As controversy continues to swirl at Harvard after dozens of student groups blamed Israel following the Hamas terrorist attacks, the university’s president is defending the students’ right to free speech — even when it comes to “outrageous” beliefs.
Harvard President Claudine Gay in a video addressed the chaotic week at the Cambridge university, where the student groups have been condemned and railed against for their anti-Israel statement after the Hamas terrorists murdered Israelis and took hostages.
The dozens of groups in the statement entirely blamed Israel for the terrorist attacks.
“Our University embraces a commitment to free expression,” Gay said in the video. “That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.
“We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views,” the president added. “But that is a far cry from endorsing them.”
Harvard was recently ranked as the worst college for free speech in the country. Harvard ranked last out of 248 colleges in a survey of more than 55,000 students across the U.S., receiving the only “Abysmal” rating in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and College Pulse free speech rankings.
Following the student groups’ anti-Israel statement over the weekend, Harvard alums have been calling for the students’ names to be public.
Then, a truck revealing students’ names and their faces started to drive around the Cambridge campus. The “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites” truck has been showing the names and photos of students who are members of the groups that signed the statement. Students’ personal information is being spread online.
“Our University rejects terrorism — that includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” Gay said in the video. “Our University rejects hate — hate of Jews, hate of Muslims, hate of any group of people based on their faith, their national origin, or any aspect of their identity.
“Our University rejects the harassment or intimidation of individuals based on their beliefs,” the president added.
Meanwhile, Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife Batia have quit the executive board of Harvard’s Kennedy School in the wake of the student groups’ statement and Gay’s initial response to the letter.
The couple said they resigned from the board “as a protest against the shocking and insensitive response of the university president, who did not condemn the letter of the student organizations that held Israel solely responsible for the massacres,” according to the Hebrew newspaper TheMarker.
Gay in the video pushed for Harvard students to come together and become united during this crisis, instead of continuing the division.
“We can issue public pronouncements declaring the rightness of our own points of view and vilify those who disagree. Or we can choose to talk and to listen with care and humility, to seek deeper understanding, and to meet one another with compassion,” Gay said.
“We can inflame an already volatile situation on our campus,” the president added. “Or we can focus our attention where it belongs on the unfolding tragedy thousands of miles away. We can ask ourselves how, as human beings, we can be helpful to people who are desperately trying to protect themselves and their families, people who are fighting to survive.”
