Washington- The Harvard University administration’s decision to stand behind the university’s president, Claudine Gay, after calls for her resignation based on her testimony regarding the rise of anti-Semitism in American universities in light of the repercussions of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, led to Israel’s supporters launching a continuous campaign to harass and defame Gay.
The campaign extended to include various dimensions, starting with questioning the university’s policies, especially with regard to accepting members of minorities and the poor, through questioning the academic honesty of the university president, and ending with punishing the university and working to financially harm it, which maintains a financial endowment worth more than 50 billion dollars. .
Claudine Gay, in addition to the President of the University of Pennsylvania, Lise Magill, and the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sally Kornbluth, were questioned by the House Education Committee earlier, against the backdrop of the escalation of “anti-Semitism” on campus since the seventh of last October.
The three women were attacked for their answers to MPs’ questions about freedom of expression and protection of Jewish students. During the session, Gay was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews conflicted with Harvard University policy. Gay did not give a clear answer, saying that it depends on the “context.”
After a violent reaction, the university issued a statement clarifying that it has a strong position on calls for violence against Jews. The president of the University of Pennsylvania resigned due to the pressure she was subjected to following the hearing, while the president of Harvard University was determined to continue carrying out her duties. The university president’s answers did not satisfy many donors, graduates, students, and politicians.
Supporting minorities at the expense of competencies
In the opening of his program on CNN, the famous commentator Fareed Zakaria accused Harvard University and other elite universities, and said, “Our elite universities have transformed from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas, and these agendas have begun to encourage diversity and inclusion in good faith.” But those good intentions have turned into dogmatic ideology, turning these universities into places where the prevailing goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit.”
Harvard is accused of favoring ethnic minority students over white students, out of a desire to create student diversity that does not necessarily reflect the academic superiority of applicants.
Today, white American students represent 36% of its total students, Asian students 21%, Hispanics 12%, foreign students 11%, black Africans 11%, and 9% from other backgrounds.
12% of university students belong to poor classes, while 88% belong to financially wealthy classes, and the cost of an academic year at Harvard is no less than 70 thousand dollars.
Last year, 42,749 students applied to Harvard University, and 1,962 of them were accepted, or only 4.6%. Many Harvard students are concerned that obtaining a degree from this prestigious university may harm job opportunities, as some employers pledge not to hire its graduates. Because of the university’s handling of anti-Israel protests.
Wall Street Tactics
Harvard University has an endowment worth $50 billion, and it is managed by the university in the form of a non-profit foundation. Accordingly, the university does not pay any taxes on its income from this endowment.
With the university under attack since October 7, Bill Ackman, the billionaire financier, investor, and Harvard graduate, is waging a battle against the university president, relying on a strategy that has earned him a reputation as one of the most ruthless investors on Wall Street.
Ackman expressed his anger almost daily at what he saw as Harvard University’s failure to confront anti-Semitism on campus. A number of senior Wall Street figures wrote demanding that the US tax authority authorities treat Harvard as a company and pay income taxes like other companies because of its investment activity in its endowment.
“Large, tax-exempt endowments leave universities looking like corporations, but without the market pressures,” Wall Street Journal editorial board member Alicia Finley wrote.
Finley pointed out that the US Tax Authority considers Harvard University, and most private universities are non-profit organizations, which means that they do not have to pay taxes. This exemption saves the university hundreds of millions of dollars each year, enabling it to grow its endowments.
Many funders, especially Jewish graduates of the university, backed away from their pledges to provide millions of dollars in donations to the university. Ackman reiterates that if Harvard had been a publicly traded company, its shares might have fallen so badly, as investors fled.
On the other hand, the university administration believes that Harvard is not beholden to shareholders who donate to it in service of their own interests, because it serves a range of parties, including students, faculty and alumni, many of whom are outraged by the idea that one wealthy donor could practice such Huge impact on their university.
“We cannot function as a university if we are accountable to the random rich and the mobs they mobilize on X-Twitter,” said Harvard Law School professor Ben Edelson.
Academic standards
Following Harvard University’s position on the consequences of the attacks of last October 7, and the large demonstrations in support of the Palestinians that followed, Gay’s scholarly writings have come under the microscope in recent weeks, and some reports have pointed to numerous examples of what appears to be almost verbatim copying from other sources. .
The university administration noted that their review of Guy’s research writings “revealed a few instances of inadequate citation, but found no violations of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”
The university’s attackers are exploiting these points, and are demanding that Harvard follow the traditional standards in judging the writings of its president, which are the standards to which the rest of the institutions of American higher education look to for guidance on academic standards.
The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo and journalist Christopher Brunet also published examples of what they said were problematic parts of a doctoral dissertation that Gay wrote in 1997 that “violate Harvard’s stated policies on academic integrity.”
The Harvard University Board of Directors decided to stand behind President Claudine Guy, and in a statement rejected these accusations as “a few cases of inadequate citation” that do not constitute “a violation of Harvard’s standards for research misconduct.”
A long history of Harvard
Harvard University was founded 387 years ago, more than 100 years before the founding of the American state, in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1636, and it is the oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
Harvard is an institution with overwhelming influence, and is sought to be accepted by members of the American elite and elites from various countries of the world, because of its reputation and academic achievements in various fields, which has made it sit at the top of university rankings in the world.
For more than three and a half centuries, Harvard graduates have made a creative and significant contribution to the United States and the world in the arts and sciences, business, political, and international affairs.
The list of Harvard graduates includes eight American presidents, the first of whom is the second president of the United States, John Adams, and the last of whom is President Barack Obama. Among the most famous presidents are John Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.
The list of graduates includes 188 billionaires and 49 Nobel laureates in various fields. Its graduates won 10 Oscars for cinema and 48 Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. Its graduates won 108 Olympic medals, including 46 gold medals. Its graduates also founded a number of the most important companies around the world. ; For example: Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
Globally, a number of Harvard graduates govern a number of countries around the world, and some of its graduates have held prestigious international positions, including the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations.