11-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Why Did Harvard Drop Its ‘Semitic' Museum?
My former colleague Peter Der Manuelian suggests that there's nothing to see in a Harvard museum's name change (Letters, May 3). Yet it's hard to see how renaming the institution the 'Museum of the Ancient Near East' reflects its mission more accurately than the adjective 'Semitic' did. The timing of the change in 2020, coinciding with a rise in anti-Zionism, suggests it was done not because 'few people know what that word means' but because many know it includes the Jews and their homeland.
Anti-Israel agitation at Harvard was unmistakable. The museum anticipated the question, 'Why now?,' by suggesting the change wasn't a reaction to any event but reflected 'our core mission in clearer terms.' Rather, it had transformed that core mission and changed the name to make it irreversible.
