Harvard Needs to Be Consistent on the Virtue of Free Speech

“As my co-author Kai Whiting and I argue in an upcoming book…free speech debates have become not simply a matter of whether or to what extent certain ideas should be banished from the public domain, but why, how, and for whom they should be restricted.”

Not long after the terrorist group Hamas savagely killed and kidnapped Israeli citizens on October 7, 2023, a fiery kerfuffle emerged on social media after 30 or so student groups at Harvard University claimed to “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” in Gaza and that any reaction by Israel in defense of its nation would amount to “colonial retaliation.”

Several renowned public figures were quick to denounce the student group statements. The economist and former President of Harvard University Lawrence Summers tweeted: “…Harvard is being defined by the morally unconscionable statement apparently coming from two dozen student groups blaming all the violence on Israel. I am sickened. I cannot fathom the Administration’s failure to disassociate the University and condemn this statement.” Another Harvard economist, Jason Furman, tweeted that the sentiments expressed by the Harvard student groups “are egregious. Blaming the victims for the slaughter of hundreds of civilians. Absolving the perpetrators of any agency. This is morally ignorant and painful for other members of the community.” X was awash in similar commentary.

Meanwhile, Harvard’s leadership came under fire for an apparently slow and insufficient initial response to the Hamas attacks, as well as for not explicitly condemning the statement by the student groups. Summers lamented “[t]he silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely,” which “has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”