Slavery, Anti-Semitism and Harvard’s Missing Moral Compass
Wall Street Journal | Ruth R. Wisse
Harvard professor emerita Ruth Wisse ties the Harvard & Legacy of Slavery Report with the Crimson’s recent editorial in support of BDS: “The initiatives from Harvard’s president and Harvard’s students are eerily similar. Addressing genuine distress—of American blacks in one case, Palestinian Arabs in the other—both gestures misidentify the cause and, by misdirecting responsibility for the misery, make it impossible to ameliorate deplorable conditions.”
Regarding the Legacy of Slavery Report, Wisse explains, “Black Americans indeed still struggle to overcome the corrosive effects of slavery, but Harvard’s administration wouldn’t have insinuated itself into the problem by misappropriating guilt for deeds it didn’t commit in the past unless it means to obscure the wrongs it is committing in the present.”
“Indulgent self-blame is an escape from moral responsibility, and in this case from the university’s proper purpose,” she goes on. “Harvard has harmed African Americans—and every other minority—by transgressing the Civil Rights Act of 1964… Rather than foster an integrated intellectual community, Harvard has used group preferences in hiring and admissions… resulting [in an] explosion of racial politics.”
Harvard’s “campaign to shame white Americans into self-renunciation…betrays the founders of the school, its alumni and the descendants of slaves who know the only antidote to slavery is self-reliance,” she argues. “The focus on white guilt deprives African Americans of agency.”
“As for the Crimson editorial,” she is equally critical: “Arab claims of victimhood at the hands of the Jews is the most daring political inversion since Wilhelm Marr preached anti-Semitism to prevent Jews from ‘conquering Germany from within.’”
Wisse is unsparing in her harsh critique, ending with gratitude, fear, and hope: “I was privileged to teach at Harvard for 21 years, and the gratitude I feel is in no way diminished by my dismay at seeing this great university succumb to ideas that, if left unchallenged, may yet bring down the republic….May it yet surprise us by recovering its moral compass.”