When Rabbi Hirschy of Harvard Chabad, a Jewish student organisation at Harvard University, invited the university president Claudine Gay on November 28 to attend an event on December 4, 2023, her office sent a regret note to the organisers. Her excuse was that she was preparing for her Congressional testimony on rising anti-Semitism on the US campuses, specifically at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The testimony was to be held on December 5.
Chabad was to screen a documentary of Hamas atrocities in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. Many reputed alumni and donors tried to convince president Gay to attend the event. They argued that it would have given her a perspective on the issue, but to no avail.
Plagiarising Ph.D. Dissertation
Whatever her excuse to turn down the invite, president Gay failed miserably at the hearings. She and others could not convincingly answer House Representatives, including Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s question whether or not “calling for the genocide of Jews violated… rules of bullying and harassment” of their respective institutions. This prompted high-pitched demands by alumni and donors for their removal
from their posts.
Over the weekend, on December 9, the president of the University of Pennsylvania and the Chairman of its board of trustees resigned from their posts. After their botched response at the hearings, Harvard and MIT presidents also faced increasing pressure to resign. Gay faces additional accusations of plagiarising her Ph.D. dissertation. Newspaper reports suggest Harvard had investigated Claudine Gay over the accusations of plagiarism but kept the news secret. It even threatened the newspaper through an expensive law firm.
Pogrom in Israel
Soon after the Jewish pogrom of October 7 in Israel, where Hamas terrorists butchered about 1,400 Jews, including women, children, and senior citizens, some of the elite US campuses erupted with anti-Israel and, in some cases, anti-Jew protests. Many protestors, including faculty, also supported Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. A professor at Cornell University, for example, called the Hamas attacks “exhilarating” and “energising,” while a professor at Yale University called Israel “a murderous, genocidal settler state.”
Blaming Israel, Downplaying Holocaust
At Harvard University, thousands of students published a statement that held Israel entirely responsible for unfolding violence. The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee is an umbrella organisation of over 30 student groups. In their signed letter, they stated that Israel’s “apartheid regime is the only one to blame” for the violence.
on December 9, the president of the University of Pennsylvania and the Chairman of its board of trustees resigned. After their botched response at the hearings, Harvard and MIT presidents also faced increasing pressure to resign
At Stanford University, a faculty member called the Jewish students colonisers and downplayed the Holocaust. According to news reports, the teacher asked the Jewish students to raise their hands, separated those students from their belongings, and said they were simulating what Jews were doing to Palestinians.
Attending pro-Palestinian Rallies
At the University of California, Bertley, students were offered “extra credit” to attend pro-Palestinian rallies on campus. The joint statement from the Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia University declared that the “Weight of responsibility of the war and casualties lies with the Israeli
extremist government…”
At Yale University, Editors at Yale Daily News, America’s oldest college daily newspaper, slapped Sahar Tartak’s pro-Israel column with an update that read: “Editor’s note, correction, Oct. 25: “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.” Tartak is the Editor in Chief at the Yale Free Press. The Editor of the Harvard Law Review attacked a Jewish student on campus during an
anti-Israel rally.
Double Standards Exposed
While the unfolding of the rampant anti-Semitism and free speech violations on the US campuses in the wake of the ghastly October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel may have provided the trigger for unprecedented protests, an implosion on these elite campuses has been brewing for a while. Many students, specifically those who do not belong to black, Muslim, LGBTQ+, or similar ‘preferred’ groups, have increasingly felt unsafe and their free speech trampled over on university campuses. Over the years and through numerous incidents, these top universities have displayed remarkable double standards in dealing with hate and free speech. “Claudine was technically correct that students can’t be punished for political chants, but when Harvard et al. have no prior credible commitment to academic freedom, institutional neutrality & viewpoint diversity, the born-again appeal to principle seems incriminating,” wrote Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard.
Preventing Modiji From Addressing Students
Under pressure from its Left-wing professors and students, including some Indians and Indian Americans, Penn had disallowed then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from delivering a speech. Many US universities also came together to host a conference against ‘Hindutva’, the essence of Hinduism. Labelled ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’, the conference had the same genocidal attributes as the chants of “from river to sea” and the call for “eradicating .”
Allegations against Claudine Gay
- Harvard President Claudine Gay is facing allegations of plagiarism after a report published in the Washington Free Beacon and Sunday Post on Substack claimed she plagiarised portions of four academic works over 24 years, including her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard
- The allegations come at a uniquely perilous time for Gay, who has been called on to resign by alumni, donors, and members of Congress following her controversial remarks at a congressional hearing on anti-semitism on college campuses
- In a statement to affiliates, members of the Harvard Corporation reaffirmed their support for Gay’s leadership. Still, they addressed concerns raised regarding Gay’s scholarship, writing that the “University became aware in late October of allegations regarding three articles.”
Over the decades, universities have downplayed merit in favor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) – race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Many colleges have eliminated standardised tests, i.e., objective criteria, in admission in favor of race and other identitarian criteria. Oversized and totalitarian DEI bureaucracies expanded their scope and domain in academia. Harvard University used race to favour some applicants over others, most notably Asian Americans, Indians included. Harvard was sued for affirmative action-based racial discrimination. In the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College case, the Supreme Court of the United States, in its 6-3 decision, found it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions.
The House hearings provide a glimpse of the results of decades-long incubation of blatant politicisation of institutions of higher learning in America. “Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasising through its vital organs,” writes John Ellis, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz in the Wall Street Journal. “The radical left is the cause,” he further writes, “most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas.” As a society, we should not allow fringe, Left-wing dogmatic cults to dictate our educational institutions. We must take our institutions back from them and rededicate them to their core values.
