OPINION
Kurt Mahlburg
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.
**Edited to remove content 21/11/23
What a week it has been at Harvard University.
No sooner had Hamas terrorists burst through Israel’s borders, massacring men, women and babies, than over 30 student groups at the once-renowned Ivy League school released a letter siding with the terrorists and blaming Israel.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” begins the letter, authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
The Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum,” according to the letter, since the Israeli government has forced Palestinians to live in an “open-air prison for over two decades”.
“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” the letter sneers.
At the time of the letter’s release, hundreds of innocent Israeli citizens had been mowed down at a music festival, untold numbers had been burned alive inside their homes, and women had been raped and paraded naked through the streets.
But all this was justified, according to the Harvard student groups, since “Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years”.
“We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians,” the letter concluded.
Harvard’s leadership responded by taking no action — which was precisely the problem. After remaining silent for two days on such damnable views from no small sector of the university’s student body, the school’s leaders were finally shamed into responding through sheer public ridicule.
Former Harvard president Larry Summers and prominent US lawmakers were among those most critical.
“What the hell is wrong with Harvard?” asked Senator Ted Cruz, a Harvard graduate, via X.
In the 400-word statement released by Harvard’s leadership, however, not a whisper was made about the school’s Hamas-sympathising hellions.
It took another 24 hours of public ridicule for Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, to release an additional statement that directly confronted the issue.
“Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” she wrote, adding, “while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership”.
While Ms Gay is strictly correct in stating that student groups don’t speak for Harvard, they certainly do speak to the university’s culture.
Harvard has been sliding ever leftward for decades, seen most notably in recent times in its taking out top place as the worst school for free speech in America. Among the shrinking cohort of students who feel unhindered to speak their mind, apparently, are Harvard’s Hamas terrorist allies.
Does it get any more leftwing than that?
Finally, belatedly, Harvard’s antisemitic students are also harbouring some regrets, of the “I regret I got caught” variety.
The New York Post now reports that many who first supported the letter are scrambling to take back their support of it:
A flurry of Harvard University students and groups are desperately trying to backtrack on their support of a letter blaming Israel for the mass slaughter of its own people by Hamas terrorists — as some business titans seek to blacklist them from future jobs.
Four of the initial 34 student organizations attached to the inflammatory statement have already withdrawn their support — while board members of other groups have quit to distance themselves.
Call me cynical, but it all seems a little too convenient; a classic case of too little, too late.
As commonsense commentator Konstantin Kisin has put it, “If there is any good at all that has come out of the last week — and there is almost none because what we have seen has been pure evil — it’s that a lot of people’s eyes are now well and truly open.”
For those looking at Harvard University with eyes wide open, it is an ugly sight indeed.