“I’m sorry Dean Claybaugh, I am going to finish my remarks,” Says Harvard’s Summers, Denouncing Lie-Filled Anti-Israel Structure
Deans interrupt Jewish campus event, requesting it move to make room for Palestine Solidarity Committee
To the list of unbelievable things that have happened on and around the Harvard campus over the past few years, now add this—a dramatic confrontation between former Harvard president and former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the dean of undergraduate education at Harvard, Amanda Claybaugh, against the backdrop of the large lie-filled anti-Israel structure that was erected this week at a crossroads on the Harvard campus.
The interaction happened at noon today, Thursday October 23, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was on the scene.
Harvard Chabad had this morning issued a call to join Summers on the Science Center Plaza. “Larry will be addressing the hateful, slanderous, and antisemitic exhibits and literature being displayed and distributed on campus.…We must not allow antisemitism to be normalized and go unchallenged,” said Rabbi Hirchy Zarchi, the founder and president of Harvard Chabad and the Jackie and Omri Dahan Harvard Chabad Jewish Chaplain.
Zarchi began the event by saying that he had heard, in particular from members of the Harvard Class of 2029 who live in the Yard, “that they increasingly feel that there’s a neutrality when it comes to Jew-hate.” Zarchi directly rebutted some of the false claims on the large lie-filled anti-Israel structure about Israel targeting hospitals and the press. He noted that Hamas had used hospitals as terror bases and had disguised its terrorists with press vests.
Summers said he didn’t think the structure should have been allowed. “I do not think that the likes of this should deface this space,” he said. “I do not believe that if the doctrines of the Ku Klux Klan were proposed for installation in the Science Center, that that would be permitted and that would be enabled by those who lead us in this community. I believe that what we are looking at is the moral equivalent of racism.”
“But I understand how one can have a different view, how one can believe that a broad principle of free speech should permit any installation to be permitted, though that would not be my view about how Harvard in fact acts,” he said. “If one believes in free speech, then one believes that the answer to bad speech is more and alternative speech.”
At that juncture—ironically, because Summers was speaking about free speech—Dean Claybaugh emerged from behind the large lie-filled anti-Israel structure accompanied by the dean of students at Harvard College, Thomas Dunne, and leaders of the Palestine Solidarity Committee.
She interrupted Summers to announce that it was time to take down the structure and to ask the Jewish group, which was not in the way, to move.
“I’m sorry Dean Claybaugh, I am going to finish my remarks,” Summers said at one point after. “I’m gonna remain right where I am,” he said.
When it became clear that the members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee were present and on the scene, Summers addressed them directly.
“You have engaged in an antisemitic and unfortunate act that I believe has brought dishonor to the Harvard community,” Summers said, to cheers and applause from the crowd. “You have a right to your speech and you have spoken by erecting this wall, and I have a right to mine,” Summers said, addressing the anti-Israel students directly. “And my speech holds that you bring shame, dishonor and prejudice to our campus, that people of morality will condemn and disapprove what you have done.”
He encouraged those present to write to Harvard President Alan Garber and Dean of the College David Deming expressing regret “that the tone of so much of the discourse at Harvard validates antisemitism and expressing the strong hope that they will use their leadership positions to assure that there is balance and neutrality.”
He also suggested that in dialogue with the Palestinian advocates in our midst, “Ask this question: Have you ever criticized Hamas?...Or has your condemnation been confined to Israel? And, if only Israel, you are antisemites.”
Harvard administrators have been under attack by the Harvard Crimson student newspaper—which has a group of editors that overlaps considerably with the membership of the anti-Israel advocacy groups—for what the Crimson totally absurdly calls “a pattern of repressing pro-Palestine speech.” Absurdly, because there is no shortage whatsoever of anti-Israel speech on the campus, as I have documented here. Maybe the attempt to shut up Summers—or to interrupt him while he was speaking and force the audience members to move—was an attempt to appear evenhanded and balanced by restricting pro-Israel speech, too.
I emailed Claybaugh to ask if she had anything to say about the interaction. I heard back from a Harvard College communications staffer, Jonathan Palumbo, who said he wasn’t there, but that, “my understanding is that Dean Claybaugh was alerting Dr. Summers that the display was scheduled to be taken down and was simply requesting he move a few feet away from where he was standing so the crew could safely remove the structure.”
At the event, which I was at, I only heard Claybaugh say it was okay for Summers to continue after Summers announced that he planned to finish speaking. A few people wrote to me to say she wasn’t trying to interfere with his free speech, she was just trying to enforce Harvard’s university rules about a 4-foot radius for disassembling any structures. A lot of campus reform type people are frequently arguing “enforce the rules firmly and impartially,” and decanal decisionmaking on the spot can be challenging (I’m very happy to be an editor and reporter, not a dean!). Yet I was there watching and this looked to me like a situation where a little Hayekian spontaneous order, patience, and flexibility was called for more than heavyhanded and rigid enforcement. In the context, “I’m sorry Dean Claybaugh, I am going to finish my remarks,” seemed not a paranoid statement from Summers but an entirely rational reaction to what was happening.
