Latest news with #JohnHarvard
New York Post
02-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Harvard yearbook erases Oct 7 massacre but includes pic of John Harvard statue in Palestinian keffiyeh: ‘Whitewashing terrorism'
Harvard needs a history lesson, according to students outraged over its 2025 yearbook ignoring the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack on Israel. The book instead depicts only Israel's aggression in Gaza, with its October 2023 entry including a photo of the famous John Harvard statue draped in a keffiyeh with a caption reading 'War breaks out in Gaza.' The official Harvard yearbook, the 520–page book aimed to capture the 'Harvard experience' and described as 'Harvard. Immortalized,' shocked graduating seniors when they flipped through the pages recapping every month since their freshman year. 10 The incendiary page in the Harvard 2025 yearbook which states '2023 October war breaks out in Gaza' in front of a picture of university founder John Harvard's statue with a keffiyeh around his shoulders and a sign reading Eyes on Gaza in front. The next page marks the end of the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) encampment after 20 days. Harvard Chabad/ X 10 A student protester in a Palestinian keffiyeh stands in front of the statue of John Harvard which has been draped in the Palestinian flag in April 2024. AP 'It's deeply offensive,' newly minted graduate Alex Bernat, who has seen the page firsthand, told The Post. He added he was 'shocked' by the complete whitewashing of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust that left 1,200 murdered, thousands injured and saw 251 abducted into Gaza and held hostage – 58 of whom have yet to be returned. 'They totally mischaracterized in a very irresponsible way the beginnings of everything on October 7, the actual thing that prompted the war on Gaza.' The treasured yearbook that's meant to 'reflect on your time in college' turned into a 'completely biased representation of the events of October 2023,' blasted the Jewish grad, adding there is no excuse for yearbook editors – a group of 20 students listed on the site – to gloss over the atrocities that precipitated the war. 'They know exactly how the events of October 7 transpired … It's such an easy thing to get right – and the fact that they didn't is really concerning,' the 23-year-old Chicago native said. Although school is out for summer at the embattled Ivy League institution, it's still under fire for being a hotbed of hate. 10 Palestine supporters, many from Harvard, rallying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in October 2023. AFP via Getty Images 10 Jewish students and supporters gathered at a Menorah lighting ceremony on Harvard's campus after the Israel-Hamas war had started. Then-president Claudine Gay was in attendance (pictured center left). David McGlynn 10 Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned from the University in January 2024 amid plagiarism accusations and a weak response to antisemitism on campus. AP President Donald Trump has pulled over $3bn in funding from the University, and the White House has instructed federal agencies to review approximately $100m in contracts the government has with Harvard and find alternatives where possible. Last week Trump said: 'Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they're doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper.' The state department has also stopped issuing new student visas nationwide, while a new vetting process is put in place. Harvard's handling of Hamas' terror attack and massacre has caused problems from the start. Hours after the atrocities, a now-infamous screed signed by 31 Harvard student groups blamed the Jewish state, holding 'the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence' – prompting outraged Harvard alums like hedge fund honcho Bill Ackman to call for the entire board of Harvard University to resign. 10 Harvard Divinity School gradujate Shabbos Kestenbaum has slammed the college's yearbook editors for 'not being able to comprehend' that Hamas started the war in Gaza. Getty Images 10 One of the buildings at Harvard University with three red banners displaying the university's crest. MG – 10 The offensive yearbook, branded 'not only factually dishonest — it's historical revisionism,' by Brooke Goldstein, Founder and Executive Director of The Lawfare Project. Harvard Chabad/ X Watchdog groups have also ripped the poisoned Ivy, which saw former president Claudine Gay wither on the vine after her gutless congressional testimony, for letting willful hate fester. 