To Some Harvard Students, ‘Zionists’ — Not Claudine Gay — Are the Problem
Posters on a Harvard-exclusive social media network are voicing their rage toward ‘the Jewish population’ in the wake of the resignation of the university’s president.
Some Harvard students are blaming the resignation of university president Claudine Gay on Jewish people, to whom they are also obliquely condemning as “Zionists” and, more generally, “the media.”
Since Ms. Gay stepped down on Tuesday, antisemitic rhetoric has abounded in anonymous posts on the Harvard-exclusive network of the social media platform, SideChat. Harvard doesn’t own or control SideChat, but the network’s Harvard group is accessible only to those with a Harvard.edu email address.
The Sun isn’t able to confirm independently that the users of the site quoted in this story are Harvard students. In any event, the true colors of some such users, perhaps emboldened by anonymity, are becoming evidently clear on the popular student-only platform.
“I would like us all to reflect on how much power the Jewish population has over the media,” one post said. Others refrained from using the descriptor, “Jewish,” carefully invoking instead the term “Zionists,” who were deemed by one user as “killers and rapers of children!”
The Nova music festival massacre was used by “our zionist classmates” as “propaganda,” another student claimed, even arguing that the October 7 event was “carried out by the IDF.”
“I proudly accept the label of terrorist,” asserted one student, “as I’ve been called in the last few days, for supporting the rights of an ethnically cleansed, occupied, brutalized and subjugated indigenous people.”
It appears students are organizing a rally in support of Ms. Gay on January 22, as one student announced in a post. “We need to show this school and the media whose side we are on,” one post said.
A number of posts on the site this evening were attacking Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has been a prominent critic of Ms. Gay after she flubbed her appearance before congress and separately was accused of plagiarism.
One student was “begging” others to recognize that blaming Jewish people for causing Ms. Gay’s resignation could be seen as part of “an antisemitic conspiracy theory” and “a common white supremacy argument against Jewish people.”
