Ira Stoll
The NY Sun, Apr. 15, 2025
“Dr. Garber is so discredited that at this point that earlier this month, New York Congressman Ritchie Torres — a Democrat — showed up on a Saturday morning at Dr. Garber’s own synagogue at the liberal Democratic stronghold of Brookline, Massachusetts, to denounce Harvard’s failed leadership and call for the appointment of a third-party antisemitism monitor.”
On June 6, 2024, Harvard’s “Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias” issued a set of preliminary recommendations. Among them: “The University should create a simple web address (e.g., www.harvard.edu/jewishcalendar) that will provide information on Jewish holidays for members of the community. Appendix A contains information on Jewish observance as well as dates of Jewish holidays. The list should be updated annually to allow academic units to simply, easily and reliably determine the days on which they should try to avoid scheduling events.”
An appendix to the recommendations mentioned the Jewish Holiday of Passover, or Pesach, and said, “In 2025 Pesach runs from the evening of April 12 until nightfall on April 20, with the first two-day sabbath-like period beginning on the evening of April 12 until nightfall on April 14, and the second two-day sabbath-like period beginning on the evening of April 18 until nightfall on April 20.”
Nearly a year later, the “www.harvard.edu/jewishcalendar” web address leads to a “404 not found” error. When Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, wrote a message responding to the federal government, which has been pressing Harvard to act to protect its Jewish students, Mr. Garber sent it on — of all possible times and days — the afternoon of April 14, while it was still the Passover holiday.
Dr. Garber’s letter said, “Over the past fifteen months, we have taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus. We plan to do much more.” If there’s “much more” still to be done to address antisemitism on the Harvard campus, why has it taken Harvard 15 months to get around to doing it? What have they been waiting for? The university’s lackadaisical pace would be unacceptable with any other category of bigotry. One might also wonder why Harvard only began to tackle the issue 15 months ago. It’s not as if there weren’t ample warnings. …SOURCE