Harvard remains silent on world affairs after Israeli-Hamas backlash

Harvard University has said it will no longer take a public position on world affairs after backlash over its response to the war between Israel and Hamas.

The Ivy League institution said it would follow the recommendations of a university committee that warned the university that speaking outside its areas of expertise, such as issuing political statements, threatened “the integrity and the credibility of the institution.

This comes after the university drew widespread condemnation with its response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and its handling of campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that followed.

Harvard’s response to the attack on Israel was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans, who ridiculed both the slow response and its final statement as “word salad.”

Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, resigned in January after a widely criticized appearance before a U.S. congressional committee, during which she refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violated university policy.

A committee of eight Harvard faculty members was formed in April and released a report this week concluding that the university and its leaders should not “issue official statements on public issues that do not directly affect the main function of the university” as an academic institution.

He adds that by “issuing official statements of empathy, the university runs the risk of giving the impression that it cares more about certain places and events than others.”

Furthermore, “innocuous official statements can cause further distress to the very groups they are intended to comfort.”

The report adds: “The university is not a government charged with addressing all matters of foreign and domestic policy, and its leaders are not, and should not be, selected for their personal political beliefs . »