Harvard’s new slogan should be: When you are in a hole, keep digging.
That, at least, is “my truth,” to quote Claudine Gay.
This hate has absolutely no place in any sanctioned dialogue. Decency would demand it relegated to the sewer of social media fringe.
As an alumni and a member of the United States Senate, 25 years later it’s hard to recognize my former university.
— Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) February 4, 2024
Given that Harvard is still in the midst of a scandal over rampant antisemitism on campus, it seems an odd time to invite a professor who made herself famous by justifying Hamas’ rape and murder of 1200 Israelis, along with the kidnapping of hundreds more.
Like an abusive husband who berates his wife for “making him” hit her, Dr. Dalal Saeb Iriqat posted on Twitter that “We will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for making us take their children and elderly as hostages.”
Now I don’t think that the Kennedy School of Government should refrain from having critics of Israel or Israeli policies in Gaza or the West Bank speak at the school. Nor do I think they should avoid having Palestinian activists speak and debate issues. They are, after all, an academic institution, and suppressing speech is almost always a bad idea.
Not that Harvard has any problem suppressing any speech the powers that be don’t like. But in principle, all reasonable views should be on the table, up to and including arguments that Israel should never have been founded.
But come on, man, as our president would say. It’s one thing to have a presentation, discussion, or debate including all rational sides of an issue; it’s another to invite Hannibal Lecter to discuss the ethics of eating meat. He may be a doctor and know more than most about the subject, but we really don’t need to hear his views.
“We will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for making us take their children and elderly as hostages.” This is not the statement of a rational interlocutor in such a debate.
Dr. Iriqat is one of the speakers at Harvard’s Belfer Center’s “Middle East Dialogue Series,” which is described as “a series of frank, open, and probing encounters with vital and varied perspectives on the current conflict, its causes, and the prospects for peace and progress in the region.”
I am pretty sure Iriqat has a different view of “peace and progress” than most people outside Hamas’ orbit.
Her conversation with Tarek Masoud will take place on March 7th. It is described as “A conversation with Dalal Saeb Iriqat, professor of diplomacy and conflict resolution, Arab American University Palestine and columnist for Al-Quds newspaper.”
“Professor of diplomacy and conflict resolution.” Geez.
One would think that Harvard could find somebody a bit more appropriate than an academic who openly justifies raping and murdering 1200 people as a “normal human struggle for freedom.” At the very least, one can question her understanding of how to resolve conflicts, which is supposed to be her specialty.
Harvard clearly hasn’t learned its lesson yet, and I am not certain that it ever will. It has too large a cash cushion, too many friends in high places, and still too many applicants for anybody pushed to go elsewhere to matter to the institution.