Lucas: Tepid antisemitism fight haunts Harvard

Forget the $2 billion.

If Harvard University were serious about sticking it to President Donald Trump, they’d award Joe Biden an honorary degree at its next commencement ceremony.

If not that, then at least it could get Biden into its Kennedy School of Government and honor him with the JFK Profile in Courage award.

Joe Biden never had any problems with pouring money into Harvard or other Ivy League schools and deserves to be honored.

It would show Trump what Harvard thinks of him.

The school only recently gave an honorary degree to actor Tom Hanks who is getting to look like Biden and could play him in a movie.  Suggested title: “Saving Joe Biden.”

While Joe Biden is no Barack Obama, his former boss, when it comes to collecting resume-enhancing awards, like the Nobel Peace Prize and two Grammys, Harvard honoring Biden would show Trump that Harvard is no pushover.

Besides, the $2 billion Trump is withholding from Harvard is nothing more than walking around money for the wealthy school.

Harvard, with an endowment of $52 billion, is the richest university in the world, richer even than some countries. In some ways the Cambridge institution is a country unto itself, or at least acts like one.

So, you can see how it really does not need any more money from average taxpayers, who never would be accepted at the antisemitism-friendly institution in the first place.

But it will mostly take the money, as it has — until now. Which should be good news for the taxpayers, since there is the possibility of another $9 billion at stake.

Harvard’s row with the Trump administration came to a head when the university said it would not give in to the Trump administration demands that the school clean up its act when it comes to dealing with rampant antisemitism, support of pro-Hamas demonstrations and abolishment of DEI programs.

Harvard President Alan Garber, in response to the demands of Trump’s Joint Task Force on Anti-Semitism, said the university was vaguely dealing with antisemitism by nurturing “a thriving culture of open inquiry,” affirming free speech and working together.

In an archly defiant answer to the Task Force, Garber said, “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

To which the Task Force responded by saying that Garber only reinforced “the troubling mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”

“The disruption of learning that has plagued campuses in recent years is unacceptable. The harassment of Jewish students is intolerable,” it said.

In short, the Task Force said that if Harvard did not “commit to meaningful change,” it could kiss federal taxpayer funding goodbye.

Perhaps Harvard could then turn to the state for money to make up the difference.

Even though Harvard’s $52 billion endowment is almost as big as Gov. Maura Healey’s current $58 billion budget, she can always come up with a couple of million to bail Harvard out — and show Trump up.

After all, Healey, a Harvard graduate, praised Garber for “standing against the Trump Administration’s brazen attempt to bully schools and weaponize the U.S. Justice Department under the pretext of civil rights.”

She said that antisemitism “should be fought in the workplace, classrooms and everywhere. Complying with the Trump Administration’s dangerous demands would have made us all less safe and less free,”

“Antisemitism had no place in America,” she said.

Except at Harvard.

Veteran political reporter Peter Lucas can be reached at: peter.lucas@bostonherald.com

President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd outside the White House Monday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

 

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