Lawrence Summers (Wikipedia)
Lawrence Summers, a former US Treasury Secretary and a former President of Harvard is furious that the university did not take action against 35 groups at the school that declared their support for Hamas. And this, in spite of the clear evidence that countless innocent people including children and pregnant women were massacred and even burned alive.
“In nearly 50 years of Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” said Lawrence Summers.
“The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel,” he added.
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“Instead, Harvard is being defined by the morally unconscionable statement apparently coming from two dozen student groups blaming all the violence on Israel. I am sickened.”
Harvard’s leadership did eventually issue a statement, but a weak one.
“Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.” Said Harvard President Claudine Gay.
“As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” she said in an official statement released by Harvard. “Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.”
Let me also state, on this matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”
But Lawrence Summers said of this, “Why can’t we give reassurance that the University stands squarely against Hamas terror to frightened students when 35 groups of their fellow students appear to be blaming all the violence on Israel?”
Lawrence Summers wrote, “The delayed Harvard leadership statement fails to meet the needs of the moment. Why can’t we find anything approaching the moral clarity of Harvard statements after George Floyd’s death or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when terrorists kill, rape and take hostage hundreds of Israelis attending a music festival?”
Lawrence Henry Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American economist who served as the 71st United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 and as director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010. He also served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, where he is the Charles W. Eliot university professor and director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.
