Racist images circulated by two pro-Palestinian groups at Harvard, censured by President Garber

Harvard University, my alma mater, has just been embarrassed again today, as news of an anti-Semitic cartoon making the rounds of social media appears to have been shared by Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Africa and African American Resistance Organization, and reposted by The Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. The Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine group was established after President Claudine Gay was pushed out of the university in the wake of her damning Congressional committee statements (during her testimony, she failed to vociferously condemn anti-Semitism on Harvard’s campus.

The cartoon, which I won’t dignify by describing here, essentially posits the Jewish people as responsible for the travails of Black and African people.  The offensive 1967 cartoon was accompanied by the comment from these groups that “African people have a profound understanding of apartheid and occupation.”

Harvard’s interim acting University President, Alan Garber, condemned the images on X, and released a statement to the entire Harvard community (I received an Email with the statement around 6.40pm this evening). It stated: “Harvard rejects antisemitism in all of its forms. We are determined to combat any such hate and bias in our community.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, a Harvard Divinity scholar who was previously a member of Harvard’s anti-Semitism advisory committee (later resigning), called the cartoon “despicably, inarguably anti-Semitic.”

You’ll remember that Harvard was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, for its response to anti-Semitism on-campus, in an ongoing investigation.

While free speech is a hallmark of our democratic society, particularly in the halls of academia, hate speech and hate images, such as those circulated by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Africa and African American Resistance Organization, cannot be tolerated.  Harvard needs to get its act together.