by Mark Helprin – Winter 2023-24 – Claremont Review of Books

As the home of intellectuals often at some remove from the consequences of their theories, and in betrayal of their purpose, universities have often become the welcoming soil for extremism, such as in National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia, and elsewhere. Consider the following unfortunate though paradigmatic account of an institution that has lost its way:

The national government had introduced a system of preferences similar in effect to the lapsed quotas this university had once implemented to “diminish the Jews.” Famously complex racial laws (in which people were ridiculously broken down into fractions) were instituted to favor some, and therefore, predictably given a limited number of places, disfavored others. After their adoption, in the ten years prior to the now-familiar events described below, the number of Jewish students was decreased by 60%.

Mere reduction of numbers was not all. Reacting to the course of events at home and abroad, many among the administration, faculty, and students simply targeted and harassed Jews. Swastikas, a toppled menorah, graffitied slogans, and the shattered windows of a Jewish student center were only part of the campaign.

For example, in the esteemed faculty of law, an officially sponsored speaker dwelt upon his fantasy of murdering Jews, claiming that some Jews eat the organs of their enemies. Uncontested by the university, a semester-long takeover of this faculty’s common area was preceded by a mob that, beating drums and buckets and shouting slogans, flooded the building and forced Jewish students to flee or hide.

In the esteemed school of public administration, despite changing rooms each day in an effort to escape, a Jewish professor’s students were subjected to hostile antagonists “standing in two parallel rows just outside the door…holding large banners and flags, so that anyone entering or exiting would be forced to walk through the gauntlet” of “protestors chanting and disrupting” the class. Again, the university did nothing.

A Jewish guest speaker, a woman of more than middle age, was taunted with the stereotype directed at Jews and blacks that they are filthy and disgusting: “How is it that you are so smelly? It’s regarding your odor…very smelly.” Mock detention notices appeared, targeting only Jews. The slogan “We shed your blood…” was spread throughout the university, and conspicuously Jewish food was removed from the dining halls. Some faculty singled out Jewish students, accusing them of various sins and pointedly refusing to let them speak in their defense, or excluding them from lectures by stating false starting times.

The university regularly awarded funds in support of student groups that sponsored demonstrations (in which administrators and faculty participated) ostensibly only against Jews who held certain political beliefs or supported their co-religionists abroad, and were thereby accused of, as one organization put it, “racist, sectarian, exclusionary, Jewish supremacism.”

External events drastically raised the temperature. Responding to one of the greatest pogroms in Jewish history, far beyond national borders much less the precincts of the university, mobs of students marched, blocked buildings, and held rallies sponsored by dozens of officially sanctioned organizations—not in sympathy, but in celebration and, remarkably, to blame the Jews for their own slaughter. The university’s position was perfectly illustrated by the fact that a student who publicly justified the massacre was subsequently honored with one of its most prestigious nominations. For weeks, as Jewish students were sometimes physically and often verbally assaulted, the demonstrations continued, with routine calls for violence against Jews, “globally.” When some objections to this were raised, 120 professors condemned them as a violation of academic freedom. And so on.

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But this was not Heidelberg in 1935; it was Harvard in 2023. And the facts above were gathered not from a history of the Third Reich but from a complaint recently filed in United States District Court. They were, of course, presented to the maximum advantage of the plaintiffs, they will be disputed, and—this is Harvard—given “context.” Nonetheless, they are facts.

Having accepted racialism as a cure for racialism—as in its pernicious discrimination in regard to Asians—Harvard reacted as if these events were a clash between parties equally at fault. But Harvard’s Jews had not mounted mass demonstrations with drumming and screaming, the only missing props being torches. Nor had they broken windows, made death threats, excluded anyone from class, celebrated atrocities, or, in fact, reduced their own university population by 60%.

It is doubtful that the masses of Harvard students and faculty blaming the October 7 Hamas massacres of Jews sleeping in their beds (and in their cribs) would hold slaves responsible for their enslavement, or say that violated women are responsible for their rapes. They would react ferociously to even an attempt to assign such blame. But not here. How stunning it is that so self-adoring an institution is so lacking in discretion that it can be so inconsistent.

Most of the Harvard community and its alumni who, even into old age, nourish their identities with fulsome presumptions of superiority, won’t have a clue. For half a century, what has now become the embarrassment on the Charles has accepted openly racist postulates. Though it hires, promotes, admits, and with nearly religious fanaticism perceives the world according to race, Harvard thinks it isn’t racist but everyone else is. And it will react to condemnation by excreting clouds of complexities and countering that, of course, its critics exaggerate.

The critics do not need to exaggerate. Nor do they hold that the events at Harvard are a prelude to a holocaust. The condemnable parallels above are drawn not to suggest the immanence of a holocaust but to hold a mirror to Harvard so as to put what it has become “in context.”

Harvard has always thought too highly of itself. But in light of what its heartfelt and corrupt principles have led to of late, and whether it will comprehend this or not, Harvard should be told that pridefully, unconsciously, stupidly, and cruelly, the face it has presented to the world is hideous to behold.

Mark Helprin is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute and the author, most recently, of Paris in the Present Tense (Abrams Books).