Harvard Does the Right Thing for Despicable Reasons

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

 

Harvard University has decided to take a vow of silence, and the consensus reaction resembles the moment in The Princess Bride when Inigo says to Andre the Giant’s character, with astonishment in his voice, “Fezzik, you did something right.”

 

It seems the vast majority of the public is supportive of Harvard’s decision to shut up—especially but not exclusively about political and cultural currents of which its opinions are meaningless yet incendiary.

 

“Harvard University said Tuesday it will no longer take public positions on matters that do not relate to its core function of academia,” reports the Washington Post, “after a report by a faculty committee found that speaking officially on matters outside its area of expertise carries risks including compromising ‘the integrity and credibility of the institution.’”

 

Of course, the time to lock the gate is before the horse has bolted, but at least the university sees this past half-year for the teaching moment it was.

 

And no one is pretending that this isn’t about Gaza: “University leaders said in a statement that they had accepted the recommendations of the committee, which was established in April, and will avoid statements on public issues, including those of social and political significance. Harvard was criticized for its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, as the violence in Israel and Gaza reignited tensions on U.S. college campuses.”

 

Harvard, like other universities, makes public statements about issues and events of import. But Oct. 7 proved Harvard’s hate for Israel exceeded its love for the sound of its own voice. Indeed, across American institutions, it was interpreted as controversial to condemn the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, as Hamas massacred entire neighborhoods and kidnapped hundreds. Harvard was paralyzed by indecision over the question: Is it okay to condemn murder if the victims were Jewish?

 

“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” former Harvard president Larry Summers wrote. “The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”

 

The pressure was enough to nudge Harvard into releasing a mealy-mouthed nonsense statement. The ensuing months of frenetic pro-Hamas activism on campus made Harvard look ridiculous in a way it is unlikely to ever fully recover from. That’s probably a good thing in the long run. And even though Harvard is making the right move by shutting its piehole, the motivation behind it is actually quite despicable.

 

The trend here is plain and undeniable: Rules and norms may exist, despite all their contradictions, until the moment they are made to apply to Jews as well.

 

The events of October 7 were straightforward: Israel was invaded, over a thousand were killed in some of the most horrible ways imaginable, women were raped and tortured, children and elderly were taken hostage. The only plausible reason to not release a statement unequivocally decrying these events and acknowledging their significance to America and to Harvard and to the Jews on campus would be that there is a policy not to comment on such events. That’s it. If you do have a policy to comment on such events, then a non-statement on this one has only one explanation: Harvard sees it as inconsistent with its mission and its values to acknowledge innocent Jewish life.

 

That is what happened here. And so the solution to such a quandary isn’t to forgo all future institutional statements on current events. It’s to disband the institution without hesitation.

 

There is no reason for such an institution to exist. And the fact that it does exist and that it is influential in its instruction of students and its placement of them in positions of power and responsibility represents a great threat to wider society.

 

This applies not just to schools but to philosophies and administrative guidance such as DEI regimes. DEI exists despite all its falsities and contradictions until the moment it is suggested that its principles also apply to Jews. The solution is not to try to force some kind of Jew-friendly DEI (none can exist anyway). The answer is to abolish DEI.

 

Jews are a kind of test, you see. It’s like the old joke about the physicist, the chemist, and the economist trapped on a desert island with only canned food to sustain them but no way to open it. “Assume a can opener,” triumphantly asserts the economist.

 

When testing your worldview, assume a Jew. If a Jew’s placement in it cannot not be accommodated, your worldview and its attendant institutions are unsalvageable.