Mick Hartley

Shabbos Kestenheim at Tablet – Being a Jew at Harvard is way worse than you think:

As a Jewish student at Harvard University, I have had my learning interrupted by students calling for the globalization of the intifada, sat directly next to classmates who praised the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, listened to 34 student groups blame the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Jews themselves, been exposed to countless death threats, and perhaps most infamously, had a university president who described calls for Jewish genocide to be “context-dependent.”

According to Hillel International, in the 1970s, Jews accounted for roughly 25% of Harvard’s student population. In 2023, that number is estimated to be lower than 5%. For Ivy League institutions across America, the percentage plummets are relatively equivalent….

While Harvard took the extraordinary step to raise the Ukrainian flag on its campus following Russia’s illegal invasion of the country, we were told a similar display of solidarity would not be permitted, and the request to fly the Israeli flag after the Hamas attacks was denied. Although Claudine Gay, as dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, immediately sent out an email forcefully condemning the murder of George Floyd and the racial undertones that allowed for it to happen, no equivalent response, certainly not one with such moral clarity, has been issued to Jewish students.

Indeed, the antisemitism and Hamas sympathies are not confined to Harvard students. They extend to, and are promoted by, Harvard faculty.

Earlier in the year, close to 100 Harvard faculty and staff published a cartoon depicting the hand of a Jew, imprinted with the Star of David and the dollar sign, holding nooses around the necks of an Arab and a Black man.

To this day, these faculty have not been disciplined in any way. They continue to teach and spread their poison with impunity. In many cases I have been a student in their classroom, pass them in the hallways, and see their names featured prominently on lectures.

Only days later, Harvard proudly hosted antisemite Noura Erakat, who participated on a panel with internationally designated terrorist and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad who has promised to repeat Oct. 7 “again and again … October 7, October 10, October one-millionth.”…

While I can provide countless more examples and infuriating testimony, I will conclude with these words: I have seldom experienced such disdain and contempt for a minority group as the way in which Harvard treats its Jewish student population.

This is the reality of being a Jew at Harvard in 2024.