Call Me a Once-Grateful Guest of Harvard
A dozen years ago, this writer once stood at the gates of Harvard Yard with an emotion best described as awe.
Awe, someone like me — who barely escaped high school with a diploma clutched like a last-minute reprieve — had been asked to speak at one of the world's most venerated institutions of higher learning.
However, the invitation came with a caveat: speakers are not paid, nor are their travel expenses reimbursed. One must want to bask in the Harvard glow enough to pay for the privilege.
I did.
I was greeted warmly and spoke to a receptive, engaged audience.
When it was over, I was given a bag overflowing with crimson-colored swag:
Harvard T-shirts, baseball caps, even a pair of boxer shorts bearing the school's seal — a sartorial wink to remind myself that I had been there, that I had belonged, however briefly.
The pile's crown jewel was a classic and collegiate gray Harvard sweatshirt.
For years, I wore it with pride.
Until now.
That sweatshirt is folded and buried in a bin somewhere in storage.
And unless something extraordinary happens, it will remain there — an artifact of misplaced pride — until Harvard finds the moral courage to confront the intellectual rot it has allowed to fester on its campus.
You see, I no longer wish to advertise for Harvard.
I no longer want to lend my implicit endorsement to an institution that has, in recent years, shown an appalling tolerance — no, complicity — for anti-Semitic rhetoric, harassment, and violence.
Let me be specific because generalizations are the friend of the coward.
On Oct, 7, 2023, just hours after the brutal Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians — an act so savagely clear that it should have united any decent human institution in condemnation— a coalition of over 30 Harvard student groups issued a joint statement blaming Israel entirely for the attack.
Not condemning the violence and not mourning the dead and but blaming the victims.
The statement was not immediately rebuked by Harvard leadership.
Instead, University President Claudine Gay waited days before issuing a response so tepid it made chamomile tea look like moonshine.
In that delay, silence spoke volumes, and still does — blaringly so.
And what did that silence enable?
It enabled of student mobs to target their Jewish peers publicly. According to multiple reports — including coverage by The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post —Jewish students were harassed, doxed, and physically intimidated.
Posters with names and photos of the Jewish students were circulated online and around campus, accusing them of "genocide support."
One Jewish undergraduate was chased into a building by protesters screaming anti-Israel slurs.
When he reported it, nothing happened.
In November 2023, a student protester screamed, "Keep the world clean," while holding a sign that featured a trash can with a Star of David inside.
This happened on campus.
Not in some fevered Reddit thread or Telegram group, but in Harvard Yard.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Brandeis Center, both watchdogs of antisemitism, reported that the climate for Jewish students at Harvard had reached an alarming low.
In a December 2023 survey, nearly 80% of Harvard's Jewish students said they no longer felt safe expressing their identity publicly.
How did Harvard respond to this crescendo of antisemitism?
By convening task forces, issuing vague platitudes, and ultimately watching as its president— under congressional scrutiny and public pressure — delivered testimony before Congress so legally lawyered and morally vacant that it became the stuff of viral infamy.
When asked if calls for genocide against Jews violated Harvard's code of conduct, Gay responded, "It depends on the context."
One could practically hear the ghost of Justice Robert H. Jackson groaning in his grave.
With alums pulling donations, and public outrage cresting at tidal wave levels, the university finally dismissed Claudine Gay — to be crystal clear, not for her grotesque failure of leadership, mind you, but for alleged plagiarism.
Evidently, at Harvard, alleged intellectual theft is a firing offense.
Tolerating genocidal hate speech, not so much.
And so — the sweatshirt is gone.
However, not burned — because I believe in redemption.
I'm a romantic in that way, hoping Harvard will awaken from its ideological slumber and return to the first principles of truth, reason, and moral clarity.
But until that day comes, I will not be a billboard for betrayal.
To wear Harvard's name across my chest would now feel like a tacit approval of cowardice masquerading as nuance:
- Of leadership that mistakes moral relativism for intellectual sophistication.
- Of a university that, for all its talk of safe spaces, has made its Jewish students feel deeply and dangerously unsafe.
I don't, and we shouldn't expect perfection from any institution.
But we should expect shame when shame is warranted.
Harvard, thus far, has shown only public relations calculus of the worst sort.
When — and only when — Harvard issues a full and unequivocal apology for its failure to protect Jewish students, condemns antisemitism without regard for its fashionable disguises, and takes real action to prevent further hate on campus, will I consider digging the sweatshirt out.
Until then, it rests in the dark — alongside my hope that someday, Harvard will again be worthy of the light.
Michael Levine is an American writer and public relations expert. He's the author of books on public relations including Guerrilla PR. He's represented 58 Academy Award winners, 34 Grammy Award winners, and 43 New York Times best-sellers, including Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand, and George Carlin, among others. Mr. Levine also appeared in "POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," a 2011 documentary by Morgan Spurlock. He's provided commentary for Variety, Forbes, Fox News, The New York Times, and USA Today. Read More of Michael Levine's Reports — Here.
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