Harvard, other schools fixate on 'safe spaces' while they ignore calls for genocide

Watching recent antisemitic protests on prestigious American campuses, I’m curious what Sebastian Haffner would say. The author documented an earlier youth movement that chose Jews as its ideological scapegoat.

In his brilliant memoir, “Defying Hitler,” Haffner describes his nightmare as an everyday German in 1933, watching the unthinkable become public policy.

“The older generation had become uncertain and timid in its ideals and convictions and began to focus on ‘youth,’ ” Haffner wrote, “with thoughts of abdication, flattery, and high expectations.”

Fleeing to London in the late 1930s, he finished the work, which went unpublished until after his death in 1999.

“A childish illusion, fixed in the minds of all children born in a certain decade and hammered home for four years, can easily reappear as a deadly serious political ideology twenty years later,” Haffner warned.

Harvard, MIT defend actions as free speech

A similar message is being hammered home for four years, this time in academia. And school leaders seem fine with it.

The presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania testified before the House Education Committee on Tuesday to discuss the rise of antisemitism on campus.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R–N.Y., asked, “What action has been taken against students who are harassing and calling for the genocide of Jews on Harvard’s campus?”

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, said her university would react only “when speech crosses into conduct.” In other words, once an actual genocide is in full swing, Harvard’s Board of Overseers might schedule a meeting.

The president of MIT said the speech “would be investigated as harassment” only if it was deemed “pervasive and severe.”

Liz Magill, president of Penn, answered the question with a smile. “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”

Jewish students are being terrorized by peers

Here’s the context, Madame President: Jewish students, faculty and staff are living in fear.

“Thirty-six hours ago, I along with most of campus sought refuge in our rooms as classmates and professors chanted proudly for the genocide of Jews while igniting smoke bombs and defacing school property,” Penn senior Eyal Yakoby said before the hearing.

“‘You’re a dirty little Jew, you deserve to die’ are words said not by Hamas but by my classmates and professors,” Yakoby added.

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At MIT, an Israeli student was “doxxed” weeks ago and has stayed in his dorm room ever since due to death threats.

Harvard student Jonathan Frieden recounted that a “mob of 200 people” marched into his study room shouting antisemitic chants.

“Many of my friends ran up to the dean of students and DEI office, but they had locked their doors for their own safety,” he said. “We heard nothing from Harvard.”

They focus on space spaces, ignore genocide

For years, conservatives have mocked college administrators for the culture of safetyism on the modern campus.

Safe spaces, crying rooms and behavioral health care is offered to students upset about getting a B-plus instead of an A-minus. A professor’s stray eye roll can be labeled a microaggression, all in the name of “student safety.”

Yet when angry mobs ransack the quad calling for the extermination of their Jewish classmates, it’s crickets in the front office. Suddenly, the script flips to “free expression,” a policy rarely enforced when a garden-variety Republican pays a visit.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression listed Harvard dead last in its annual ranking of 254 colleges on the protection of free speech.

Penn? Second to last.

The academy has been so transfixed on microaggressions that macroaggressions like genocide fly by unnoticed, if not heartily endorsed.

Ninety years ago, Sebastian Haffner watched a timid older generation abandon its ideals to flatter a young vanguard of antisemites.

Never again.

Jon Gabriel, a Mesa resident, is editor-in-chief of Ricochet.com and a contributor to The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. On Twitter: @exjon.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Harvard fixates on 'safe spaces' while it ignores calls for genocide