in regard to the protests. One was from Harvard, although none of the three seemed to fare very well; granted, it was at the height of the intensity on the issue. Yet when the then-president of Harvard was asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate Harvard’s rules against bullying and harassment, Claudine Gay said, “It can be, depending on the context.”
Gay would later apologize, but the damage was done, and such became one large factor that ultimately led to her resignation. There was simply great thought across the country that the nation’s oldest university wasn’t taking antisemitism seriously enough.
Enter Pres. Trump, not one to seemingly shy away from a fight, who upon return to the Oval Office, called for a crackdown on antisemitism, even signing an executive order nine days in, directing tougher enforcement.
Because there is absolutely no place for antisemitism, invoking sterner measures is understandable. What gives me pause, however, is I’m not convinced the end justifies the means — something I oft question with this administration and more. Jonah Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Dispatch, a conservative but not a Trump supporter, said it well, in my opinion:
“Perhaps the most frustrating thing about being a conservative critic of Trumpism is that you often start by agreeing with Trumpworld about ends while disagreeing about means.
This pleases nobody. The left, broadly speaking, considers the ends as illegitimate as the means, and the pro-Trump right thinks that if you’re against the means you really don’t desire the ends. I’m against the abuse of power, even for my own ‘side.’
… consider Harvard. If you read its own report on antisemitism at the university, it’s hard to disagree with many of the administration’s criticisms. Harvard has been intolerant of internal dissent, and its educational philosophy has been absurdly left-wing. For instance, a mandatory class for students at the Harvard Graduate School of Education deployed a grotesque chart titled ‘The Pyramid of White Supremacy’ equating free trade agreements with ‘slavery’ and ‘colorblindness’ with ‘racial profiling.’ (See Page 150 of the antisemitism report; the graphic is no longer in use.) It suggests that the Anti-Defamation League is engaging in ‘coded’ rhetoric for ‘genocide.’ Meanwhile, the Harvard Law Review seems to be practicing flat-out racial discrimination.
But as Charles Lane of The Free Press recently put it, ‘Harvard had it coming. That doesn’t mean Trump is right.’ The Trump administration has frozen funding and ended new research grants to Harvard unless it adopts recommended reforms, and the president wants to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status. These are draconian ‘remedies,’ raising a host of different ethical, prudential, legal, policy and constitutional issues. Suffice it to say, I think defunding cancer research to own the [liberals] seems like overkill. Removing Harvard’s tax-exempt status is probably illegal. But even if it’s not, it’s insane to do it via executive order and would set a precedent conservatives will rue.”
Harvard has rejected the administration’s reforms and demands; the situation thus continues to escalate. “Team Trump? Or Team Harvard?” coined The Free Press. To call it messy is an understatement, with errors in wisdom on all sides. The Trump admin is now attempting to bar the school from enrolling international students, a demographic that accounts for 27% of their student population. A judge responded by blocking the move.
Again, it’s messy. As Oliver Wiseman writes for The Free Press, “How did institutions come to stray so far from the values they were founded on? How much, in a liberal democracy, should the federal government interfere to try to fix those institutions? And is the current president actually interested in repairing what is broken—or just attacking his perceived enemies?”
Those are excellent questions. I wish we could tell.
I also wish we were better at solving problems. Too much gets in the way… even at commencement.
Respectfully…
AR