Harvard Mob Spreads Jew-Hating Lies

Corporation Is Unlikely to Cave to Divestment Demand

The scene this afternoon at Harvard Square.

Anti-Israel Harvard students invoked age-old antisemitic tropes during a rally and march around the Harvard campus today, accusing Jews of spreading disease, poisoning the water supply, and murdering babies. They also threatened to shut the university down if it did not meet their demands.

The protest was directed not only at Israel but also at America. “From Palestine to the Philippines, stop the U.S. war machine,” the mob chanted at one point.

A handful of participants in the demonstration were openly communist, with one sporting a red “Revolutionary Communists of America” t-shirt with a hammer and sickle, and another toting a stack of “The Communist” newspaper.

Some of the slogans chanted at the rally echoed the propaganda of the Soviet Union. “Israel is racist state. Israel is a fascist state,” the demonstrators chanted. “Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Israel is a racist state.”

One student wearing an HLS, or Harvard Law School, cap falsely accused Israel of the “murder of babies.” He didn’t say a word about the Israeli babies burned alive by Hamas.

I did not hear calls for a ceasefire or a hostage-for-prisoners deal, just a lot of false accusations against Israel.

One of the leaders of the event was Violet Barron, who as of last spring was an associate editorial editor of the Harvard Crimson.

Some of the slogans at the event could be interpreted as violent threats or calling for wiping Israel off the map. “There is only one solution, intifadah, revolution,” they chanted. “From the sea, to the river, Palestine will live forever.”

And, “if we don’t get it, shut it down,” a repeated refrain.

The event attracted a crowd of only 30 or 40 participants, much smaller than the 200 or so, including senior faculty and a dean, who gathered Sunday in the same spot to mourn the hostages murdered by the terrorist organization Hamas. 

About a dozen pro-Israel counterprotesters also showed up at today’s event, which began in the Science Center Plaza, then traveled along the outside of the Yard and crossed Mass. Ave to the plaza in front of the Smith Center.

Harvard’s a community traditionally numbered at 10,000, but in reality considerably larger. In that context, 30 or 40 is a tiny group, far fewer than the hundreds of faculty who signed up for a new “Harvard Faculty for Israel” group launched this week.

The event was timed to coincide with a meeting, inside the Smith Center, of members of the anti-Israel groups with representatives of the Harvard Management Company and Harvard Corporation. The anti-Israel protesters had demanded such a meeting as a condition of disbanding their encampment in Harvard Yard.

The Harvard officials, including President Garber, met yesterday with pro-Israel and politically conservative students, a day before meeting with representatives of the anti-Israel group. The pro-Israel students were asked to keep the meeting confidential, but left reassured that Harvard will not divest from Israel. That may in part be because the endowment managers are bullish about the opportunities for returns, especially investing in Israel’s private venture markets. The Harvard endowment has underperformed that of competing institutions in recent years, generating some grumbling from alumni and faculty.

Bring on the Trump IVF Baby Boom: The Wall Street Journal has published an opinion piece I wrote under the headline “The Conservative Case for Trump’s IVF Policy.” Please check it out over at the Journal if you have access to it.

I write:

 A more sensible accounting of Mr. Trump’s proposal would include not only the costs of the medical procedure but the benefits to society of more souls, a concept conveyed in the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Found in Genesis 1:28 and again in Genesis 9:1, it is the first commandment in the Bible and one of the few that predates the Sinai covenant.

The roughly $15,000 price of an IVF procedure is nothing compared with the priceless potential of an individual human being.

Comment of the Day—Is Trump Weird: Reacting to the observation in yesterday’s newsletter (“Trump’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Is a Terrible Idea”) that “Even just appearing in the respectable company of Rodgin Cohen, Sander Gerber, David Malpass, Larry Kudlow, and Reshma Soujani, rather than the MAGA masses of outdoor rallies in rural Pennsylvania or Michigan, made Trump seem more conventionally plausible, less ‘weird,’” Michael Greenberg asks, “Do you think Trump is weird? Real question.” 

Look, most politicians, most celebrities, are unusual in some ways compared to the rest of the population. I’ve met Trump in person a grand total of once in my life, as far as I can recall, and he seemed oddly orange and waxy, but perhaps he’d been coming from a television appearance and still had stage makeup on. What I was getting at in that aside was that at the Republican National Convention, the Trump campaign highlighted some unconventional-appearing individuals, such as Hulk Hogan, a professional wrestler who appeared in a sleeveless shirt, a handlebar mustache, and platinum-blond hair down to his shoulders, and Amber Rose, a former stripper who has a tattoo across her forehead. I thought the convention was generally well executed, yet those characters made me wonder a bit whether the idea was outreach or if that was the Trump Republican archetype. The people at the New York Economic Club look more conventional in terms of the people that Republican politicians typically hang out with. They were wearing suits or conventional business attire, they didn’t have facial tattoos. I’m not judging, and maybe “weird,” which is a Democratic attack, wasn’t the right word choice. I was just trying to describe that for some voters, it may be reassuring to see Trump with some more traditionally appearing people.

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