Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., made headlines in December for pointedly questioning Harvard University’s former President, Claudine Gay. Stefanik helped a congressional hearing become, by some metrics, the most watched such hearing of all time. After her viral moment, Stefanik was even lampooned on Saturday Night Live.
Four months on, Gay has resigned from the presidency, and Stefanik has recaptured attention by issuing an open letter to Harvard’s new leadership. She posted the letter on Thursday.
Stefanik is not Jewish, but she is a Harvard graduate. She addressed her letter to Interim President Dr. Alan Garber and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny Pritzker.
Penny Pritzker was once the U.S. secretary of commerce under former President Barack Obama. She’s the sister to the current governor of Illinois. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, serves as the top-ranked member of Harvard’s glitzy, glamorous board. She remains President Joe Biden’s special representative for Ukraine’s economic recovery.
Naturally, Stefanik’s letter slammed Harvard for allowing liberal ideologues to capture a pluralistic institution.
Take a look at Stefanik’s letter, reprinted below with no spin.
Dear Dr. Garber and Ms. Pritzker:
I write expressing grave concern and continued outrage over a recent handling of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. This institution has failed time and time again to take steps to properly address this scoursge and hold perpretrators accountable. Your actions have continued to disgrace this institution and threaten the safety of the students you claim to serve.
On October 18, 2023, Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee staged a “die-in” at Harvard Business School where students protested Israel’s efforts to defend itself following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, displaying a sign stating, “From the river to the sea.” During this event, an Israeli Harvard Business School student recorded the act and was quickly surrounded by a mob of anti-Israel protestors who assaulted and harassed him. These assailants blocked his path, repeatedly grabbed him, and shouted “Shame! Shame! Shame! at him. This assault is well documented and was denounced by many alumni who were rightly outraged by the actions of these protestors and called for accountability.
According to documents obtained by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, following this incident, Harvard engaged the law firm of Jenner & Block to conduct an independent investigation of the incident. Jenner & Block met with the victims’ attorneys at the law firm Holtzman Vogel in early January 2024 and received relevant video evidence of the incident.
Further information schows that local prosecutors are currently in the process of negotiationg court dates with two of the Harvard students who assaulted the victim. On March 25, Holtzman Vogel learned that teh “Clerk’s Hearing” in the criminal case has been postponed to May 7. One of the assailants in the incident, a Harvard Divinity School graduate student, is scheduled to graduate in May 2024. Due to this postponement, the assailant will gain the lifelong distinction of being an alumnus of Harvard despite having commited a well-documented antisemitic hate crime against a fellow student.
Justice for this incident should have been served quickly, and the delay of justice that specifically allows an antisemitic student to graduate is an affront to accountability and demonstrates the cultural rot of Harvard University’s leadership that has allowed antisemitism to continue.
In front of Congress, when disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay failed to denounce antisemitism and calls for genocide, she also claimed “disciplinary processes are underway” angainst perpetrators of antisemitism. This has proven to be false, with Harvard producing no evidence of punishment against those who have committed crimes and violated Harvard’s code of conduct. This same lack of accountability applies to a faculty member who recently threatened a Jewish student yet is still employed by the univeristy.
This recent case of Harvard protexting those who hate Jews is disgusting. As an alumna of Harvard university, allowing this student to gain the title of Harvard graduate disgraces all who have come before him and erodes the distinction of a once sought after degree. At a time when support and applications for Harvard have fallen, university leadership has continuously chosen to side with those who hate Jewish students and faculty and failed to keep them safe.
Sicncerely,
Elise M. Stefanik
Member of Congress
The Horn editorial team