Of course Harvard supports terrorism

The school's always been a hotbed of bigotry

Palestinians invaded Israel on October 7 — a holy day for Jews — and raped women, tortured men, murdered grannies, beheaded babies and burned people alive.

The reaction by Harvard was to hold a vigil three nights later for Palestinians. Harvard’s anti-Semitism is so strong that I am surprised that Hitler wasn’t a graduate. Maybe World War I interrupted his classes on Aryan Studies and Teutonic History.

The heads of more than 30 student organizations signed a letter supporting Palestinian terrorism because somehow Jews are the villains in their scenario. This presented a public relations problem as it turns out large donors are not crazy; they do not support rape, torture and murder.

Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a hastily written letter, which stated, “As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.

“Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.

“We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue.”

So she condemned terrorism while at the same time saying there were origins — justifications — for the longstanding conflict. Larry Summers, one of her predecessors at Harvard, blasted her milquetoast response saying she lacked leadership. But of course because she wasn’t hired to be a leader; she was hired because she is black. Harvard wanted its first black president in the worst way, and that is exactly what she delivered.

Harvard needed a black president to appease donors who wanted a virtue to signal. Ah, irony.

Of course, it wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time, the only black people at Harvard worked in the kitchen. And once upon a time, Harvard had a president who stood up for truth, justice and the American way.

In 1847, Harvard accepted Beverly Garnett Williams, a male, as its first black student. Born into slavery (likely from a white father), he was raised by the Rev. Joseph Parker, minister of the First Baptist Church in Cambridge. Williams excelled in Greek grammar in prep school. Nevertheless, students and faculty hated the idea of integration.

Enter Edward Everett, a man remembered as the featured speaker at the ceremony where Lincoln gave his 240-word Gettysburg Address. When I was in elementary school, we memorized that address.

Everett was president of Harvard when the school admitted Williams. Facing a rebellion, he said, “The admission to Harvard College depends upon examination, and if this boy passes the examinations, he will be admitted. and if the white students choose to withdraw, all the income of this college will be devoted to his education.”

The story I linked is about Thomas Jinnings, a son of the first black man to hold a U.S. patent. His father, a tailor, invented modern dry cleaning and made a mint. Later, one of his daughters challenged the ban in New York City on black people riding streetcars. The father hired a lawyer and got the law declared unconstitutional. The lawyer was Chester Arthur, who later became the 21st president.

There really is no record of Jinnings being admitted, but Williams certainly was. Everett’s vow to educate Williams even if all the white students abandoned the school was never tested as the lad died over the summer before enrolling. 23 years and a civil war would pass before Harvard accepted another black student.

Harvard was inhospitable to black students well into the 1950s. Only 18 black students were admitted in 1959 as part of the class of 1963.

The overnight popularity of the new civil rights movement and affirmative action changed that and Harvard went overboard in giving preference to black applicants. The Supreme Court recently told Harvard to ditch its preference for black students and to accept more Asian students who qualified and fewer students who did not.

But anti-Semitism at Harvard — and other schools deemed prestigious — hasn’t ended. They have a long history of hating Jews. Quotas capped how many Jewish students Harvard (and others) admitted. This led to the curious fact that graduates of CCNY (City College of New York) include 13 Nobel Prize laureates.

12 are Jewish.

The Times of Israel in June reported, “Harvard’s 20th-century anti-Semitic Jewish quotas were a key part of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action on Thursday, as the winning litigant and two conservative justices cited them in the landmark case.

“The 6-3 decision Thursday, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, bars universities from using race as an explicit factor in considering admissions, but allows race to be cited by applicants in essays describing their life experiences.

“Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative advocacy group that brought the cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, claimed that the holistic admissions approach Harvard uses — which includes seeking an ‘extraordinary and diverse class of undergraduate students by conducting a wide-ranging review of every aspect of each applicant’s background and experience’ — had its roots in the 1920s quota system ‘to discriminate against Jewish applicants.’

“In 1922, Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, noticed a precipitous rise in the number of Jews accepted to the university and proposed accepting a quota of only 15% Jewish students. Other American and Canadian universities followed suit.

“At least two justices were sympathetic to the SFFA argument. Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas each raised the Jewish quotas in separate concurrences.”

Justice Thomas wrote, “According to then-[Harvard] President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, excluding Jews from Harvard would help maintain admissions opportunities for Gentiles and perpetuate the purity of the Brahmin race.”

The Brahmin race! As I said, Hitler would have been a good fit at Harvard.

But a century after Harvard decided to perpetuate the purity of the Brahmin race, its donors may have had enough. A prestigious law firm cancelled its internship (tryout for employment) offer to one of the signers of the pro-terrorism letter. The horrific crimes of October 7 were a wake-up call to the West that, yes, Palestinians by and large want to eliminate Israel.

Jazz Shaw reported, “The line to punch Harvard in the trust fund or cut ties with them in other ways in response to the infamous letter supporting Hamas continues to grow longer. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has curtailed his relationship with the university, withdrawing his offer to participate in fellowship programs there. Hogan isn’t a Harvard Grad himself (he attended Florida State) and there is no mention of him being a significant financial donor, but he’s a fairly big name in the political world, and Harvard no doubt valued having him in their stable. But from the sound of his announcement, that relationship is over unless the university makes some major changes and it doesn’t sound as if that’s going to happen.”

When the left loses the RINOs, it has lost the battle.

Liberals are in full panic. The New Yorker made the anti-Semites the victims with a piece it called, “The Anguished Fallout from a Pro-Palestinian Letter at Harvard.”

It said, “What has followed at Harvard is a particularly harsh and far-reaching episode of the campus free-speech wars, unfolding against — and, some would say, distracting from — the carnage in the Middle East. Early last week, several conservative Web sites, including a short-lived ‘College Terror List’ (since censored by Google), were publicizing the personal information of students in the signatory groups. The billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus and donor, called on the university to release individual names, so that C.E.O.s could make sure not to ‘inadvertently hire’ any of them. (Summers said in a television interview that Ackman was getting ‘a bit carried away.’) On Wednesday, a billboard truck bankrolled by the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media showed up in Harvard Square. Screens on the sides of the truck, which has in the past targeted U.C. Berkeley and other campuses, flashed names and photos of student leaders from the signatory organizations, under the heading ‘Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.’ The display directed onlookers to a URL: HarvardHatesJews.com.”

So let’s tally up the hypocrisies. The New Yorker decried as a threat to free speech reacting to what they said, while at the same time the magazine cheered Google censoring someone upset by Harvard students supporting terrorism.

The magazine also was shocked that someone named the people who signed the letter. I suggest New Yorker’s staff read up on what a John Hancock is.

Free speech has its limits. I never complained about being fired over something I wrote because that is a small price to pay. If you stand up for what you believe be prepared. By the way, my newspaper wanted to fire me for 15 years. I was too conservative for a conservative newspaper.

What also has its limits is how much hate, missiles and bludgeoning of civilians Israel must endure before the world understands that the nation must stop trying to be proportionate in its retaliation.

Palestinians want to remove Jews from the river to the sea. Harvard is cool with that because its anti-Semitism never ended.