Thursday, June 27, 2024

Harvard is fully in t¨ne with the Third Reich

Harvard dean threatens faculty who protest school’s mistreatment of Jews

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3058799/harvard-dean-threatens-faculty-protest-school-mistreatment-jews/


“Snitches get stitches” is a threat typically made by adolescents to avoid punishment by intimidating those who might expose their misdeeds. Yet it seems Harvard is a glorified junior high these days, with Lawrence Bobo, its dean of social sciences, threatening faculty who publicly criticize the university for its mistreatment of Jewish students.

Writing in the Crimson, Bobo argued that it is “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business.”

Faculty who appeal to external actors to reverse gross injustices at Harvard may not get literal stitches, but Bobo could deny them tenure or lower their pay. His piece has not been made official Harvard policy, but more senior administrators have not repudiated his interpretation of “acceptable professional conduct,” and his discretion to punish snitches remains intact.

Bobo’s hostility to “external intervention” is reminiscent of something more menacing than junior high taunts about snitches. It echoes George Wallace’s complaints about “outside agitators.” The segregationist governor of Alabama claimed in a 1964 letter that efforts by him and other Southern leaders to improve the condition of the “Negro citizen” were being undermined by “the national news media and the propaganda distributed by various organizations.” If only outside agitators would avoid stirring up trouble, both “white and colored” could continue to live in “peace and equanimity.”

Bobo similarly expresses a preference for managing Harvard’s problems through “internal discussion on key policy matters,” threatening to sanction “behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.” It’s as if Bobo were saying that Harvard’s Jews could be living in “peace and equanimity” without outside agitators in the media and government stirring up trouble.

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