Harvard University President Claudine Gay and other administrators intentionally cut language condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre of more than 1,200 civilians as “violence” and references to their Israeli hostages from an official statement after the brutal attack, a stunning House committee report revealed Thursday.
The GOP-led House Education and Workforce Committee in a 122-page report found that the Ivy League university leaders made “an intentional decision” to water down their Oct. 9 statement that still failed to condemn Hamas’ attack, according to documents, some of which were obtained via subpoena.
“We denounce this act of terror,” reads an earlier draft of the statement that was jettisoned.
Then-Harvard Law School Dean John Manning, who has since become the school’s provost, successfully lobbied against adding more language that referenced the hundreds of hostages taken by Hamas.
“The violence hits all too close to home for many at Harvard,” states the earlier draft. “Some members of our community have lost family members and friends; some have been unable to reach loved ones, and others fear that their loved ones may have been taken hostage.”
The administrators also opted against denouncing a joint statement from 31 Harvard student groups holding Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ atrocities.
“This may be slicing things too fine. But I also wonder whether, if the judgment is not to express an institutional condemnation of Hamas’s act of terror, there might still be a way to dissociate the university from the ‘Israel is entirely responsible’ statement reportedly issued by 31 Harvard student groups – and attracting widespread media attention (not to mention denunciation by Rep. [Elise] Stefanik),” wrote secretary of the university Marc Goodheart in an Oct. 9, 2023, email.
Gay and several deans also advocated the most for the final statement that expressed a moral equivalency between Hamas’ terror act and Israel’s declaration of war against the jihadists in Gaza.
Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker in an Aug. 29 transcribed interview with the committee called the statement, in retrospect, “massively inappropriate at the time and insufficient.”
“For over a year, the American people have watched antisemitic mobs rule over so-called elite universities, but what was happening behind the scenes is arguably worse,” said Education Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in a statement.
“While Jewish students displayed incredible courage and a refusal to cave to the harassment, university administrators, faculty, and staff were cowards who fully capitulated to the mob and failed the students they were supposed to serve,” Foxx noted.
Pritzker had also pushed Gay to acknowledge that student signs declaring “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” or any of its variants were “clearly” antisemitic, pointing out that alumni were wondering “why we would tolerate that and not signage calling for Lynchings by the KKK.”
The president dodged the inquiry and handed it off to then-Provost Alan Garber, who responded in an Oct. 22, 2023, email that the “genocidal implication when used by Hamas supporters seem clear enough to me” but “that’s not the same as saying there is a consensus that the phrase itself is always antisemitic.”
Gay in another email the same day admitted that her concern in labeling the phrase anti-semitic “prompts the question of what we’re doing about it, i.e. discipline.”
Two months later, Stefanik (R-NY) grilled Gay over the distinction in a Dec. 5 House Education and Workforce Committee hearing.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?” the House Republican conference chairwoman asked.
“It can be depending on the context,” Gay replied — a remark that was widely denounced by Republicans, Democrats and the White House.
“It does not depend on the context — the answer is yes, and this is why you should resign,” Stefanik fired back.
Gay went on to privately mock Stefanik as a “supporter” of the far-right Proud Boys who stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while acknowledging that her testimony was wrong.
Meeting minutes from a Board of Overseers sit-down obtained by the House committee show Gay said what she “should have expressed is that calls for violence against Jewish [sic] community shouldn’t be allowed.”
The president also disparaged Stefanik as a “purveyor of hate” and “supporter of proudboys.”
The House committee’s report also revealed the “astounding concessions” and other failures by Columbia, Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Rutgers and UCLA officials that led to an explosion of on-campus antisemitism over the past year.
Columbia University administrators considered caving to the demands of anti-Israel students and ended up suspending just four undergraduate protesters.
Hundreds of anti-Israel students pitched a tent encampment on Columbia’s South Lawn on April 17 and immediately entered into negotiations with university administrators about the conditions under which they would end their protest.
The administrators quickly cooked up a “menu” of responses to the demands, according to emails, documents and interviews conducted by the House committee.
They first offered for Columbia’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing to review the demonstrators’ divestment plans from Israel-linked firms and defense manufacturers supplying weapons to the US and its allies.
They also proposed a new student exchange program with Al-Quds University in the West Bank, an institution that has hosted pro-Hamas rallies and at least one demonstration in which the participants waved banners of suicide bombers and made Nazi salutes.
They further pitched amnesty for all students on interim suspension after setting up the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and a path toward reinstating the suspended student groups leading it: Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
The two groups were banned from campus after hosting events the month after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre that promoted “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.
That hostile environment for Jews continued at the encampment, where students glorified Hamas terrorists as “martyrs” and at least one of its leaders declared: “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
Talks between them and administrators broke down on April 29, even as Columbia president Minouche Shafik praised the “important ideas that emerged from this dialogue.”
“We plan to explore pursuing them in the future,” promised Shafik, who resigned from her post in August.
The NYPD cleared Columbia’s anti-Israel encampment and stormed into occupied Hamilton Hall on the night of April 30, arresting 112 people. At least 80 were students, and 32 were not affiliated with the school.
While the university pledged to expel 22 of the Hamilton Hall occupiers, only three were suspended and one was put on disciplinary probation. The rest graduated or remain in good standing.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest member Khymani James, who told administrators they should “be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists,” was suspended last spring — but he and the group have stood by the hateful rhetoric.
In total, Columbia suspended just four students in antisemitism disciplinary proceedings, put 41 on some kind of probation, warned another four about their conduct and had “mandatory educational conversations as part of an alternative resolution process” with 15 students, according to the committee’s report.
The Republican-led House Education panel faulted the school’s administrators for “appeasing” the demonstrators, which emboldened other students to set up similar tent encampments at Rutgers and Brown universities.
“By rewarding egregious conduct violations with staggering concessions rather than enforcing university rules, these agreements set dangerous precedents that invite future chaos and could open colleges and universities up to potential violations of Title VI,” the report states, referencing the federal law preventing discrimination based on shared ancestry.
“Our investigation has shown that these ‘leaders’ bear the responsibility for the chaos likely violating Title VI and threatening public safety,” Foxx said.
“It is time for the executive branch to enforce the laws and ensure colleges and universities restore order and guarantee that all students have a safe learning environment.”
“Columbia strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination, and we are resolute that calls for violence or harm have no place at our University,” a university spokesperson said in a statement. “Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to reinforce Columbia’s academic mission, make our community safe, and address the Committee’s concerns, including by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes.”
“Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office,” the spokesperson added. “We are committed to applying the rules fairly, consistently, and efficiently.”
Reps for Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
