Disciplining Harvard University

"The consequences of the government's overreach will be severe and long-lasting."

"In recent weeks, the federal Government has launched a broad attack on the critical funding partnerships that make this invaluable research [studies on pediatric cancer, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease] possible."

"This case involves the Government's efforts to use the withholding of federal funding as leverage to gain control of academic decision making at Harvard."

"Today, we stand for the values that have made American higher education a beacon for the world."

"We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honour their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion."

President Alan M. Garber, Harvard University 

"The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families is coming to an end."

"Taxpayer funds are a privilege, and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege."

White House spokesman Harrison Fields

Harvard University, Reuters

"[Many international students at Harvard are] scared of speaking up [because they feel merely attending the school has put a target on their back]."

"It's incredibly scary for people. All student visas right now at Harvard are at risk, and what the Trump administration is trying to do is divide us."

Leo Gerden, senior Harvard student from Sweden 

"The Government has not — and cannot — identify any rational connection between antisemitism concerns and the medical, scientific, technological, and other research it has frozen that aims to save American lives, foster American success, preserve American security, and maintain America's position as a global leader in innovation."

"Nor has the Government acknowledged the significant consequences that the indefinite freeze of billions of dollars in federal research funding will have on Harvard's research programs, the beneficiaries of that research, and the national interest in furthering American innovation and progress."

"[The freeze was also] arbitrary and capricious and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act."

Harvard lawsuit 

Students, faculty and members of the Harvard University community rally on campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 17. (Charles Krupa/The Associated Press)

Ivy league universities across the United States have hosted scores of vehement, organized 'protests' against Israel as an 'occupying power', claiming it is committing 'genocide' against Palestinians in the months following the terrorist attacks by Palestinian groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, followed by ordinary Palestinian citizens who breached the separation wall between Gaza and Israel to flood southern Israel with thousands of operatives intent on creating a savage barbarity of mass rape, torture, and slaughter of entire families whose homes were burned around them. 

 

The protests on U.S. university campuses began almost immediately after the October 7, 2023 attack. Palestinian student groups organized, advertised and instructed their followers to get out and demand of university administrations full and complete academic and investment divestiture in anything pertaining to Israel, while shouting their slogans of Israel disappearing into the sea so Palestinians could be free. Jewish university students were hounded, threatened, their security and sense of place fully disrupted. University staff members became involved in support of the Palestinian protests.

 

A graduate displays a Palestinian flag during the 373rd Commencement at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 23, 2024.

(photo credit: Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Harvard, the premier institute of higher learning in the U.S., was among others of its kind to host these disruptive, violent campaigns in a spirit of toleration and free speech rights taking precedence over the rights of Jewish students to be able to access classes, to be free of intimidation and threats. With the  ascent of U.S. President Donald Trump to his second term in the White House, his administration, as promised during the election campaign, has sought to close down the protests, and it has resorted to the threat of withholding federal funding for the oldest and most prestigious university in the States.

 

Harvard has responded by defying the orders, insisting it has itself launched a number of investigations into the protests that had turned virulently antisemitic. Harvard's defiance against orders to defuse the situation by refusing to host any further campus activism, and crack down on antisemitism and 'diversity' programs, has signalled its defiance by launching a lawsuit against the Trump Administration. 

 

Harvard refused the demand by the Department of Homeland Security to turn over 'detailed records' of its foreign student visa holders' "illegal and violent activities" by April 30. Two grants to the school totalling US$27 million were cancelled. At Harvard, international students comprise 27 percent of the campus with the majority of its student body in graduate school, engaged most often in conducting nationally prominent research. The university's distinction as a premier study destination is linked to its ability to attract top global intellectual talent. It also distinguishes itself as attracting large tax-deductible donations from wealthy American philanthropists, most of whom were former alumni.

 

Harvard faculty and staff hold signs inside Harvard Yard during a press conference by faculty supporters of the Harvard Out of Palestine coalition.  (John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

All of which makes it that much more disturbing that riotous protests damning Israel and discomfiting Jewish students with anger directed at their presence, to the extent that many students felt compelled to miss their classes as a result of having been corralled and trapped by enraged Palestinian/Hamas-supporting groups committing criminal acts of occupation of university grounds and buildings, while demanding that faculty have no academic intercourse with their Israeli counterparts and the university commit to complete divestment.

 

Over US$2 billion in federal grants and contracts has been frozen to the Ivy League institution. Harvard is reeling from the threat to its hosting of international students even as the Trump administration has gone about deleting records to terminate the legal status of international students at schools country-wide. There is no recourse for the students on  how they may regain legal status in the United States. It seems a just enough solution to the problem of international students feeling free to abuse the hospitality of a country they find fault with, even as they advantage themselves of the superior education opportunities it offers.

