Most offensively, Harvard’s top brass has strongly implied, in a series of personnel decisions and in court, that a not insignificant number of its own professors are antisemites, with zero factual basis to support the smear. Consider a brief Harvard filed last week, which referred to the disciplining of the faculty who participated in a 2024 protest in Widener Library — one that made no mention of Israel, Palestine, or any issues other than free speech — as part of “actions it had taken to address antisemitism.” Influential actors aiming to reshape the university, likely including individuals who are being courted to pay the $10 million apiece to endow the “viewpoint diversity” professorships, are likewise leery of the academic experts who lead Harvard’s research and teaching. Sam Lessin, an alumnus and venture capitalist who founded the 1636 Forum after his failed 2023 campaign to join the Board of Overseers, told The New Yorker that he, in the words of the journalist Nathan Heller, “shares a widespread donor view that, at a moment when universities have become large and growth-oriented, more like companies, scholars are the wrong people to guide their trajectories.”
hard hitting piece from @kirstenweld.bsky.social @aaup.org on the so much nonsense flowing down from Harvard's President & senior leadership.
