These days, one of the most talked about news in the United States is the resignation of the president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay.
While Harvard and its leaders are focused on the media, Palestinians continue to be killed by US-supplied bombs and buried under the rubble of their homes, schools, mosques and hospitals.
While Harvard Yard teems with speculation about the career of a millionaire academic, two million Palestinians are displaced by carpet bombing intended to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Amid attempts to deflect an actualized genocide whose targets include the families of Harvard students, those of us who stand in solidarity with Palestine remain under relentless attack.
Indeed, as hundreds of university intellectuals mobilized to sign a letter to the Harvard Corporation in support of Gay – the same president who spent weeks denouncing students demonstrating in solidarity with the victims of the ongoing Nakba – we barely receive minimal support.
The letter, urging the Harvard Corporation “in the strongest possible terms to defend the independence of the university and resist political pressure,” received extensive national media attention.
Ultimately, however, this effort by Harvard professors not only failed to save Gay’s job, but also failed to translate into meaningful support for those of us in solidarity with Palestine and who refuse to cower. While Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories are subjected to unfathomable conditions, relentless massacres and irreversible destruction, the condemnation at Harvard remains unfairly attributed to students organizing for justice in Palestine. Leading professors seem willing to support only Gay, who, although he has not recited the exact script demanded by the Zionists, still calls our pro-liberation activities “abhorrent.”
When solidarity is reserved for elite academics during an active genocide and there is only limited activity to demand that Harvard end its complicity, or even simply protect students alongside the oppressed, we have a problem. When the rhetorical trap of a Trump supporter goes unchallenged and rejects the nefarious premise that students calling for an end to actual genocide are somehow calling for a hypothetical genocide, we have a problem. When some mobilize to preserve “freedom of inquiry” but avoid recognizing the Palestinian exception to freedom of expression, we have a problem.
For years, many have called on Harvard to reveal and disengage from its material complicity in what is widely recognized as an apartheid regime. In recent months of particularly egregious censorship and threats against largely Muslim, Arab, black and brown students, we have been the target of attacks on campus.
A list compiled by the students of more than 70 incidents includes: a woman in a hijab chased by someone brandishing a knife; doxing via ad truck as targeted students face job losses, expulsions, and academic sanctions; frivolous police reports against visibly Muslim students; and students followed and harassed for wearing a keffiyeh (by the wife of a Harvard professor who signed the letter of support for Gay). During her limited tenure, which allowed her to make various Zionist demands in public and private spheres, President Gay did not acknowledge any of these incidents; not even behind closed doors when the rare opportunities for Muslims to express their suffering presented themselves.
During the fall semester, victims of anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim racism found little support from the majority of professors who signed the letter to the Harvard Corporation. Only about 10 percent of the 764 signatories joined an open letter calling on Gay to recognize the suffering of Palestinians and denounce the silencing of supporters of Palestinian liberation (which she has never done, not even in her post-resignation editorial). Even the murder of more than 100 family members of a single Palestinian student at Harvard Law School was not enough to elicit sympathy – much less anger – from that institution.
Recognizing pervasive anti-Black racism and denouncing the bigotry that motivated Gay’s ouster — even as his administration has perpetuated its own patterns of injustice against marginalized communities — is necessary. It is also necessary to recognize that following a previous smear campaign by a billionaire tycoon against a black student protester and a Muslim security commissioner, Gay would succumb to this hateful campaign and publish an email to inform the public that these students are under investigation by local police and the FBI.
While Gay is backed by hundreds of teachers in an attempt to salvage her elite position, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo was quickly stripped of her residential assistant position, with minimal outcry. The president of Harvard at the time even condemned the liberating formula “from the river to the sea”: Palestine will be free, in communication with the entire Harvard community. While prominent intellectuals attempted to save Gay under the guise of free speech, many were disappointed by ignoring Harvard’s neglect of its students who spoke for a free Palestine.
Now, will these Harvard professors commit to supporting the crucial faculty and staff chapter for justice in Palestine?
The focus should now be on understanding why many stand idly by, while students in solidarity with Palestine face smear campaigns ignored or supported by their universities, and others within these institutions are mobilizing only for a president who brags about punishing these students. Some at Harvard shamefully justify their rhetoric against the Zionist genocidal campaign, refusing to use institutional privilege to pursue the truth in the most basic way. Even as the university attempts to restrict speech and censor voices in support of Palestine, hundreds of faculty, who happily signed an open letter in support of Gay, are turning away from their students who stand up for justice in Palestine.
As the Palestinians are massacred, many at Harvard, through their rhetoric and actions, support their plight “from the river to the sea.” Yet elite academics and headlines only inform us of the defense of a president who credulously opened herself up to a frivolous congressional hearing.
As grave injustice unfolds before our eyes, at the most basic level, Harvard – as one of the most influential institutions based in a nation that is the most fervent ally of the Zionist project – must recognize Palestinian suffering.
It is high time that institutions like ours put an end to their material and moral complicity in this oppression. Let this be the moment when influential people in these spaces finally hear the calls to stand in solidarity with our movement to end the ongoing Nakba, above all else.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.