Harvard Hasn't Learned Its Lesson

AP Photo/Charles Krupa

Scandal-ridden Harvard University is doubling down on its antisemitism with a plan to host a summer program in partnership with a pro-jihadi Palestinian school.

In the wake of the unspeakably heinous Hamas attack on Israelis on Oct. 7, which the terrorists proudly broadcast to the world, a horrifying number of Westerners deliberately ignored what the terrorists and Gazans themselves avow and all historical and current evidence to support the Gazans and demonize Israel. Sadly, this was especially true of college students, as anti-Semitism is rife on campuses poisoned with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

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“Harvard University will host a summer program where students will be briefed on ‘settler colonialism’ at a Palestinian university that called for ‘glory to martyrs’ after the October 7 terrorist massacre in Israel and has a student body that overwhelmingly elected a Hamas-affiliated bloc to run its student government,” The Daily Wire reported on Jan. 10. If you don’t know, “glory to the martyrs” is a slogan celebrating terrorists who are killed while waging jihad on Israel.

RelatedFormer DEI Director: DEI ‘Deliberately Stokes’ Anti-Semitism at Colleges

Harvard’s “Palestine Social Medicine Course” is set to send students for the second year in a row to Birzeit University in the “West Bank,” which is the Palestinian misnomer for Judea and Samaria (which belonged to ancient Israel centuries before Islam was invented). 

Below is from the program website, but keep in mind there is no such thing as “occupied Palestinian territories.” The latter term is merely terrorist propaganda, falsely claiming ownership of land that rightfully belongs to Israel:

This three-week intensive summer course is designed to introduce students to the social, structural, political, and historical aspects that determine Palestinian health beyond the biological basis of disease...

The course offers both conceptual and practical engagement with the structural determinants of health affecting Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel, and the Diaspora. The Palestine Social Medicine Course occurs annually at Birzeit University in the West Bank, occupied Palestinian territories. It includes travel throughout the West Bank and Israel for site visits focused on evaluating the range of health care available, as well as the variable social conditions which contribute to and determine health outcomes.

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Curriculum content includes “Settler colonialism and its manifestations in Palestine” and “Health and racism.”

It is absolutely disgusting that an American university partners with a pro-jihad institution to spread terrorist propaganda against Israel. It is especially ironic that the program should be through the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights. I guess Israelis are not included among those who have human rights.

Daily Wire said that multiple Harvard students expressed concerns about Birzeit University, “given its history and alignment with terrorist groups.” A Harvard spokeswoman admitted to Daily Wire that one of the program’s co-developers was the World Health Organization (WHO), whose disastrous recommendations gave us COVID-19 lockdowns. On Oct. 10, a few days after the Oct. 7 horrors, Birzeit tweeted, “Glory for martyrs, recovery for wounded ones, and freedom for the captives” in the Gaza Strip.

When “Birzeit University’s student population voted overwhelmingly for a Hamas-affiliated bloc in its student government elections” this past year, Daily Wire explained, approving “resistance” (i.e. jihad) against Israel, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called up to help the students celebrate. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) arrested eight students, including the student government president, in September for reportedly planning a terrorist attack. The Harvard program’s co-director condemned the IDF raid.

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In 2022, Birzeit student activists were arrested for helping to launder money from Gaza to Hamas members in Turkey to finance terrorist attacks, The Jerusalem Post reported.

About 60 to 70 Birzeit students are imprisoned at any given time for security offenses, according to a 2017 feature by the Financial Times.

Worst of all, Harvard’s Dean for Communications and Strategic Initiatives Stephanie Simon actually admitted the Hamas connection, but the program continues! “Student government elections at Birzeit typically involve candidates affiliated with each of the major political parties in the region, including Hamas,” Simon stated. “These student government elections are not germane to and have not affected the FXB Center’s work with the scholars and students at Birzeit’s Institute of Community and Public Health.” But they should affect it.

“[Birzeit] university also openly honors prominent terrorists,” including a suicide bomb engineer, and banned Israeli Jews from campus, Daily Wire added. You can read more details there, but the main and salient fact is that Harvard is partnering with a Hamas-tied, jihad-loving, Israeli-hating university.

How can Harvard, which receives substantial federal funds and has many Jewish students, possibly justify this program in partnership with such a terror-promoting entity?

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