Harvard is Hamas-occupied territory

Yahoo

30-04-2025

On October 7, 2023, Hamas jihadists committed an unspeakably evil atrocity against Jews living in Israel. Within hours of the Nazi-like pogrom, nearly three dozen separate groups of Harvard University students blamed the Jews for it.
Did the Harvard 'Students for Justice in Palestine' (SJP) chapter have, as a recently filed lawsuit alleges the Columbia SJP chapter had, advance knowledge of the massacre? (Columbia SJP has denied the allegations). Inquiring minds would certainly like to know.
But these days, Harvard is not a hospitable place for free inquiry.
Don't get me wrong: Harvard certainly thinks of itself as a bastion of free inquiry. That was the moral high ground Harvard attempted to claim in its recent denunciation of the Trump administration's attempt to enforce civil rights on campus. And that was the moral high ground Harvard again attempted to claim this week, when it released its much-anticipated report on campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias. In the report, Harvard purports to lament the rise of post-October 7 campus Jew-hatred, but it deigns to offer only toothless and symbolic suggestions for what to actually do about it.
Harvard cannot claim to care about the plight of Jews on its campus while simultaneously suing for its 'right' to bilk the American taxpayer while appearing to defy the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It's really that simple. Some circles just can't be squared.
The reality is that the Harvard Americans once knew has been occupied. Once upon a time, Harvard held a privileged place in the minds of decent and intelligent Americans – a shining intellectual city on a hill. But in recent years, it seems to have been – first intellectually and then, literally, physically – occupied by an alliance of radical Islamists and far-Left Marxists, with the apparent approval of liberals who will rush to defend anything out of their own Jew-hatred and/or Trump-hatred.
It can be difficult to figure out the paranoid, irritable reactionary gestures that pass for liberal political thought these days.
But here is what's not hard to figure out: the facts. The Harvard Kennedy School had an alleged financier of Hamas – a man accused of helping to fund the tunnels used for the October 7 attack – on its Dean's Council (he has denied the allegations). In its negotiations with the Trump administration, Harvard has literally threatened to kill lab animals.
One must ask: If it walks like a Hamas-occupied territory and it talks like a Hamas-occupied territory, then what is it?
That's what the Trump administration would like to know. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, and Linda McMahon, the US education secretary, just want to know the facts – and to enforce the law. But Harvard gives the impression of believing that it is above the law.
And it's not the first time. Harvard fought all the way up to the United States Supreme Court for its 'right' to violate the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution and discriminate on the basis of race. Its alumnus, Chief Justice John Roberts, an institutionalist if there ever were one, made a brave decision to put the Constitution's colour-blind ideals above the parochial interests of his alma mater.
Maybe other judges will follow Justice Roberts's precedent and allow the law to be enforced. Many other judges certainly want to prioritise the interests of murderers, rapists, and terrorists over their own oaths to the Constitution. But some things take time.
Harvard, on the other hand, doesn't have more time. Because when it comes to Harvard, it's not about what happens next – it's about what's already happened. If Harvard has violated the law, then Donald Trump will enforce the law. As the president recently told the governor of Maine before moving to pull funding for the state's permitting biological men to compete in women's sports, 'We are the federal law.'
The best of the liberals will point out that, in Harvard's perhaps-mild defence, Alan Garber, the university's current president, is not Claudine Gay. His body of academic work is legitimate. He didn't get to his position on the pure basis of noxious DEI ideology. And also, they'll say, he is himself Jewish.
Perhaps the liberals are right. Maybe Garber is a good guy who is really trying to do right by his university. But it doesn't actually matter. Because Garber isn't really the one in charge.
Harvard isn't controlled by its president, or even by the Harvard Corporation. Harvard is governed by hordes of students and cadres of professors who are true believers in what they've been taught in their woke madrasa.
President Trump poses no true threat to what Americans think of when they think of Harvard. Indeed, the nostalgic, rose-coloured perception of Harvard is actually what he seeks to restore. Read the administration's letter, which appalled Harvard by asking it to do simple things, such as: commit to follow the 14th Amendment and American civil rights law.
There's a precedent for what presidents do when peculiar institutions within the United States refuse to acknowledge that they're governed by the US Constitution. Ask Abraham Lincoln. Or Ulysses S Grant.
If the Harvard Corporation has any fiduciary interest in its own continued existence, it should promptly adopt a new bargaining tactic: unconditional surrender.
If Harvard had a shred of legal, moral, ethical, or historical understanding, it would reflect on Atlanta, Georgia circa 1864.
Things didn't go well for Atlanta back then. But Atlanta's Emory University is certainly very nice. The best and brightest American students can always go there – whether or not Harvard exists.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large, host of 'The Josh Hammer Show,' senior counsel for the Article III Project, and author of the new book, 'Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West' (Radius Book Group)
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