Gaza and Charities at War: Harvard University and Wexner Foundation
Hamas did it. It is still doing it, and it will do it again. Hamas threw grenades into a crowd of unarmed teenagers and 20-somethings hiding in a fortified bunker with an unlocked front door, no windows, and no back door. The force of the grenade blast compressed inside the hardened bunker. Hamas should be hunted down like Nazis to the ends of the earth. Then killed or captured.
Meanwhile, the cancel culture that comedians and folks on the right have so often condemned as an attack on the marketplace of ideas is gaining new allies. Don’t get me wrong, grassroot cancellation of folks for their ideas is part of free speech. Have at it. Because hearing and listening is part of speech and nobody is obligated to listen to your stinking ideas. The right to hear or listen includes the right to say “STFU and go away, I don’t like your speech.” It also includes the right to say “I won’t shop at your establishment if you sponsor or hire people whose ideas I hate.” Kinda stupid, sometimes, but it’s a free country. As long as it’s not the government saying so. My oldest is at Harvard. She is part of the African American student something or other. I told her to shut up, don’t sign no petition, don’t say nothing one way or the other. Just get out of school and get a job. I can do that. I am not the Government and this family ain’t no damn democracy. And I have tenure.
I can’t find the actual letter, but the folks at the Wexner Foundation have withdrawn its charitable support for Harvard University. “We are stunned and sickened at the dismal failure of Harvard’s leadership to take a clear and unequivocal stand against the barbaric murders of innocent Israeli civilians by terrorists last Saturday, the Sabbath and a festival day,” the foundation wrote in a letter signed by the Wexners, President Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson and Ra’anan Avital, the director general. Harvard apparently “tiptoed,” insufficiently condemning students who spoke about the conflict pretty much blaming Israel. Way too much nuance and discernment, I guess. The Harvard Crimson tells the story:
After a 34-year partnership, the Wexner Foundation will end its financial and programmatic relationship with Harvard and the Harvard Kennedy School, condemning the University’s response to the Hamas attack on Israel as a “dismal failure.”
In a letter to the Board of Overseers — Harvard’s second-highest governing body — on Monday, Wexner Foundation President Elka Abrahamson, Director General Ra’anan Avital, and chairmen Abigail S. Wexner and Leslie H. Wexner criticized University President Claudine Gay’s “tiptoeing, equivocating” response to a joint statement by more than 30 Harvard student groups holding Israel responsible for the ongoing violence.
“In the absence of this clear moral stand, we have determined that the Harvard Kennedy School and the Wexner Foundation are no longer compatible partners,” the Wexner letter stated. The joint student statement provoked international backlash and was denounced by more than 4,000 Harvard affiliates across two open letters.
I think Wexner’s verbal reaction to Harvard’s verbal reaction to other peoples’ verbal reactions to Hamas’ actual crimes is pretty stupid; but . . . if it were Black men, women, children and babies kidnapped, raped, slaughtered and beheaded, my reactions to peoples’ reactions to other peoples’ “tepid” reactions would be pretty similar. The Supreme Court says I should just get over the fact that all that happened to Black people, by the way, but that’s a different conversation. Harvard is not the only University being taken to task for its response to the way others respond. Here is what Jon Huntsman said to the University of Pennsylvania:
To the outsider, it appears that Penn has become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable. Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option. The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate. Consequently, Huntsman Foundation will close its checkbook on all future giving to Penn – something that has been a source of enormous pride for now three generations of graduates. My siblings join me in this rebuke.
Its fair to note that Governor Huntsman apparently didn’t have a conversation with Penn President Elizabeth Magill, and wasn’t aware that she was preparing an email that went out Sunday saying “I, and this University, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’ terrorist assault on Israel and their violent atrocities against civilians.” I too might be so angry and torn asunder where I more personally impacted (by race, religion, or other affinity, when really only humanity is required) that I too might label as enemies those who do not shake their fist as hard or as fast as I do.
darryll k jones