'Harvard's official yearbook description of the October 7 massacre as merely 'war breaking out in Gaza' is not only factually dishonest — it's historical revisionism. By erasing the brutal, premeditated slaughter of over 1,200 Israelis, Harvard is whitewashing terrorism and contributing to the narratives that justify the ongoing genocide against the Jewish people,' Brooke Goldstein, Founder and Executive Director of The Lawfare Project, told The Post. 'This isn't just a failure of language — it's a moral failure. Harvard has become a symbol of elite radicalization. This is an American problem, not just a Jewish one.' The galling omission is tantamount to 'Holocaust-like denial,' railed Harvard Chabad, the Jewish movement that supports students on campus. 10 A protester at Harvard with a sign reading 'END THE OCCUPATION NOW!' REUTERS 10 A sign reading Harvard at the university's campus in Boston, Massachusetts AFP via Getty Images Francesca Albanese, the controversial UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, who's been accused of spewing antisemitism, appeared at Harvard last year in an event described as 'exploring how certain concepts from international law, such as 'occupation,' 'apartheid,' and 'genocide,' applied to the situation in and around Gaza.' 'This is what they're being taught,' Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi claimed of the one-sided exposure to students. 'They're being told to be skeptical about what Israel says happened on October 7 and to believe everything from Hamas. 'It's an absolute disgrace.' Harvard Divinity School grad, Shabbos Kestenbaum, who settled an antisemitism lawsuit last month against his alma mater, attacked his former school. 'The murder of 45 American citizens as well as the abduction of 12 Americans on October 7th was a horrific terrorist attack,' the 2024 grad told The Post. 'Harvard students not being able to comprehend that basic fact is deeply disturbing.'
Indian Express
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Amid standoff with US government, a brief history of Harvard University
A US federal judge on Friday (May 23) barred the Donald Trump administration from revoking Harvard University's ability to enrol international students a day after the policy was brought in. Harvard University, one of the world's most prestigious educational institutions, has been at the crosshairs of the administration since Trump took office in January. The latest development is the most serious escalation in the c0nflict yet. Foreign students have made up more than a quarter of the university's strength for the past three years, and the order could have significant repercussions. Here' a brief history of how Harvard, a university often described as 'older than the United States', came to be. On October 28, 1636, Harvard, the first college in the American colonies, was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, almost a century-and-a-half before the the US Declaration of Independence was adopted on July 4, 1776. Originally called the New College, its mission was to train the clergy, much like many colleges in the renowned universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in England. According to its official website, Harvard received its now famous name on March 13, 1639. The university was named after the 'renowned benefactor seated in 'lies.'' This refers to a black statue on the campus, supposedly representing one John Harvard, a Puritan minister, with an engraving that says 'founder'. However, this statue in all likelihood does not depict this man. And although he is often associated with the founding of the university, John Harvard was not really its founder nor did he study there (he studied at Cambridge). He was, however, its first major benefactor, who donated half of his estate and his library, which consisted of over 400 books. The real founder of Harvard University was not an individual, but the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which took a vote to set up the institution. The city of Cambridge was then called 'Newetowne'. In 1642, the first Harvard Commencement was held, with nine graduates. The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University, recorded in 1893 that the term for prestigious East Coast US colleges stems from a practice related to the actual Ivy plant. On one customary day in June before the graduation, known as Class Day, students would plant the ivy, in one of the several rituals commemorating the day. The term 'Ivy League' now refers to eight prestigious East Coast universities, including Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.
