Former Harvard president and Washington Post contributing columnist Lawrence Summers published a column Wednesday that ripped Harvard University and other U.S. colleges for their slow responses to the wave of antisemitism on their campuses.
Summers, a current professor at Harvard and former treasury secretary under President Clinton, adapted the column from a speech he gave at the Harvard Medical and Dental School Shabbat Observance last week expressing worry over the "moral and mortal peril in the world and in university communities like my own" stemming from the new wave of antisemitism following Hamas’ massacre in Israel last month.
Condemning the antisemitism seen at Harvard and other campuses, he stated, "For more than two decades, since I spoke of antisemitism in effect if not intent in response to the Divest Israel movement while serving as Harvard’s president, I have been alarmed."
"More recent developments — from Harvard’s student newspaper’s endorsements of the boycott-divest-sanction (BDS) movement, to testimonials by Israeli students regarding in-class discrimination, to vile social media posts — have only heightened my concern," he said. "Even so, I am shocked and appalled by what I have seen on university campuses since Oct. 7. I should have raised my voice louder. It is not a mistake I will make again."
Harvard faced backlash after 34 student groups signed onto a statement from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups that blamed the "Israeli regime" for "all unfolding violence" in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
Other college campuses throughout the country have seen a rash of antisemitism from anti-Israel protests. For example, the words "Holocaust 2.0" were allegedly written in chalk in a University of Maryland common area last week.
"We come together at a moment of danger. Antisemitism is a cancer — a lethal adversary best addressed as rapidly, thoughtfully and aggressively as possible," Summers wrote. "Harvard and many other elite universities have not been swift in their response. Though some universities have done better. After a long month of delay, the kinds of statements that many of us have been insisting on from the first day have come at last from university leaders."
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Summers proclaimed that "It is the responsibility of university leaders — deans, presidents and outside trustees — while leaving aside the cut and thrust of politics and policy, to assure that universities are sources of moral clarity on the great questions of their time."
"It is shameful that no honest observer looking at the record of the past few years, and especially at the last month, can suppose that universities’ responses to antisemitism have paralleled in vigor or volume the responses to racism or other forms of prejudice," he wrote.
"For example, too often, those most directly charged with confronting prejudice — Offices of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — have failed to stand with Israeli and Jewish students confronting antisemitism, the oldest prejudice of them all," Summers continued. "Some university DEI officials have themselves taken positions that are widely viewed as antisemitic."
Summers encouraged universities to be places of "moral leadership" by not allowing the "soft understanding that glides over questions of right and wrong."
"We will not just endure but prevail by, yes, insisting on what is right but also carrying on with our vitally important work in the library and the lab, the classroom and the common room," he wrote.
Summers and Harvard have yet to respond for comment.
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