The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee has campaigned for decades to bring conversations about justice in Palestine onto Harvard’s campus. The Harvard Crimson’s editorial endorsing BDS was a watershed moment that showed that our approach is working. The recent backlash against The Crimson and PSC has been immense, but it all speaks to the impact of our work.
Harvard University faculty and officers issue an open letter in support of the Harvard Crimson’s endorsement of BDS, and student efforts to oppose Israeli apartheid. They write to counter a faculty letter deploring the Crimson endorsement in which “the only violence mentioned is that of antisemitism, the only threat identified is to the Jewish national project, and the only vulnerability named is that faced by ‘Jewish and Zionist students.’”
In attacking the Harvard Crimson for endorsing BDS, Larry Summers and Alan Dershowitz deny a core reality: “If there is ever to be even a minimally just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the most important prerequisite, is the Israeli recognition that their historical narrative of the conflict is largely mythological and that they have incurred an overwhelming moral obligation… to reach a peace settlement with the Palestinian people.”
Pro-Palestine activists have repeatedly been beaten back at Harvard, and sure enough, today the school paper’s endorsement of BDS is facing intense backlash. But this time round the pro-Israel arguments feel familiar, and have lost their bite. Faculty and alumni letters claim the endorsement will cause Jewish students to feel alienated. One alum warns angrily that Harvard will lose Iron Dome protection. Gosh.
The ADL’s main targets these days include a liberal ice cream company, mainstream human rights organizations, and the Harvard University student newspaper.
Acknowledging that support for Palestinian liberation means “you will be shunned from the newsroom, past accomplishments or legitimate arguments be damned,” Harvard Crimson editors “proudly” endorse the BDS campaign saying it is the best tool to liberate Palestinians from their “violent reality.” Harvard is a marker of establishment opinion; as recent Israeli apartheid reports have become a fad among human rights organizations, so too will BDS endorsements; and the Israel lobby is concerned.