In Boston’s Beacon Hill, there are gas lamps that appear to be quaint vestiges of the city’s Victorian past. Harvard, located three miles away, is giving the district a run for its money when it comes to gas lighting. Look no further than Harvard’s honorary degree recipient, Elaine Kim from the University of California, Berkeley, to see the Ivy League attempt to disavow anti-Semitism while embracing someone who embodies it on campus.
Amid Harvard University’s fight to protect its foreign students from the Trump administration’s visa restrictions, to combat ongoing anti-Semitism investigations, and moves to defund the school through the government’s cancellation of grants and major donors’ withholding of donations, the university showed its true colors. In granting Elaine Kim an honorary degree, Harvard exemplifies the irony and moral decrepitude that have come to characterize higher education.
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the Department of Homeland Security would begin revoking student visas from China due to national security concerns, Harvard did the predictable thing and sued the government on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment, the Due Process Clause, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Certainly, not all Chinese students are spies for the Chinese Communist Party; however, even students who may love the West and hate Beijing are subject to pressure and threats from their homeland. American intelligence agencies have long warned about the threat of student spies. The recent case of Chinese spies at Stanford University confirms that the threat is real. Harvard has over 1,000 Chinese students who might face their visas getting revoked.
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To signal its disdain for Trump, Harvard chose a Chinese student to give the commencement address, while the university’s salutatorian spoke in Latin and declared, “Neither powers nor princes can change the truth and deny that diversity is our strength.” That Harvard is keen to protect students from China while having recently suffered a legal blow over systematic discrimination against Asian-American students over the course of years exemplifies ideological double standards in higher education.
In 2013, well before the drama of the Trump years, Harvard was sued by the nonprofit group, Students for Fair Admissions (Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College) for violating the Fourteenth Amendment and discriminating against Asian students in admissions. After a decade-long legal battle that made its way to the Supreme Court, justices ruled in a 6-2 ruling that indeed Harvard illegally and unconstitutionally discriminated against students based on race. When examining student records, Students for Fair Admissions claimed it discovered that Harvard ranked Asian-American students as “lower in personality and likability ratings” compared to other students. According to the opinion of the Supreme Court, the university’s main response to criticism that it was racist in its admissions was simply “trust us.” The court stated that Harvard’s “race-based admissions systems … fail to comply with the twin commands of the Equal Protection Clause that race may never be used as a ‘negative’ and that it may not operate as a stereotype.”
Harvard’s commencement was already built upon irony, but it turned its graduation ceremony into a full opera of hypocrisy when it awarded Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian American cultural studies and feminism, an honorary degree. Kim was a controversial choice given her open support for the United States Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and the overall Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Despite being an emeritus professor, Kim is active in her animosity towards Israel, having openly endorsed boycotting the Batsheva Dance Company’s U.S. tour just this year.
Kim’s support for BDS and the anti-Semitism it represents is not unusual.
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The National Association of Scholars demonstrated how ethnic studies and various identity groups coalesce around BDS and justify their actions through frameworks of critical theory. What is unusual is why Harvard chose to bestow an honorary degree on an anti-Semitic emeritus professor. Harvard defended its choice by declaring that “recipients are chosen based on a candidate’s overall lifetime contributions and accomplishments.” On the question of anti-Semitism, Harvard turned up the gaslight to a full glow when it asserted that the university “strongly opposes academic boycotts.” In other words, Harvard wants you to know it does not condone anti-Semitism, but overlooks the anti-Semites it needlessly awards.
Added up, Harvard’s commencement on the surface is the stuff of dark comedy about a school tossing Molotov cocktails on its own reputation while it is already burning. Last year, polls revealed that the public’s perception of Harvard was already at a record low. Megadonor hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman asserted recently that it would be worth revoking Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Even Harvard’s enrollment is down, and not due to falling birth rates. Defending student visas from Communist China after discriminating against Asian-Americans and awarding anti-Semites while declaring it is working against anti-Semitism would be hilarious if it were not so twisted.
Harvard’s dark, gaslit comedy highlights everything that is wrong with higher education. The identity politics, virtue signaling, and racism when it is conducive to higher-ed’s own ideological interests are what make today’s American universities run. If universities did not have double standards, they would have none at all.
Image: “Harvard University graduation seating” by Caroline Culler on Wikimedia Commons