One Harvard hand told me that Claybaugh is considered generally supportive of Israeli students and politically conservative students. She’s also been encouraging professors all day to email her to discuss today’s events if they want to reach out.
After Harvard flexibly tolerated an outlaw anti-Israel encampment in Harvard Yard for weeks in spring of 2024 when other colleges were calling in the police, it seems strange, or at least logically inconsistent, that the former president of the university could not have five minutes to finish his remarks without being interrupted and asked to move, especially when he and the audience were not in anyone’s way. Even classes at Harvard typically don’t start till five or ten minutes after the hour (“Harvard time”) so enforcing a super-punctual start time for the takedown of the large lie-filled anti-Israel structure appeared more about disrupting the pro-Israel event, which was brief. It was so brief that I posted to X with a video of the event at 12:27 p.m., from my phone while aboard the Red Line on the way to a lunch meeting in the Boston Federal Reserve building across from South Station. I was inside the Fed, past the security, by 12:38.
The deans’ whole purpose of appearing there didn’t seem to be to support Summers or Chabad and to keep people safe from toppling wall sections or even to get the lie-filled large anti-Israel structure removed from view as rapidly as possible. They showed up alongside the Palestine Solidarity Committee members and moved to the Palestine Solidarity side of the barriers. Dunne at one point could be seen making hand motions—pushing, pointing—aiming to move an Israeli woman away from the lie-filled large anti-Israel structure. The woman was standing there trying to watch Summers speak.
I have posted videos of the event to X here and here (the second one is particularly good for Dunne’s hand motions). Harvard Chabad also posted the complete video, 9 minutes and 56 second total, to both X and Instagram. In retrospect maybe I should have held off on posting the video to social media until after writing this more nuanced and through account of the event, which is going to get a lot fewer views than the X post with a short piece of video and a sentence saying, “Unbelievable scene just now as a Harvard Undergraduate Education Dean tries to shut down former Harvard President Larry Summers as he points out the lies and distortions of an anti-Israel structure erected on the campus.” (80,000 views and counting, about eight hours after I first posted it). Fair enough. But the real problem here isn’t me being too brief in exposing the ridiculousness; the real problem is the underlying ridiculousness, which Summers and Zarchi set out to spotlight and which the deans reinforced with their behavior. Maybe ideally it’d be better if we didn’t live in a world with viral videos making deans look ridiculous, but also, the reality is, we live in a world of viral videos, so if you are a dean, try not to behave in a way that leaves yourself exposed to looking ridiculous. And if you are an institution like Harvard, don’t make so many mistakes that erode public confidence in you, so that when it appears that a dean is trying to interrupt a rare pro-Israel speech by a faculty member, it confirms people’s prior expectations.
The whole event was surreal. Summers and Zarchi are both heroes. By publicly challenging the lies, they are helping to make Harvard better and a more truthful institution, a less hostile environment for Jews and Israelis.
The Jewish students understand this. After Summers stopped talking, dozens of students approached him, one at a time, to thank him for speaking out.
The deans at Harvard, too, should be thanking Summers and Zarchi. Or asking what they can do to help. Instead, they are interrupting them and asking them to move.
Thank you: The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.
I was at first a bit perplexed by the initial clip on X. However, even then it was pretty apparent what was happening, and the extended accounts here make it even clearer. For two top Harvard officials to show up suddenly, with the grim and humorless Palestine Solidarity Committee in tow (or was the PSC bringing the top brass in tow?), in order to disrupt the obviously low-key and civil group assembled is mindboggling in and of itself. What other public gatherings excite such top-level interest at Harvard so rapidly? I have to wonder if Harvard has learned ANYTHING at all these past two plus years. As I understand it, Trump seems to have signaled that he feels he's made some headway with Harvard. I guess I think he has started a ball rolling, but this little incident tells me it's got an awfully long way to roll.
Did Harvard provide 24-hour security for this wall as they did previously? As discussed in a decision by Judge Stearns (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-d-mas/116457922.html) "Harvard required Chabbad, a campus Hasidic Jewish community center, to remove its Hanukkah menorah from campus each night to prevent it being vandalized, but it provided 24/7 security to [Palestinian Solidarity Committee]'s “Wall of Resistance.”".
Hanukkah begins on Sunday 14 December, during exams. Will Harvard engage in disparate treatment as it did in the past, to a degree that a judge cited the disparity in a decision?