Harvard I am a supporter and big fan of Harvard, its students and what it can do for people and the country when it gets it right. It is critical that it be a leader in open discourse and intellectual rigor. But the University report of antisemitism by its own committee is sobering. Except for a small window of time in the 70s, Harvard has a long history of administration-sponsored, deliberately implemented discrimination. The first Jewish professor was forced to convert to Christianity — and it didn’t get much better from there. There were quotas that kept Jewish enrollment down for decades and then DEI that led to new waves of suppression by defining one of the most oppressed people in the world long subject to deadly pogroms, slavery, discrimination and 6 million exterminated in the Holocaust as oppressors. And just recently the Supreme Court found Harvard explicitly guilty of discrimination against Asians in its admissions practices. While Harvard is private institution, discrimination of any kind is illegal and subject to government review. There’s a lot of talk about Trump administration overreaching in its demands for strict monitoring and review of the university practices related to antisemitism. But there were no complaints when the EEOC put hundreds of such requirements on the University. And with all the handwringing about no administration ever going this far, memories seem to have forgotten that after Brown v. Board, Eisenhower even sent federal troops to high schools to enforce it and protect students. SFFA vs. Harvard is just as important a decision and while troops are not needed, clear actions that are undertaken and are monitored are in line with enforcing the laws. The 300-page University report details how multiple divisions of the school have fallen into the hands of activists who have shut out all intellectual discussion and are teaching warped views of history. And it details a campus hostile to Jews and all those from Israel with serious incidents of bullying and intimidation. Harvard should sit down and negotiate with the administration and work out reasonable reforms. I think a solution can be found here outside a legal battle but it starts with Harvard recognizing it does have a long history of a real problem as has been fully documented by the courts and its own committee.
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