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Joel B. Pollak
The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard College, has published a series of essays offering a set of different “perspectives” on antisemitism at the university — a skeptical approach, two writers pointed out, not followed for any other group.
Eric I. Kalimi and Isaac Mansell, both Harvard students, wrote in “The Disturbing Denial of Jewish Grief”:
[T]he very format of the package of op-eds to which this article belongs begs our examination. I, Isaac, am a proud member of the Editorial Board. When it comes to the Board’s track record of tackling bigotry, their first reaction tends to be exactly that – tackling said bigotry.Regarding antisemitism, their response has deviated significantly from the norm. They have decided to gather a wide range of perspectives from various corners of the Jewish community, taking a far more skeptical approach than we believe the issue merits. We cannot find a similar treatment — with multiple authors dissecting exactly what constitutes hate — for any other form of hate in The Crimson in recent history, indicating that the conversation surrounding antisemitism has become much more equivocal than it ought to be.
Moreover, there has been a broader, equally disturbing dialogue attempting to dictate the bounds of Jewish feelings. Whenever University President Claudine Gay takes a step to reckon with antisemitism on campus, students turn to social media to deny the presence of said antisemitism.
Rabbi David Wolpe, who resigned from Harvard’s new antisemitism committee after President Claudine Gay’s disastrous testimony in Congress last month, also wrote an essay, in which he noted the long history of antisemitism at Harvard:
Harvard has a long and ignoble history of antisemitism, as Harvard President Claudine Gay said in her remarks to Harvard Hillel in October. It is time to admit it, confront it and overcome it. One can criticize policies without calling for the end to the only homeland Jews have ever known. One can demand a Palestinian state without globalizing the intifada — the term for a protest that previously resulted in over 110 suicide bombings that targeted buses, cafes, and malls.
Other writings were critical of Israel, and one even contested the idea that there was antisemitism at Harvard at all, claiming that the accusation had been fabricated and “weaponized” to bully pro-Palestinian students and to stifle criticism of Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
