The Harvard Crimson’s War Profiteers

Student newspaper backs anti-Israel call for Harvard divestment while prospering from its own holdings

A detail from a Harvard Crimson t-shirt. Personal collection of the editor.

“Divestment from weapons manufacturers is only humane,” a staff editorial in the Harvard Crimson declares, urging “amnesty” for the anti-Israel protesters who occupied Harvard Yard and for Harvard to “think seriously” about adopting the protesters’ demands. If the editors are sincere, they might want to take a look at their own institution, which has its own weapons investments, before lecturing Harvard University about its holdings.

Divesting either Harvard’s holdings or the Crimson’s from weapons manufacturers would be a terrible idea. The Crimson editorial leaves unexplained how, precisely, it’s “humane” to disinvest from the weapons that protect Israeli Jews and other Israelis too from being wiped off the map by Iran-backed terrorists. It leaves unexplained what is inhumane about weapons that protect Ukraine from Russian aggression and protect Taiwan from Chinese Communist aggression and protect South Korea from North Korean Communist aggression. Weapons wielded by Harvard University Police and Cambridge Police officers are the force that protect the Crimson and its editors from would-be criminals.

Also unexplained by the Crimson is how surrendering to an anti-Israel demand to cease investing in companies arming Israel is consistent with the newspaper’s March 2024 editorial favoring “a policy of institutional neutrality” by Harvard. What’s neutral about backing an anti-Israel demand to try to cut off weapons to Israel in its war of self-defense against a terrorist group, Hamas, dedicated to killing Jews and destroying Israel? If Harvard did that it wouldn’t be perceived as neutrality, but as caving in to the anti-Israel protesters and to the enemies of America, Ukraine, and Taiwan. Without weapons, the free and democratic countries would get overrun and killed by the dictatorships. That’s not humane at all.

As context, an April 29, 2022, staff editorial in the Harvard Crimson student newspaper endorsed the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. That editorial was met with a strong opposing response, including a letter signed by more than 70 former editors and a Harvard faculty statement. Since then, the Crimson has doubled down and persisted in anti-Jewish staff editorials, opinion columns, and news coverage. A November 2, 2022, Crimson staff editorial stridently denounced the president of Wellesley, Paula Johnson, who had issued a mild statement criticizing the “mapping project” that conspiratorially charted Jewish and pro-Israel influence in the Boston area listing names and addresses. A January 31, 2023, Crimson staff editorial, echoing antisemitic tropes, demanded an investigation of what the paper called, with no evidence, “the influence of the well-monied donors” in initially blocking a Kennedy School fellowship for virulent Israel critic Ken Roth. As recently as September 2023, a Crimson editorial about the criteria for selecting a new Kennedy School dean called for someone with the “courage” and “moral backbone to stand up to potent political forces … pro-Israel forces.”

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has observed, ”In recent years, the Crimson has become the megaphone for anti-Israel and antisemitic extremism on campus. It’s also become the censor of pro-Israel and balanced views." I’m a former president of the Crimson and a member of its Graduate Council, and I think Dershowitz has it right.

There’s substantial overlap between Harvard’s hard-core anti-Israel activists and the editors of the Crimson. Violet T.M. Barron is identified by the paper both as “a Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine press liaison” and as “a Crimson editorial editor.” Prince Williams, an organizer with Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, is also identified by the paper as a Crimson editorial editor.

As with a lot of the antisemitism at Harvard, the Crimson’s problems are related to the stifling ideological conformity. If you look at the newspaper’s November 2023 diversity numbers you’ll see the Crimson staff is 1.8 percent conservative and 78 percent “progressive,” “leftist” or “liberal.” (The document is hosted by the Crimson on a web server from Amazon, one of the companies the anti-Israel mob wants universities to divest from because it operates in Israel.)

The Crimson recently announced the conclusion of a $15 million capital campaign. Tax records of the Harvard Crimson Trust II show $6.3 million invested in, among other things, Fidelity Advisor mutual funds whose holdings include arms manufacturers such as Boeing and BAE Systems and also tech companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, that are included among divestment demands of the anti-Israel activists. Under the Crimson’s financial aid program funded by this money, which is facilitated by the Harvard College financial aid office, qualified students writing and editing the anti-Israel editorials and columns earn money that is credited toward their Harvard tuition, room, and board obligations. 

I asked the Crimson editors whether they found it hypocritical to ask Harvard University to divest when the Crimson itself doesn’t appear to have divested, and they didn’t reply. The grownups who are decisionmakers on the Crimson’s funds are too intelligent, I’m sure, to fall for the error of divesting from weapons manufacturers while Israel is in an existential war with Hamas. They are also intelligent enough to realize that undergraduate editors need freedom to make their own mistakes without heavyhanded intervention from alumni. But at the Crimson as at Harvard University itself, the existence of the endowment in a way works against accountability by insulating decisionmakers from the consequences of their own actions—actually, by subsidizing them while they make terrible decisions. Eventually even a large endowment in dollars can’t compensate for a lack of judgment, and the reputational damage is severe.

The 1619 Paradox: “Call it the 1619 paradox. The more excessive the space and years devoted to a New York Times investigative project, the more hyperbolically excessive will be the author’s claims for its importance, and the less likely they are to be empirically true.” That’s a line from my latest piece for the Algemeiner, “New York Times Unloads Immense New ‘1619-Project’-Style Attack on Israel.” Please check it out over there if you are interested.

Thank you!: Unlike the Harvard Crimson, The Editors did not recently conclude a $15 million capital campaign, not is it backed by a Trust with millions in investments in defense and non-defense-related investments. We rely instead on paying readers. Please support independent journalism, freedom and prosperity, and trustworthy information by becoming a paying subscriber today if you aren’t already.

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