The resignation of Claudine Gay, the first president and black woman at the head of the elitist Harvard, is not enough of a trophy.
This is the opinion of six Jewish students from this university integrated into the select Ivy League. This group filed a lawsuit against Harvard this week in which they accuse this institution of being “a bastion of growing hatred and harassment of Jews”, exacerbated by the Hamas attack on Israel.
They even emphasized that teachers have promulgated anti-Semitism and intimidated students who oppose it.
The case was handed over to the Massachusetts court. The documents allege that this institution violated the civil rights of Jewish students, turned a blind eye and went from punishing acts of anti-Semitism (others deny it and speak of anti-Zionism) and the spread of the hate
The plaintiffs claimed that “anti-Semitism is particularly severe and pervasive” since Hamas attacked inside Israeli territory on October 7. This was a brutal retaliation by the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu against the Palestinians in Gaza, an action that has led to widespread protests in US universities.
“Crowds of pro-Hamas students and professors demonstrated in hundreds on the Harvard campus shouting vile anti-Semitic slogans and calling for the death of Jews and Israel,” they remarked.
Among the threats of extinction is the slogan chanted by pro-Palestine, “from the river to the sea”, a territorial claim that the Jews interpret as returning to the status of 1947, when the State of Israel did not yet exist.
“These mobs have occupied buildings, classrooms, libraries, student bars, squares and residences, often for days or weeks, and have promoted violence against Jews, harassed and assaulted them,” the plaintiffs said.
The signatories of the complaint allege that Jewish students have been targeted on social media with the approval of faculty members. “The most amazing thing about all of this is the abject failure of Harvard and its refusal to lift a finger to stop and deter this outrageous anti-Semitic behavior and punish the students and professors who perpetrated it,” they insisted.
This view, if anything, forgets a relevant factor. Yes, there was a punishment. Gay, the president, had to leave her position at the beginning of this month.
Gay, along with his colleagues at Massachusetts MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, appeared before a Republican-controlled congressional committee and did not respond strongly to the trick question about the response to anti-Semitism on their campuses . The slip for not having strongly condemned anti-Semitism has meant that only Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, survives in office. UPenn’s Liz Magill resigned almost immediately. Gay was confirmed after making a public apology and acknowledging his mistake.
But the affair surrounding her went far beyond the alleged anti-Semitism and the pressure continued. Gay was among the targets of the far right. The color of his skin did not please the white conservatives, who saw in this controversy the opportunity to gain points against the policies of racial diversity and inclusion when it comes to accessing elite universities, which are those of the power
