What's Happened to Harvard?

Key Findings:

This essay calls attention to those who openly support Hamas acts, including those who participate in marches and rallies.

The October 7 incident of the young Israeli man trapped at the Supernova music festival, facing possible capture and further harm from Hamas terrorists, is invoked. In a moment of profound emotion, he sends a brief message to his family, containing two powerful sentences: "I love you" and "I'm sorry." The latter phrase, "I'm sorry," signifies his remorse not for his possible fate, but for the anticipated distress and grief that his family may experience. “I’m sorry.” I’m sorry for providing a satisfying moment for these dead-hearted murderers. Sorry that my life is likely to end before I could do anything to counter evil impulses, evil people. Sorry that I’m only human.

Halfway across the world, the murderers’ verbal accomplices — one waving a swastika — gather and march in Times Square, and send notices from Fair Harvard that the slaughter of children was justified. Pro-Palestinian groups at Harvard proudly march in favor of terrorists. Even the Harvard president, who eventually seemed to recant with a strong statement condemning Hamas, came out initially with an extremely flimsy statement.

The author shares personal experiences from their time at Harvard during the 1960s when student protests were commonplace (and arguably necessary) due to the Vietnam War. But protest becomes equivalent to violence itself when it threatens the very existence of a university by promoting harm. The balance between allowing students to express their views and preventing actions that could harm the institution is delicate.

Individuals who seek to rationalize or provide a balanced perspective on such violence are nothing but apologists for terror and violence. There are situations where moral relativism does not apply, and celebrating Hamas rhetoric and violence is unequivocally wrong. One must ask what can be taught to someone who effectively cheers on the beheading of babies. By so savage an act — as savage as the act it applauds — one forfeits the right to call oneself a student. A student’s mind is by definition open to learning, flexible, inquiring, and is sympathetic above all.