 

Some 1,024 students to date attending 160 colleges, universities and university systems have seen their visas revoked or had their legal status removed since late March. An administration insider with familiarity in the contentious matter revealed that the Treasury Department had directed the IRS acting chief counsel to begin the process of revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status, while speaking on the condition of anonymity.

 

Anti-Israel students at Harvard's law school reportedly conspired to smear law firms that bucked campus antisemitism after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against Israeli civilians. (Getty Images; Fox News )

Hate Speech Defined, Condemned, and Defended

"There's an unprecedented rise in antisemitism in Canada."

"We need to do anything we possibly can to stem this tide, and we need to appeal to all levels of government including the federal government, to take the lead."

Talia Klein Leighton, petition organizer

 

"They [Canada's political leaders] hide behind ambiguity, ignorance and definitions to avoid taking action."

"This petition forces the issue and demands that those we trust to keep us safe stop hiding and do their jobs"

"It also calls for the Trudeau government, who have shown their cowardice, to follow our democratic allies in the U.S., Germany and Austria in recognizing the chant "from the river to the sea" for what it is in Hamas terms -- a call for genocide and the elimination of the State of Israel."

Kevin Vuong, Independent Member for Parliament for Toronto

 

"From the river to the sea [is unequivocally hateful and antisemitic]."

"It only has one interpretation -- what it effectively calls for is the destruction of the Jewish state."

"And then when  you take it into the context of the companion cry for a global intifada, then it extends not just to the Jewish state, but to the Jewish people, and is consistent with what Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and Iran have been threatening that they intend to do." 

Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

The entrance to a Pro-Palestinian encampment in an area that was fenced off at the University of Toronto campus in downtown Toronto on May 2, 2024. Ernest Doroszuk/Toronto Sun/Post

There are some who claim that the hate-and-extermination messages - chorused against Israel and global Jewry by protesters at organized public venues where a show of force and clear racism has been played in public since early October, with repeats on an ongoing basis -- are well within the law of free speech rights under the Canadian constitution. There are hate laws in Canada to protect the public and discrete groups from discrimination severe enough to be viewed as threats and intimidation. The speech in and of itself of a quality that speaks of endangering the well-being of others.

The regular protests targeting the social weal and Canadian Jews in particular are threatening in nature and are meant to send a number of messages; that Jews are unsafe in their home country, that Israel's reputation as a democratic nation for which human rights is ensured, is open to slander, statements of 'fact' outright hostile fabrications that do damage that reality and true facts struggle to correct among a force of antisemitism that has no use for truth.

The viral and ever-rising antisemitic events of intimidation and threats carried out in municipal offices, in front of and within shopping centres, hospitals, Jewish community centres, synagogues and Jewish parochial schools, have morphed more latterly into university campus occupations, leaving Jewish students, non-Jewish students, university staff and members of the faculty concerned for their security and safety, as well as for their inability to reach their classes. Authority figures, whether university administrators, provincial or federal governments have done nothing useful to uphold law and order and ensure public safety.

Now, a petition has been circulated to attempt to persuade those authorities -- city mayors, police chiefs, governments at all levels, including those of the universities involved -- to become more steadfast, reliable and active in putting an end to what amounts to racist hate-fests. The rallying cries of 'Palestine will be free', 'globalize the intefadeh', and 'long live Oct7' have no place in a civil society. What the petition asserts is that these expressions interpreted, contravene portions of Section 319 of the Criminal Code of Canada through the wilful promotion of hatred.

The phrases in question have been outlawed in recognition of their quality of hateful rhetoric that could lead to violence, in a number of other countries. The petition states that the popular slogans denigrating Israel's existence and Jews in general "implicitly raises reasonable suspicions of supporting the events of Oct. 7 and inciting hatred toward the Jewish people". It is generally agreed that the chant calling for the eradication of Israel and its citizens is meant to promote a Palestinian state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

True North

"While I hate these statements and while I happen to be of the view that 'from the river to the sea' is an antisemitic and probably genocidal chant, I don't think it's a clear cut case enough for Section 319."

"If you look at the text of Section 319, it says 'communicates a statement that is likely to lead to a breach of the peace' -- and somebody in Canada chanting 'from the river to the sea', I don't think reaches that very specific high threshold."

"[Other statements the petition mentions like "Long Live Oct 7" [are different]. It's very difficult to say that in a peaceful way."

"We take a strong free speech position because we think that if the mechanism for dealing with disagreements in society through speech breaks down, all we have left is violence."

Joanna Baron, executive director, Canadian Constitution Foundation