Welcome to Harvard, Where Jews Get Tracked and Terrorists Get Applause

For a long time, I held a great deal of respect for Harvard. Then they admitted David Hogg, a state college reject, simply because he’d become a famous activist, and I realized how all those famous people who got into Ivy League schools got there. They weren’t that smart, they just looked good for the school.

Couple that with legacy admissions, and I realized that Harvard and other Ivy League schools weren’t elite institutions, but institutions for elites.

There’s a difference.

Things have gone downhill since then, believe it or not. The antisemitism that runs rampant on school campuses is very much alive and well at schools like Harvard, and it’s costing them.

I talked a bit about Harvard’s latest moves earlier this week.

Now, the plot thickens.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Harvard report on antisemitism. Of course, they tried to downplay it by releasing a report on Islamophobia, too, though that’s hardly as significant an issue on Harvard’s campuses. Still, the report, and the terrifying bit underlying it:

“While I quietly stood watching the open mic in the encampment (I attended alone and not in ‘counter protest’), a Harvard alum and former student called me on the phone, and then texted several times, which is not normal. When we were able to speak after I left the yard that night, he informed me that he had seen my name come up on an internal chat (apparently a large group communication for ‘marshals of the encampment’) and that there was concern with my presence there. I was described so that others could recognize me and identified as a ‘Zionist.’ It was unclear if he was alerting me to warn me to be careful or to ask me to leave, but during our brief conversation he wrongly associated me with counter protest and communicated that he was hoping I’d act in an especially nonthreatening way because my presence was a concern. It was chilling.

“What I’m taking from this, and perhaps I’ve internalized it in the wrong way, is that I was surveilled, identified by name, and profiled as a ‘Zionist’ threat in a chat that reached far enough that an alum not at the protest, who I had no idea was even involved, knew exactly where I was and reached out with concern. I have not shared any of my views (complex and ever-changing) with students or in any public setting save for asking a question at a ‘teach in.’ I have no idea what I did to end up on a blacklist, but whatever the reason I was profiled, beliefs about me that are inextricable from my Jewishness seem to have made me a potential target.”

An unavoidable characteristic of the pro-Hamas extremists on campus is that they engage in projection: They make paranoid accusations that turn out to reflect their own creepy behavior. So masked campus lunatics stomp and shout about some kind of Jewish-backed system of surveillance because, it turns out, they have been surveilling Jews and keeping in constant communication about the whereabouts of those Jews.

This is from a faculty member who had gone to hear what the speakers had to say at the Gaza encampment.

Frankly, it’s terrifying.

In this day and age, a sophisticated enough group with publicly available technology could track a Jewish professor around the encampment and send that information far and wide.

Who needs a yellow Star of David on the breast when you have instant messaging, right?

Look, people have a right to whatever warped beliefs they want to have. The most basic right anyone can have is the right to be a jackass. They’re welcome to think whatever they want.

But when you’re surveilling a Jewish professor, ascribing politics to them because of their Jewish lineage, and are essentially doing so in a way that is threatening to some degree or another, you might not be crossing the line, but you’re damn sure crowding it.

Especially when there’s literally no reason for it.

A Jewish professor is walking around, listening. She’s not threatening anyone, she doesn’t seem to be looking at faces and writing them down, so she can punish people when they get to class, nothing like that.

But they were watching.

I’m sorry, but this is damning. I’m sure the media will largely ignore it, but I won’t.

These people are dangerous.

You don’t track people for a reason. You don’t track people because you’re bored. You track them because you’re either afraid of them or you have ill intent.

This is one woman. It’s unlikely they were really afraid of her, though I suppose that if she’s a professor, there might have been some concern.

No, considering what else we’ve seen from this bunch, my bet is that their intentions are less than pure.

Terrorists start somewhere.

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