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Noting how anti-Zionist bullies claim they\u2019re \u201cjust\u201d criticizing Israel, the report proclaims: \u201cIt is disingenuous to use a mild word like \u201ccriticism\u201d to describe raucous, aggressive, and inflammatory protest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report offers a long, fascinating, but not-fully-relevant historical overview of Harvard\u2019s Jew-hatred.<\/p>\n
It is useful in tracking how relations between Zionists and Palestinians soured since 2005 as \u201ca new politics of some pro-Palestinian organizing appear[ed] to view bridge-building activities as a form of betrayal, and a new generation of student activists\u201d perceived \u201cIsrael as a symbol and vehicle of the evils of the United States and the rest of the Western world.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a delicate description of Palestinians\u2019 belligerent \u201canti-normalization\u201d BDS boycott strategy, demonizing Israel while cold-shouldering anyone who deals with Israelis, Zionists, or Jews \u2013 unless they\u2019re the \u201cgood\u201d Jews who bash Israel.<\/p>\n
Then, alas, the task force failed. After detailing this deterioration and, predictably, adding some sharp what-about-ist elbows blaming Israeli politics, the report says \u201cmany Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard\u201d found themselves \u201con the wrong side of a political binary that provided no room for the complexity of history or current politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report should have provided an equally detailed history of how this oppressed-oppressor \u201cbinary\u201d overtook and corrupted Harvard \u2013 along with academia. That would have been pathbreaking. Instead, this mysterious \u201cbinary\u201d remains undefined in 100,000 words.<\/p>\n
By contrast, in January 2024, Harvard\u2019s legendary dean, Harry Lewis, diagnosed the problem devastatingly in 865 words. His article \u201cReaping What We Have Taught,\u201d published only in The Harvard Crimson, found words like \u201cdecolonize,\u201d \u201coppression,\u201d \u201cliberation,\u201d \u201csocial justice,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacy,\u201d and \u201cintersectionality\u201d appearing in the course catalog over 100 times.<\/p>\n
This crude experiment, Lewis sadly but courageously concluded, \u201csupports the suspicion that the Harvard curriculum has become heavily slanted toward recent fashions of the progressive Left.\u201d He added, using words far bolder than the Task Force, that \u201cmerchants of hate are repurposing these intellectual goods that universities are producing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lewis showed how this old, ever-adaptable, historic parasite called \u201cJew-hatred\u201d bonded with a new host \u2013 what some call \u201cwoke\u201d\u2013 creating what I call my new book, The Academic Intifada.<\/p>\n
Clearly, wary of offending too many colleagues, Task Force members detailed some of the implications of this toxic bonding, such as biased professors polemicizing in class, bullying students, and imposing one-sided curricula. But the report spinelessly sidestepped the cause.<\/p>\n
You cannot solve a problem without diagnosing it clearly.<\/p>\n
The final falsehood was ideological. The report champions \u201cpluralism,\u201d mentioning it 173 times. The authors offer Alain Locke\u2019s \u201cvision of cultural pluralism\u201d to save Harvard, endorsing his \u201cinsistence that diversity enriches the human experience and that cultural exchange can deepen our understanding of ourselves and others.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019re betting on the wrong Locke. Alain Locke (1885-1954), class of 1907 and the first African American Rhodes Scholar, was correct in embracing an openness essential to learning. But this report neglects the real ideology that made Harvard Harvard and America America: the liberalism of John Locke (1632-1704), among others.<\/p>\n
Liberalism wanted to \u201cpreserve and enlarge freedom\u201d by protecting individual rights. Building on that leap forward, pluralism functions more as a foreign policy, urging even more openness to groups and cultures.<\/p>\n
Liberalism remains the defining, most successful, democratic, and academic vision. Ultimately, it unleashed professors seeking truth \u2013 or truths. \u201cCultural pluralism,\u201d the later, alumnus Locke admitted, \u201cpresupposed cultural relativism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Lockes rhyme more than they clash. But liberal universities traditionally kept politics out of the classroom to pursue truth. Today\u2019s pluralistic palaces are so open they\u2019re morally confused \u2013 although genuine pluralists would at least resist woke orthodoxy.<\/p>\n
As a Harvard tour guide, I finished the standard three-lie riff by pointing to Harvard\u2019s motto, \u201cVeritas,\u201d emblazoned on the statue. \u201cThat makes it the statue of four lies,\u201d I insisted. \u201cVeritas means \u2018truth\u2019 and you can\u2019t have truth amid three other lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alas, truth today is not only missing from John Harvard\u2019s statue, but from the university named for him.<\/p>\n