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Harvard Let Students Mourn the US Election; Where Was That Sympathy Post-October 7?
Students accusing Israel of genocide at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory in the US election, Harvard professors quickly rescheduled or even canceled classes, offering students space to “process” their emotions.
Class attendance was optional, assignments were extended, and some professors even opened their offices as “spaces to grieve” the results of an election.
This was their response to an exercise of the democratic process. Harvard’s response last year to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust stands in telling contrast.
On October 7, 2023, when 1,200 Israelis, Americans, and others were massacred by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists, Jewish students were faced not with grief counselors and sympathetic professors, but a mob that was often incited by those same professors.
The overwrought response to the results of a free and democratic election — which Palestinians have been denied for almost two decades by their own leaders — reveals a troubling pattern of emotional manipulation and simplification by Harvard. It’s a real-world manifestation of a problem that follows the pattern of social media rage-bait.
On TikTok, algorithm-driven narratives often prioritize distortion over substance. TikTok’s content caters to user preferences, often resulting in echo chambers and oversimplified narratives. However, users generally understand the platform’s nature — it is social media, designed for quick consumption and viral spread. There’s an implicit understanding that content is often exaggerated or sensationalized for engagement.
Harvard, on the other hand, purports to be a bastion of higher learning and critical thinking. Strikingly, its treatment of the Israel-Palestinian conflict has devolved into a similar pattern of reductionism and emotional manipulation. The difference? Harvard’s approach comes with the veneer of academic credibility, making it far more insidious.
On social media, professional expertise is often seen as a plus. Commercial landscapers, fashion designers like me, and devoted activists are sought out for our conclusive opinions. But academia is supposed to be different. Higher education isn’t supposed to deliver an endless stream of hot takes. Universities are meant to teach and hone the process of discovering truth, in contrast to activists who advance crystallized conclusions. You would think that Harvard would want its students in class the day after a pivotal election to engage with the results, not encourage students to retreat from this challenge under the guise of “processing their emotions” — a “processIng” notably free of supervision from mental health professionals.
“It’s indoctrination, not education,” a faculty member is quoted as saying in the academic audit conducted by the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance (HJAA) released in May 2024.
False accusations of Israeli genocide are buttressed by academic theories like settler colonialism. The HJAA audit found that the settler colonialism framework exists across the School of Public Health, the Divinity School, and the English and Anthropology departments of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, not just in fields focused on the Middle East.
Since October 8, 2023, Harvard has stubbornly demonstrated that it has sunk below the intellectual standards of TikTok in its approach to the ongoing Middle East conflict. Both Harvard and the social media company present a crude, simplified, and emotionally provocative view of this prominent issue, but at least with TikTok, users know what they’re getting. Harvard today is no better for academic discourse than the comment section on a social media video, the place where carefully cited facts are given the same weight as the poop emoji. In that context, it makes sense that professors would feel students need space to “grieve” a presidential election that didn’t go their way.
However egregious Harvard’s failings are in comparison to TikTok, there is one significant difference, where Harvard does offer hope. We are mired in debates about making social media safe and free, safeguarding the First Amendment while protecting the vulnerable. Clean solutions for social media are elusive. But Harvard does have a clear path to improvement.
Harvard’s recent steps toward institutional neutrality should be applauded and taken as a starting point. Harvard must demonstrate a clear commitment to stamping out antisemitism by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, conducting an independent investigation into the issue on campus, and actually enforcing the university’s own code equally and transparently. Faculty members, who too often are the ones pushing antisemitism on their students, should have additional training to combat this. And if professors continue to make campus unsafe for the Jewish community, the administration needs to act as the adult in the room and dismiss them.
Harvard could also end its collaboration with Birzeit University, known for educating would-be terrorists, graduating actual terrorists, some while imprisoned for conducting lethal terror attacks, hosting military parades featuring mock suicide bombers, and barring Israelis from entering.
Scores of students are already reconsidering their attendance at this storied institution because of its failure to prevent campus from turning into the worst iterations of a social media echochamber. Harvard can either renew its focus on academic integrity — and Veritas — or ride the social media cycle through to irrelevance like MySpace and Friendster.
Roni Brunn is the Vice President of Media Relations at the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance and a social media content creator.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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