HAIFA (Israel), January 20 – Hundreds of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis demonstrated against the genocide in Gaza. Poster says “Only Peace Will Bring Security” in Hebrew and Arabic. There’s no peace in capitalism
Harvard was a “smelly mess… a privileged sanctuary for Fifth Amendment Communists,” declared fascist Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1953. No way, Harvard replied. It was already firing Communist Party members.
Seventy years later, politicians like Elaine Stefanik, with wealthy alumni donors like Bill Ackman, are again gunning for Harvard.
They grossly misinterpret “intifada” and “From the river to the sea” as calls for genocide against Jews. They demand the ouster of those who protest the Israeli government’s actual genocide against the Gaza masses. They successfully pressured the Harvard Corporation “Board of Overseers” to fire President Claudine Gay.
A college president’s main job isn’t to lead academic policy. It’s to raise money. That’s why Gay was so vulnerable. It’s also why we should dig deeper: Harvard still doesn’t need lessons in fascism.
Harvard, Imperialism, and Zionism
The Kennedy School’s Belfer Center links Harvard to US imperialist policymaking. Its director was a key Bush advisor on Iraq. She has ties with war contractor Raytheon, investment managers, and Citigroup.
For economic policy, the Kennedy School has the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, funded by a chief investment officer for Goldman Sachs and an international energy executive. Its head, Larry Summers, was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and headed the World Bank.
In 2019, students identified Harvard indirect investments in four companies linked to the Israeli military. A 2020 report found Harvard had $200 million invested in companies tied to Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. More is hidden.
Last spring, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government tried to rescind a fellowship offered to Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, saying he was “too critical of Israel.” Student and faculty protests forced the dean to back down.
The Kennedy School has a huge Zionist presence. From 1989-2023, the Wexner Foundation paid for 300 mid-career Israelis (almost all Ashkenazi Jews) to be groomed there for higher government positions. They were mostly in the military, intelligence, law enforcement, or criminal justice. It also funded a leadership program for Israeli executives.
Palestinian students found the Kennedy School “scary.” An event planned by the Palestine Caucus in 2020 was stalled for six weeks. Then administrators made unreasonable demands, forcing the event to be moved.
Harvard belongs to a “tight triangle of ties between Washington, Wall Street, and Cambridge.” We need to understand the conflict over former president Gay in terms of contradictions within the US ruling class.
US Rulers Face Contradictions
First, not “whether” to support Israel, but “how.” US rulers have long advocated a two-state solution where Zionists grabbed an enormous chunk of Palestine. Half of Palestinian Arabs were driven off ancestral lands to establish the Israeli state. Israel continually blocked the second (Palestinian) state. Now Netanyahu demands Israeli control “from the river to the sea.”
Will the US openly back Israel’s fascist “one-state reality,” as a recent Foreign Affairs article advocated? But even some US Senators now question the impacts this would have for US imperialism globally as Israel’s Gaza genocide defies world opinion.
Second, isolated US imperialism increasingly needs fascism to crush class struggle and prevent rebellion. Should that fascism take the form of Trump’s aggressively racist, open authoritarianism? Or of a “diverse” and formally democratic but still dictatorial state?
Stefanik’s panel implemented the Republican campaign against “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Her Zionist inquisition didn’t get Harvard to dump Gay. So Ackman and De Santis pal Christopher Rufo dug up one Jonatan Pallesen who claimed Gay plagiarized. This Pallesen has coauthored articles with notorious pseudoscientific racists.
But Gay’s defenders who attack this “new eugenics” ignore that Harvard itself has been notoriously hospitable to it. Jensen, Herrnstein, and James Q. Wilson pushed racist IQ diatribes. Moynihan, Banfield, and Wilson used “culture of poverty” lies to justify racist repression.
Communism Will End Imperialism and Its Universities
“Plagiarism” rests on capitalism’s sanctified private property, applied to ideas. Communism will end private property and with it, “plagiarism.” Communist ideas come from the masses and belong to the masses. Please share, reprint, adapt, and use the ideas in Red Flag to advance the struggle for communism!
Abolishing private property means ending capitalist wage slavery with communist revolution. We will all work for the common good and share the fruits of our labor. Workers will decide collectively what we need to know. We’ll collectively figure it out. Learning, teaching, and research will be integrated with work. We’ll be motivated not by “degrees” and status but by curiosity and our commitment to the masses’ needs.
Students raging at the genocide in Gaza are chanting “The only solution: Intifada, Revolution.” The only solution is communist revolution everywhere. We invite them to join ICWP to make it happen.