Toronto Sun
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Sun
Canadians' future at Harvard in question after Trump bans international students
Published May 23, 2025 • 1 minute read People gather around the John Harvard Statue on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachussetts, on April 15, 2025. Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO / AFP via Getty Images Hundreds of Canadians could potentially be caught up in the fight between President Donald Trump and prestigious Harvard University over international student enrollment. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The school did not immediately have a current count of Canadians studying there, but numbers on its website from 2022 show there were 686 enrolled at that time. Harvard University filed a lawsuit Friday morning in federal court in Boston challenging the Trump administration's decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students. The school called the decision unconstitutional retaliation for defying the White House's political demands. Harvard said the government's action violates the First Amendment and will have an immediate and devastating effect on more than 7,000 student visa holders at the school. It said it plans to file for a temporary restraining order to block the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the move. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The department announced the action Thursday, accusing Harvard of creating an unsafe campus environment by allowing 'anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators' to assault Jewish students on campus. It also accused Harvard of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, contending the school had hosted and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024. Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Mass. Most are graduate students and they come from more than 100 countries. — With files from the Associated Press. Canada Toronto Maple Leafs Editorial Cartoons Other Sports Toronto & GTA
Globe and Mail
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Donald Trump says he will strip Harvard University's tax-exempt status
An American flag flies over the John Harvard statue at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on March 19. SOPHIE PARK/The New York Times News Service U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he planned to strip Harvard University of its tax-exempt status, the latest salvo against the Ivy League school amid a larger crackdown on elite U.S. universities. 'We are going to be taking away Harvard's Tax Exempt Status. It's what they deserve!' Trump said in a post on his social media platform, without specifying when he might take action. Representatives for Harvard could not be immediately reached for comment on the president's post. Since taking office in January, Trump has targeted major U.S. universities by freezing federal funding, launching investigations, revoking student visas and making other demands, saying higher education has been gripped by antisemitic, anti-American, Marxist and 'radical left' ideologies. Harvard has pushed back, suing the administration over the halted U.S. research funding and other demands, and joining more than 200 university and college presidents in protesting Trump's higher education policies.
New York Times
26-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Harvard's Endowment Is $53.2 Billion. What Should It Be For?
Among Harvard University's many distinctions remains the fact it is the oldest continuing corporation in the Western Hemisphere. The designation originates in a charter, authorizing a board of officers to oversee the college's finances, property and receipt of gifts. Nearing his death in 1638, John Harvard, a Puritan minister, left half his estate to the institution that would soon bear his name. Five years later came a contribution of 100 pounds from Ann Radcliffe to underwrite Harvard's first scholarships. The university's funds, as the historian Bruce Kimball has noted, are the oldest perpetual investments in the United States. At $53.2 billion, Harvard's endowment is the largest in the world, with more than 70 percent of its portfolio given over to interests in hedge funds and private equity. The endowment does not include its real estate, which encompasses acres of land across the river in Boston, parcels of which the university purchased for $88 million over several years in the 1990s, anonymously to avoid the possibility of paying more. In 2023, the university's chief investment officer, a title absent from any 17th-century charter, made $7.6 million. These figures can breed confusion, if not hostility, among the many people whose lives will never be touched by Massachusetts Hall. The Trump administration's war against higher education for what it insists is a dangerous culture of intellectual inflexibility has forced a debate about capital as central now as the vast underlying disagreements over values. The endowment of the University of Pennsylvania, to take one example, stands at three and a half times the municipal budget of Philadelphia. If universities can claim assets like this, it can be hard to understand what keeps them from releasing funds to cover the research dollars the government is taking away in the name of eradicating 'wokeness.' Unlike Columbia, which bowed to the White House, Harvard resisted. In retaliation, the government froze $2.2 billion in grant funding and threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status. Harvard has since sued the government, arguing that it cannot interfere with the university's right to free speech, 'to advance its own vision of ideological balance.' Harvard might choose to go deeper into its reserves to compensate for losses. Or it might elect to take on more debt, or roll out a fund-raising campaign in the name of defending