After a laundry list of Harvard student associations issued an open letter blaming the rape, kidnapping and murder of women, children and the elderly on Israel and the United States, opening with the sentence, “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the question that hung in the air was what would Harvard University have to say.**
It wasn’t just that a long list of faux student organizations signed on, but that Harvard had already established precedent, having issued statements in support of Ukraine and Black Lives Matters.
And Larry Summers, former president of Harvard, and others called out the university out for its silence.
Finally, Harvard had something to say.
We have no illusion that Harvard alone can readily bridge the widely different views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we are hopeful that, as a community devoted to learning, we can take steps that will draw on our common humanity and shared values in order to modulate rather than amplify the deep-seated divisions and animosities so distressingly evident in the wider world. Especially at such a time, we want to emphasize our commitment to fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy, appealing to one another’s thoughtfulness and goodwill in a time of unimaginable loss and sorrow.
As many colleagues, classmates, and friends deal with pain and deep concern about the events in Israel and Gaza, we must all remember that we are one Harvard community, drawn together by a shared passion for learning, discovery, and the pursuit of truth in all its complexity, and held together by a commitment to mutual respect and support. At this moment of challenge, let us embody the care and compassion the world needs now.
Reactions to the statement issued by Harvard President Claudine Gay ranged from tepid drivel to word salad. But what was Harvard to do? As I’ve argued many times, progressive ideology is inherently flawed, a view that elite academia does not share. It holds that Palestinians are the oppressed, and hence good, while Israel is the oppressor, and hence evil.
If Gay condemned the rape, kidnapping and murder of women, children and the elderly, the failure of identitarian orthodoxy would have been undeniable. No, identities do not dictate who is good or evil, but conduct does. Right and wrong does not shift based on who is engaging in the conduct. To recognize this is to disavow progressive ideology.
Could Harvard do such a thing? Could it tell its faculty, staff and students that their blind faith in woke ideology was wrong and they were praying to a false god?
Many have tried to blunt the obvious by raising the history behind Palestinian and Israeli relations, arguing that Israel had it coming. Often, the claim that Gaza was an “open air prison” was intoned as if it justified the rape and slaughter of civilians, of kids, at a music festival. But these weren’t the words issued by the president of Harvard.
Claudine Gay could not bring herself to condemn the conduct of Hamas terrorists because it would reveal that the inherent conflict in progressive ideology was real and the students at the nation’s most renowned university would not have accepted a condemnation of their fundamentally flawed belief system. What else could she have done?
*Tuesday talk rules apply, within reason.
**At least it wasn’t as absurd and delusional as Larry Tribe’s twit that this was a conspiracy by Netanyahu to take the focus off his authoritarian activities.
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Harvard has become an intellectual and moral pariah beyond any saving.
You prefer your drivel warmed over, seasoned w/ a soupcon of outrage? What sort of dressing do you like on your word salad?
Much of academia, the political cultural left, and the media elite now worship at the alter of identity archetype. It is, so to speak, essential to the identity. It has colored their views of republican democracy, making the majority evil to be tamed, re educated, ignored, and governed by right thinking aristocrats (like them). They and the authoritarians to the right represent a real threat to the American Experiment.
While your point is well taken, it’s naive if you think that the woke left will grasp the fallacy of their ideology this time. Remember the riots after the murder of George Floyd, when the left twisted themselves in knots to rationalize why burning and looting weren’t wrong, but just the “voice of the unheard”?
When it comes to making up excuses for the failure of woke ideology, anything will do, and they will persist without regard to how absurd or wrong they are. They learned no lesson then. They will learn no lesson now.
SHG and others.
Youu may find some of the things I say in this post hit nerves as I am a supporter of rights for the underclass members who are descended from conquered defeated indigenous peoples living in the successor states to that conquest, viz Australia and Israel. In both cases the only rights left to the indigines are so called “human rights” which are very weak rights and can never override the accepted legitimate interests of sovereign states such as Austalia, Israel, Indonesion occupied West Papua, The USA or ……….
99% of the worlds population (my estimate, I may be inaccurate) agree that the actions of the Palestinians are not just deserving of criticism but justify the term “EVIL”. I am one of 1% (my estimate, I may be inaccurate) who find Palestinian actions starting on Saturday 2023/10/07 perfectly understandable.
Wars between colonial settler states and indigenous people DO NOT END they simply SHIFT PHASES. In Australia the war against those whom we used to refer by various nasty abbreviations connected to malign UNCONSCIOUS NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES but now describe as :”First Nations” is in the UNDERCLASS MAINTENENCE PHASE while that in Israeli Occupied Palestine is in the FUTILE VIOLENT RESISTANCE TO SIGNAL LACK OF SURRENDER and the TIT FOR TAT MASSIVE RESPONSE PHASE.
