(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Harvard University recently said after facing the backlash that it “should not… issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.”
The news came after the infamous institution has embroiled itself in controversy with 122 faculty members saying that criticizing the deadly phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” is “imprudent” and a former president refusing to condemn anti-Semitic protests and calls for the genocide of Jews, the Daily Wire reported.
Last month, Interim President Alan M. Garber and Interim Provost John F. Manning announced the formation of the Institutional Voice Working Group to decide when Harvard as a university “should speak on matters of social and political significance and who should be authorized to speak for the institution as a whole,” the Harvard Gazette reported.
The news source added that the group was co-chaired by Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Alison Simmons, the Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy.
“The main point of the report is that the University’s leadership can and should speak out on anything relevant to the core function of the University, which is creating an environment suitable for free, open inquiry, teaching and research. That environment is threatened these days, and we need to defend it,” Feldman said.
He then said that talking about politics could not be classified as something relevant to the “core function” of Harvard.
“At the same time, the University as an institution should not make official statements on issues outside its core function. Harvard isn’t a government. It shouldn’t have a foreign policy or a domestic policy.”
Claudine Gay, Harvard’s former president, resigned in January 2024 after it was discovered that she plagiarized her academic papers and was reluctant to condemn blatant anti-Semitism in Harvard when she testified before Congress.
Gay also exposed her anti-white and anti-male beliefs when she put together a task force after the death of George Floyd to diminish the number of white men who were visible on Harvard campus.
