At the office, with your friends or during a family meal this weekend, you will have noticed: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most sensitive topics discussed. Between international support for Israel, the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the qualification of Hamas as “terrorists”, it is difficult if not impossible to find a position that achieves consensus. Certain personalities and institutions thus find themselves violently attacked for a lack of reaction or after a clumsy press release.
This is particularly the case at Harvard, the prestigious American university, where donors, teachers, alumni and students are torn apart, between harassment, accusations of anti-Semitism and denunciation of a “genocide”. Where does this controversy come from? How is the university management trying to calm the crisis? Why do financial supporters and alumni get involved? 20 minutes make the point.
Where did the controversy start?
It all began on October 8, the day after the Hamas attack and after the first Israeli bombings. Around thirty student groups and clubs co-signed and distributed a letter on campus, which denounced “the apartheid regime of Israel”, “responsible for all the violence” which has shaped “all aspects of Palestinian life for seventy-five years “. “I was very proud, and moved by the accuracy and courage of this letter,” says Release Josh, activist in a pro-Palestinian Jewish organization and recent Harvard graduate. “But the backlash has been insane. »
The affair quickly took a media turn, with a former director and several elected officials (Republicans Elise Stefanik and Ted Cruz, a graduate of Harvard Law School, Democrat Jake Auchincloss) calling for a firm reaction from the management of the ‘university. The campus is also ignited, with a second text, supported by professors and several thousand students, describing the pro-Palestinian press release as “completely erroneous and deeply offensive”. Worse, a doxxing takes place, revealing the names of the signatories of the first text. This is how a van, paid for by a conservative group, circulated around the campus, displaying on a screen the photos and names of signatories, adorned with the adjective “anti-Semitic”. “I threw up in the Harvard garden,” says one of the people targeted in New York Times.
How did Harvard management react?
Summoned to react, the university office published a first press release on October 9, proposing to “deepen knowledge” on the conflict in the name of “our common humanity and shared values”, and emphasizing “the fear, the sadness , anger” which could run through the students. Far too soft, say some detractors.
Harvard President Claudine Gay then spoke in the first person the following evening: “Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. (…) Allow me also to affirm that, on this subject as on others, our students certainly have the right to speak in their name, but no student group – not even thirty student groups – speaks in the name of Harvard University or its management. »
Why is the most prestigious American university in danger?
In the United States, freedom of expression is strongly protected by the Constitution and is a subject of attention on campuses, where opposition to the Vietnam War was forged. At Stanford and Columbia, university presidents, who tend to encourage diversity of opinion, are also criticized for “not having expressed themselves quickly enough, loudly enough” on similar facts on their campuses, quotes the president. of the American Association of Universities (AACU), Lynn Pasquerella. A collective of Harvard professors is calling for the protection of students “harassed” on the Internet.
Because donors and alumni continue to put pressure on Harvard. Bill Ackman, a Wall Street figure who attended Boston University, asked that the names of the signatories of the first text be made public so as not to hire them “inadvertently”. The Wexner Foundation, which promotes the training of elites of the Jewish community in the United States, has ended its partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School. A response to “the abject failure of Harvard leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians,” wrote billionaire Les Wexner, founder of the Bath & Body Works (Victoria’s) retail chain Secret).
According to American media, Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the Citadel investment fund and one of Harvard’s major donors ($350 million in 2023), also made his dissatisfaction known. If this is not enough to threaten the “economic model” of the university, one of the richest in the world, the phenomenon weakens the smaller campuses, worries Lynn Pasquerella.