Harvard University’s president spoke out Tuesday amid national backlash over a student group’s statement that condemned Israel amid it’s ongoing conflict with Hamas, emphasizing the group does not speak for the entire school.
“Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region,” Harvard University President Claudine Gay wrote in a statement, referring to the ongoing strikes.
“Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 students groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership,” she added.
Gay said there should be no doubt that she condemns the “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.”
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Her comments come three days after the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee published a statement that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” in the wake of Hamas’s multi-pronged attack on Israel.
The letter, co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations, immediately came under fire from school alumni and even U.S. lawmakers.
Probably why the student org’s sense of tact is evidently so fucked up
Buncha rich kids who’ve never experienced social consequences for saying something controversial before.
Like yeah Israel certainly hasn’t helped itself in preventing the conditions that lead to mass outbreaks of violence, but there’s an infinite number of ways to say that more tactfully immediately after a civilian massacre.
All the sense and ability to read the room of someone peddling the line about America funding the taliban right after 9/11
Not a super good comparison since that’s a misconception based on mot understanding that multiple groups went under the title of Mujahedeen and the one the US directly supported went on to become the northern alliance government, not the pashto irredentist taliban, meanwhile Israel actually did do the shit someone would typically point to while making this kind of accusation, but the point about the overall tone deafness of such an accusation still stands.
This is a really good point.