academic freedom — The Harvard Crimson reported that more than $1 million in online donations came in within 24 hours of the university's announcing it would not concede. This month, both former President Barack Obama and Lawrence Summers, who had presided over Harvard and the U.S. Treasury, made the point that the endowments of rich universities were there to be activated in a crisis and did not exist, as Mr. Summers put it in a guest essay in The New York Times, 'to simply be envied or admired.' For the millions of Americans who do not pay attention to Ivy League investment strategy, that might not seem like an especially defiant proposition. But the idea abrades fiercely held tradition. It is a commandment of managing any trust, but especially university endowments, that the principal go untouched. If you suggest to academic bureaucrats that there must be a way for huge endowments to cover prospective cuts in government funding — and you are not Larry Summers — they will look at you as if you were a child wondering why it is unwise to leave raw eggs out in the sun. Recently, university administrators have unleashed a PowerPoint of clichés to explain what endowments, with their significant spending limitations, are not. An endowment is not a 'piggy bank' or a 'checking account' or a 'rainy day fund' (to which some reasonably wonder, 'Why not?'). What endowments are becomes considerably more complicated — a matter of existential priority as much as it is a question of practical application, one leading inevitability to a reckoning with the ideals that wealthy universities are ultimately meant to serve. The Circuitous Logic of Infinite Growth Concerted efforts to raise funds among alumni began at Williams College in 1821. But it was Charles Eliot, Harvard's president 50 years later, who brought a focus to long-term financial planning, shaken as he was by the loss of his family's fortune in the Panic of 1857. Mr. Eliot is featured in 'Wealth Cost and Price in American Higher Education,' Mr. Kimball's excellent book on the history of college financing. In it, he charts two momentous periods in the history of endowments. The first came at the turn of the last century with the surge of wealth produced by the Industrial Revolution, which gave way to so much philanthropy and the founding of universities like Stanford, Vanderbilt and Carnegie Mellon. The next era took shape in the late 1980s and '90s with what became known as the Yale Model, pioneered by David Swensen, who in 1985 left a career at Lehman Brothers to run Yale's endowment. Mr. Swensen's innovation was to redirect investments away from conventional formulas for allocations mostly held in stocks and bonds and toward private equity, hedge and venture capital funds, as well as real estate. Over his 35-year tenure he averaged returns of 13.1 percent. Like Warren Buffett, Mr. Swensen became a guru in the field, with acolytes spread out across the academic ecosystem swelling wealth in elite higher education. As a doctoral student in economics, Mr. Swensen had been mentored by James Tobin, a Nobel laureate whose work provides the dominant thinking around endowments. In an influential paper published in 1974, Mr. Tobin introduced the idea of 'intergenerational equity,' a phrase woven through annual reports. 'The trustees of an endowed institution,' Mr. Tobin wrote 'are the guardians of the future against the claims of the present.' This emerged as a mantra embedded in the assumption that universities are 'immortal.' Running the Ford Foundation in the late 1960s, McGeorge Bundy, a former presidential adviser, had already been worrying about the costs of higher education. He commissioned studies that produced two enduring recommendations — the first that endowment managers invest more aggressively, in growth stocks, to build wealth rather than merely avert losses and the second that they spend their annual earnings prudently, according to a rule. For decades universities have taken it as catechism to spend their year-to-year earnings at a rate of no more than 5 percent of the total endowment (often less). Foundations as well as cultural and religious institutions are required by law to spend a 5 percent minimum; colleges and universities are not but do so because they think it is sound policy. (A few states, including Massachusetts, do have laws requiring 'prudence' from universities.) Morton Schapiro, a former president of Williams and later Northwestern, described the origins of the standard as 'completely arbitrary' and yet fortuitous. 'If you look back at the past 10 to 20 years, endowments have earned about 8 percent a year; inflation has been about 3 percent. Guess what? Five percent, it's turned out to be a remarkably good rule of thumb.' At the most basic level, that annual draw helps pay for the business of keeping a university going. Every year, the National Association of College and University Business Officers issues a report on the strength of endowments and where the money they generate ends up. The most recent looked at 658 institutions. About 48 percent of investment income went to student aid. Tuition, as high as it is, does not cover the cost of an education at most places; about a quarter of the money, the research showed, went to academic programs and maintaining facilities. The fixation with infinite growth can hijack endowments to a circuitous logic, making them problematic in ways that are surfacing now. Locked up in order to get bigger, they become harder to access when they are needed, and the bigger they get, the more vulnerable they become to popular resentments. As the most prestigious universities have followed the exalted fortunes of Wall Street, they have subjected themselves to the animosities leveled against the financial class; they can seem like the rich friend showing up for lunch with a Vacheron Constantin on her wrist, complaining about the cost of