Ruth R. Wisse
WSJ, May 13, 2022
“As for the Crimson editorial, Arab claims of victimhood at the hands of the Jews is the most daring political inversion since Wilhelm Marr preached anti-Semitism to prevent Jews from “conquering Germany from within.”
A recent report, “Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery,” notes that the university’s faculty, staff and leaders held more than 70 black slaves between 1636, when Harvard was founded, and 1783, when Massachusetts abolished slavery. In atonement, President Lawrence Bacow reports, the university intends to dedicate $100 million of its endowment to help address “the persistent corrosive effects of those historical practices on individuals, on Harvard, and on our society.”
A Harvard Crimson editorial speaks with even stronger moral conviction of the desire for rightful justice that spreads “like wildfire” when oppression strikes anywhere in the world. Moved to right past wrongs, the editors propose to help “free Palestine” by boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, which stands accused of pushing “Palestinians toward indefinite statelessness, combining ethnonationalist legislation and a continued assault on the sovereignty of the West Bank through illegal settlements that difficults [sic] the prospect of a two-state solution.”
Despite differences in literacy and purpose, the initiatives from Harvard’s president and Harvard’s students are eerily similar. Addressing genuine distress—of American blacks in one case, Palestinian Arabs in the other—both gestures misidentify the cause and, by misdirecting responsibility for the misery, make it impossible to ameliorate deplorable conditions.
Ms. Wisse is a professor emerita at Harvard and author of the memoir “Free as a Jew.”
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