The recent kerfuffle at Harvard University prompts this question: what is required for a beleaguered people to assert themselves in their own defense? MSNBC’s Joy Reid recently highlighted the same question by claiming Donald Trump’s success in the Iowa caucus was due to “too many white Christians” in the state.
While Reid lost no funding over that remark, wealthy Jewish benefactors such as Bill Ackman acted decisively once they decided high-profile university presidents had failed to respond appropriately to their students’ expressions of antisemitism. Especially Jewish donors have responded vigorously, many suspending contributions to the Ivies on account of the antisemitism students expressed after Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
It certainly makes sense that an alum would withhold contributions to his or her alma mater when the institution’s values don’t align with the donor’s. Most people’s values would certainly not be in harmony with calls for the genocide of their own people, right?
It was over precisely this issue that Ackman found former Harvard president Claudine Gay wanting. Her responses to questions at a congressional hearing, titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Anti-Semitism,” were for Ackman far too tepid, especially her attempt to navigate around whether calls for genocide violate Harvard’s code of conduct. As most readers are aware by now, his discontent with her responses eventually resulted in Gay resigning her presidency.
Ackman wasn’t done. His reaction to Harvard students’ expressions of hatred toward Jews included a full-throttle condemnation of the “diversity, equity,
