Mick Hartley

Amusing, from Juliet Samuel in the Times:

“Harvard Admissions Office,” says the dour voice.

“My son Hameed would really like to register for your establishment next year. He was one of the [October 7] Hamas fighters,” says a motherly voice. He is a “real political activist”, she says indulgently. Does Harvard have any politics scholarships?

“All our scholarships are need-based,” comes the reply.

“It would not help if he says that he’s a Hamas fighter?” she inquires.

“Everything that a student does helps them in the process.”

“So that would be helpful if he writes down that he was in the October 7 massacre?”

Briefly the apparatchik stutters: “Our process looks at the student’s entire secondary school career … inside and outside the classroom.”

The mother is not actually a proud Hamas parent, of course, but the Israeli satirist Racheli Rottner making a prank call. Harvard is a ripe target. Its response to campus antisemitism has been appallingly limp.

Ideologies like “decolonisation” and “intersectionality” are part of the problem but much of it, I suspect, is bureaucratic torpor and cowardice. Shortly before I studied there more than a decade ago the economist Larry Summers was hounded out as university president for saying it’s possible that women and men tend, on average, to have different academic strengths. His successors have all been inoffensive non-entities. They are selecting for panderers.

No, I obviously do not believe that Harvard would knowingly admit a Hamas terrorist. But the admissions officer on the call is too afraid to say so. “All I can say to you is that he can apply,” he says instead. “Have a nice day.”

I wouldn't be so sure about Harvard not knowingly admitting a Hamas terrorist.

Another point worth making: Jews are funny. Islamists and hard leftists – not so much.