The majority of the world’s population is unable to comprehend why the Palestinians persist in FUTILE TERRORISM or Australia’s 1st Nations underclass persist in BLUE COLLAR CRIME. In both cases the perpetrators do it in order to PISS OFF their enemies, but in the MIDDLE EAST it is seen as ILLEGITIMATE TERRORISM and in AUSTRALIA SENSELESS BLUE COLLAR CRIME. i suspect that if anyone were to talk to any of the perpetrators one would find that RAGE is the motivation either rage stirred up by an instance of PERCEIVED DISRESPECT or a state of mind that is permanently ENRAGED and triggered multiple times today.
It is serrendipitous occurrence in Australia and Israel of events that highlight the INTRINSIC CONFLICT. On 14 October 2023 Australians are going to vote NO in a referendum about establishing in the Australian Constitution recognition of their status as being here before legitimate settlement by the British on 26 January 1788 but also body to represent First Nations people and their interests to the Federal Government. Initially polls showed the YES CASE ahead at 56% but now NO is conformably ahead mostly in my view by stirring up appeals to the NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES that I mentioned previosly that are usually LATENT but have been rearroused by proponents of the NO CASE. In my view these stereotype are what some call a CHEAP SHOT or a FREE KICK for the bigots.
What I am trying to say is better expressed by COMMENTOR BINOY CAMPMARK on COUNTERPUNCH at the moment. No link but google “Binoy Kampmark” and “indecency” on site http://www.counterpunch.org.
Incidentally Binoy Kampmark is in my opinion one of very few commentators who obeys consistent principles in all his posts no matter what the consensus of the rest of species homo sapiens is. He does not have his own blog but his posts are ubiquitous all over the INTERTUBES and he posts on a vast range of issues..
There are few such commentators but SHG if you like I will send you my list when I finally draw it up.
WTF?
Thank you for highlighting the words you thing most important by posting them in capital letters. Also, thank you for serving as an on-point example of what the author has described. (“… raising the history … Israel had it coming”)
I also find it interesting that you draw a line between “understandable” and “Evil”.
I am at a loss, however, to connect what you have written to the question of how Harvard might have responded differently at some point.
Actually I started a post relevant to the absolute inability of different groups among homo sapiens to understand each. Initially I was thinking of SHG’s post on the refusal of proponents of wokeness and anti-wokeness to let each other speak. I consider myself WOKE on some issues but ANTI-WOKE on others.
Then I realised that current events in two colonial settler states serve as a much better illustration.
I 100% agree with what SHG is saying in his post above but I wandered off topic but for a reason.
I find that I do most of my thinking reading blogs and I find SHG’s posts often offer excellent starting points for a branching thread relevant to SHG’s post. While meditating on SHG’s post current events in Australia and Israel captured my attention. When some issues such as relations between colonial settler states and the remaining indigenous come into my mind, I become very angry and my thoughts gallop off on an apparently irrelevant direction. When writing in anger I usually calm down and what I finally write loses the anger but gains in what I call WMD level sarcasm.
Actually SHG how about a Palestine post it is topical now?
Your thinking needs a new operating procedure.
I really like to articulate in most situations but: yikes.
You were the example he spoke of (in the literal article you were commenting on) and didn’t realize it. And you are here to convince others of things? To make requests of people?
You need to work to improve yourself and thinking before engaging in this way. Your writing and thinking make it clear.
I am humbled and amazed that you had the fortitude to read that whole screed.
Congratulations on winning today’s Billy Madison Award!
It must be tricky to not know if it’s “perfectly understandable” when someone perpetrates a Las Vegas-style mass shooting, commits a string of serial sex murders, or blows up a federal building until you read their manifesto. It can all be so intersectional.
I too thought of the Vegas massacre. The only difference being the Vegas monster never made any declaration. But that’s an insignificant difference. The results were identical.
I must be naive. I think when war crimes are committed ( Hamas) certain responses are going to happen.
Will a land acknowledgement on the El Al flight into Tel Aviv mollify you?
Word Salad Crazy Crazy
(with apologies to the great Aussie band the Wiggles, at least in their earlier incarnations)
Update: The Harvard link added a statement from Harvard’s president Claudine Gay saying that she condemns the attack and that the student groups aren’t speaking for the university or its leadership.
The Left hates Jews and wants them dead but the intelligentsia want to retain the appearance of gravitas so they refrain from outright dancing in the blood. Harvard has become an empty husk worn as a skin suit while demanding respect.
Was Tuesday Halloween?