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Harvard Actually Does the Right Thing For Once [1]

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Date: 2023-12-13  

Harvard's President has received a vote of confidence from the university’s senior governing board, known as “the Corporation” but officially “The President and Fellow of Harvard College”. That miserable excuse for a Congressperson Elise Stefanik will not be getting Claudine Gay’s head on a silver platter, as she did the head of Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania (Donald Trump’s alma mater). For once in its checkered history, Harvard has done the right thing, standing up for academic freedom and diversity of viewpoints.

It was not always so. During the red scare of the 1950s, under Nathan Pusey’s Presidency, Harvard felt free to cut loose anyone without tenure who was suspected of being a Communist or who failed to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Prominent among the witch-hunters of the time was McGeorge Bundy, then the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Anti-intellectualism has always been a hallmark of the far right, and the current excuse is alleged antisemitism. At Harvard, Jews have been prominent among administrators, faculty, and the student body since 1722, and the charge of antisemitism is ludicrous, particularly coming from Stefanik, who herself graduated from Harvard College as recently as 2006 and knows damned well what sort of place it is.

Harvard has many faults, chief among them the elevation of money-grubbing over academic excellence, but it deserves credit where credit is due.

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