Israel, too, figures into this dialectic. In his program to “decolonize Harvard,” Montalvo promoted materials highlighting Harvard student and faculty activism against Israel’s supposed “apartheid regime” and “settlement enterprise.” The student groups accused Israel of “structural and cultural forms of violence” and called for both “scholarly action” and collective resistance against the Jewish state.
(Christopher Rufo) Harvard finds itself in an ideological bind. Following Hamas’s horrific terror attack against Israel, the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee issued a statement, co-signed by 33 other student groups, blaming the Jewish state for the murder, rape, and mutilation of its own citizens by Hamas. “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the statement read. “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”
The reaction was swift. The media, the public, and prominent political figures condemned the students for rationalizing atrocities against innocent people, including women, children, and the elderly. Harvard’s administration, long accustomed to toeing the radical line, hesitated for days before releasing a generic statement of condemnation and writing that “no student group—not even 30 student groups—speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”