The photograph spread worldwide: the Palestinian flag draped over the iconic statue of John Harvard inside Harvard Yard.
The symbolic takeover of the world’s most prestigious university by pro-Palestinian forces was complete.
No single image better summarized Harvard’s — and much of American education’s — decades of ideological radicalism, over-tolerance of reprehensible and hateful thought, university mismanagement and financial greed.
What is happening today at Harvard began more than 50 years ago.
During the Vietnam War, Harvard led the way in banning the United States military from its campus. Harvard prohibited its students who joined R.O.T.C from holding drills and instruction on campus, thus forcing these students to go down Massachusetts Avenue to M.I.T to attend R.O.T.C training.
Harvard also banned the CIA from recruiting on campus.
When the Vietnam War finally ended and most of the country reconciled with the soldiers who fought, if not with the politicians and generals who ran the war, Harvard was unrepentant. The ban on R.O.T.C on campus continued. Harvard said the new reason was to protest the military’s “anti-gay” policies.
Though Harvard finally rescinded this ban after 42 years, the school continued to display an intolerant mindset for dissenting thought.
Harvard claimed to champion diversity — but in fact only for leftist arguments. There was little tolerance for conservative thought.
Harvard did not suffer because of these decisions. The Harvard Endowment — the largest academic endowment in the world — continued to grow. Rich alumni kept pouring millions into the school, either to help grease the way for a relative’s admission or to have their name permanently enshrined somewhere on campus. The university was awash in money.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the outside world, the Harvard community congratulated themselves in their own echo chamber, which I first encountered as a freshman in 1972. The college was filled with a sense of superiority, arrogance, haughtiness and a feeling of, “We are at Harvard, so therefore we are smarter than average people and know better than they do about what is best for them.”
This attitude dripped from Harvard professors, administrators and even many students. It was prevalent in the classrooms, the dining halls and the dorms.
Five decades later, these attitudes have multiplied exponentially, combined with even more tolerance for previously unacceptable thought and speech.
The Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel brought all of these trends to a head. The previously unthinkable landed on the Harvard campus. Out-and-out calls for the death of Jews and the elimination of Israel were spoken openly through the Harvard campus. A Jewish Harvard Business School student was physically attacked on campus in October. In February, a faculty group posted a cartoon featuring a hand tattooed with the Star of David and a dollar sign lynching a Palestinian man and a Black man.
Harvard allowed it all.
Why?
Because the university — which lost 697 students, teachers, staffers and alumni fighting against fascism and genocide in World War II — has long since lost its moral compass.
What would those brave men think about their alma mater tolerating calls for the very thing they gave their lives to stop?
Protestors championing genocide of Israeli Jews are still being given free rein by Harvard’s leadership. Some Jewish students are today scared to walk across the Harvard campus. As reported in the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi recently said that “freshmen studying in their rooms ‘are being confronted with terrifying chants of globalize the Intifada — a call for the murder of Jews.”
Harvard may be finally feeling the consequences of decades of too-much-tolerance: The most famous university in the world saw its applications fall by 5 percent. Meanwhile, Yale’s applications increased by 10 percent while Dartmouth, Penn, Duke and other top-flight and equally expensive schools reported their applications increasing.
Donors, too, are backing away from Harvard. Ken Griffin, a Harvard graduate and the CEO of Citadel LLC, announced he was withholding his donations because of how Harvard has handled the post-Oct. 7 demonstrations. Other major donors have also severed ties with the university.
Bill Ackman, a Harvard alumnus and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, announced he would not hire any Harvard students who, after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, signed a letter blaming Israel for the attacks.
Why are applications declining, donors fleeing and the powerful “Harvard network” no longer welcoming some Harvard graduates?
Because Harvard for decades has wrapped itself in illiberal, intolerant and hate-filled causes.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) ranks Harvard as the only school achieving an “abysmal” grade in its latest College Free Speech rankings. It concluded in this year’s report, “If this prestigious university hopes to turn things around, it should reflect on its traditional scholarly purpose and direct its attention toward reviving the free speech norms that make fulfilling that purpose possible.”
Just when the university needs to make a course correction it instead chose as their commencement speaker Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, CEO of the Philippine-based news site the Rappler, which likened Israel to Adolf Hitler’s Germany and bogusly claimed that Israel has purposely targeted journalists in Gaza.
Was this choice a sop to the pro-Palestinian forces to avoid further demonstrations at commencement?
Harvard’s once-sterling reputation is being spoiled by these decisions.
A course correction is needed.
The Harvard Corporation — the governing body of the university — has often used the selection of a new university president as a form of barrier-breaking. In 2007 it chose Harvard’s first woman president. A few years later it chose the first Black woman president. In her case, the Corporation was so eager to install her that it conveniently overlooked serious charges of serial academic plagiarism, which would have brought immediate expulsion for any undergraduate. She proved totally inadequate for the presidency after Oct. 7 and has since been fired.
Choosing a new president will force a major decision: What will be the future direction of Harvard? Will the university continue to be a vessel for the far left and the most-vile anti-American sentiments?
Or will Harvard pick someone — recognized worldwide as a leader open to all sides but not tolerant of hatred and extremism — whose appointment re-centers Harvard as the positive global example it once was?
Above all, the next leader must return Harvard to its central mission best summed up on the Dexter Gate on the way out of Harvard Yard, “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”
John LeBoutillier, author of “Harvard Hates America” (Gateway Editions, 1978), is a 1976 Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard College and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979. In 1980 he was elected to Congress as a Republican representing New York’s 6th District. He is the co-author of the upcoming “The Women of Whitney Lane” historical fiction series.