Interim President Alan M. Garber said he wants to solve this problem but he is coming up short so far.
Maya A. Bodnick writes at the Harvard Crimson:
Antisemitism Continues to Thrive in Garber’s HarvardSince interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 took office, antisemitism has continued to thrive at Harvard. In the first two months of his presidency, Garber hasn’t done any better than his predecessor, former University President Claudine Gay, at addressing this explosion of hatred.Over winter break, I saw Harvard’s Sidechat page inundated with anonymous hateful messages denying the atrocities of Oct. 7, calling Zionists pedophiles, and promoting theories that Jews control the University. Walking to my first day of classes at the beginning of the semester, I passed by posters of Israeli hostages defaced with hateful phrases like “Israel did 9/11.” One Harvard employee even defended this disgusting graffiti, threatening a Jewish Harvard Divinity School student on TikTok and challenging him to a debate about Israel’s role in the 9/11 attacks.Most recently, on Feb. 19, two pro-Palestine student organizations and Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine posted a deeply antisemitic cartoon on Instagram, which portrayed Jews as puppet masters strangling an Arab and Black person. Antisemitism on campus has become so widespread that some students have given up wearing kippahs for fear of being identified as Jewish.Despite this surge of hatred, many at Harvard believe that antisemitism is made-up or exaggerated. For example, one Sidechat post epitomized this ignorant point of view: “Nobody would even know you’re Jewish if you didn’t tell them just by looking at you on the street and yet you’re scared? Of what lol.”As a Jewish woman with distinctly Ashkenazi features who frequently writes about her identity, calls out antisemitism, and spends time at Hillel — yes, I’m scared.I’m scared that some of my classmates, or even my professors, hate people like me. I’m left wondering: How many of the people who teach me and sit next to me in class believe that Jews are evil puppet masters who committed 9/11 and control the global order with their deep pockets?I can’t believe I’m seriously contemplating these questions at Harvard. I came to college expecting to join an open, welcoming community of scholars. But I have personally witnessed more antisemitism during my short time at Harvard than in the entirety of the eighteen years before I set foot on campus.
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