renovating her place in Jackson Hole while insisting on splitting the check. A Mark of Status From one vantage, huge endowments are an invention of Wall Street, justified as virtue. Universities defend them as an essential means of securing the most talented faculty, supporting the most valuable research, delivering the most aid. But universities imagine themselves as quasi democracies in a way that Goldman Sachs does not. When every constituency is given a voice, many opinions are rendered. As Derek Bok, another former Harvard president, once pointed out, a huge endowment is a disadvantage to the extent that it elevates expectations that surplus ought to be targeted toward righting perceived injustices. Endowments are not meant to be tools of politics, but they inevitably appear that way when donors writing $50 million checks assert priorities that may not be politically neutral. The competition for contributions can force concessions to philanthropic interest, vanity and control. Much of what cannot be easily freed in any single fund falls under the category of 'restricted use,' which typically means that it has been earmarked according to donor prerogative. Very few people turn over six or seven figures to their alma mater and say, 'Enjoy!' Even in quiet times, outsize endowments invite skepticism given the inequities they expose in education more broadly. In recent years, a number of small liberal arts colleges have closed because they could not afford the alternative. For every undergraduate enrolled in Columbia or Cornell, 92 more are going to ailing, public two-year colleges. Whether it should be the concern of the richest schools to help the poorest, the belief that elite universities have stockpiled too much money is shared across political affiliations. Two years ago, Zohran Mamdani, a progressive New York State assemblyman now running for mayor, introduced failed legislation to end more than $321 million in annual property tax exemption for New York University and Columbia and divert that money to the city's troubled public university system. There are proposals from Republicans in Congress to increase the tax on large endowments, potentially to 14 percent, much higher than the 1.4 percent put in place eight years ago. Assuming a 10 percent return, that would leave Harvard with a tax bill of about $742,000,000, roughly equal to what it spent on financial aid last year. But you can go around and round. If Harvard raised its endowment draw, however sacrilegiously, to 7 percent, it would add about $1.3 billion to its budget. Undoubtedly the prospect of higher taxes and the realities of a chaotic stock market have made the notion of tapping endowment income more robustly seem even less attractive to trustees. But those who consider endowments essentially inviolate dismiss some of the workarounds. It is true that as endowments have become more heavily invested in hedge funds and private equity, they have become less liquid. But there are secondary markets for selling positions in some of these funds if a need for cash is urgent. There are reports that Harvard is now considering this option. One of the great luxuries of having a lot of money is the ability to borrow against it, often cheaply. Princeton University's president, Christopher Eisgruber, has become one of the most prominent critics of the Trump administration's antagonisms toward the academy. In response to the federal government's freezing of several dozen grants, the university, rather than hike up its draw, has issued bonds as a means of raising cash. Some observers of the recent campus upheaval have noted that Columbia, the largest landowner in New York City, rather than acquiesce to the government's demands to preserve $400 million in grant money, might have borrowed against its real estate, the value of which stands apart from its $14 billion endowment. Harvard, with its triple-A rating, has issued more than $1 billion in bonds since March. 'For a bondholder, the only question is: 'Will I be paid?'' said Larry Ladd, a former budget director at the university who is now a consultant. 'If Harvard were liquidated, they would get paid,' he added. And while many restrictions are imposed by donors, others are imposed by the university itself, Mr. Schapiro of Williams and Northwestern explained to me recently, 'so they can be unrestricted.' Although it is difficult to pull off, and Mr. Schapiro does not recommend it as protocol, he once approached the grandson of a donor who had died long ago to ask if he could use the money for something other than what was intended. The grandson said yes. Years after Mr. Tobin delivered his immortality thesis, Henry B. Hansmann, an economist and a professor at Yale Law School, published a retort, questioning what was equitable about privileging a world long into the future over the exigencies of the moment. Whatever lasting arguments his theory might have ignited seem to have given way to an understanding of an endowment as an end in itself, a stand-in for a university's purpose, a rejection of the idea that underlying a belief in institutional eternity is an alienating self-regard. As Mr. Swensen, the pioneer of the Yale Model, once put it: 'Short of beating an archrival in football,' posting an endowment's highest year-end result 'ranks near the top' of 'institutional aspiration,' a mark of status with which it becomes possible to raise more and more money. Modern universities are essentially engaged in a contest of inverse ratio: Which can claim the most dramatic differential between the amount of money piled up and the percentage of applicants turned away. The Trump administration has named 60 universities it plans to investigate; soon enough, many will most likely have to wrestle with the questions Harvard and Columbia have. If they believe they deserve to last forever, they might ask what besides money they want to leave behind.
