Harvard Discriminated Against Me and Other Jews. Trump Is Right To Threaten Its Funding.

If Harvard spent just half as much time fixing the problem of antisemitism as they did denying it existed, the federal government would not be threatening to withhold federal funds from the University.

Indeed, the Universities of Vanderbilt, Chicago, Dartmouth, and others have remained clear of the Department of Education’s investigations, not due to any particular political favor but because they seem to consistently enforce internal school policies and comply with federal obligations under law.

The same cannot be stated about Harvard in any measurable way.

While Crimson editorialists, professors, and students create a concocted narrative whereby Harvard can either protect free speech or Jewish students, the reality is almost nothing Jewish students have been experiencing has to do with speech. Rather, it has everything to do with discrimination and criminality.

While we can debate violent, antisemitic chants like “globalize the intifada” or “from the river to the sea” — written in Hamas’s own charter — I certainly find it odd that the same administrators and students who have disinvited controversial guest speakers, taught that repeatedly misgendering is an action worthy of discipline, and otherwise engaged in cancel culture, are suddenly vested in issues of free speech and the First Amendment.

Nevertheless, here are the facts consistently ignored: Since October 7, a Jewish student was physically accosted on his campus, another Jewish student was spat on while wearing a kippah, an Israeli student claimed she was asked by the professor to leave the class because her mere presence made others uncomfortable, hostage posters of Jewish children were ripped and defaced on several occasions, and an employee challenged me to debate Israel’s role in 9/11 with him at an overpass.

One user on Sidechat referred to the “Jewish lobby” and another wrote “LET EM COOK” in obvious reference to the Israeli civilians killed in the October 7 attacks. Another said “Harvard Hillel is burning in hell.” Professors reposted an explicitly antisemitic cartoon and faced no disciplinary action.

And perhaps the most damning of all, students established an almost month-long encampment in the center of Harvard Yard that violated virtually all of the University’s time, place, and manner restrictions.

During the encampment, affiliates used bolt cutters in an attempt to break open Harvard’s gates, according to the Harvard University Police Department. Participants also depicted Harvard’s Jewish president as a devil replete with horns and a tail and established self-appointed security marshals that other students and I witnessed monitoring and recording Jews like us on our way to class.

Ignoring the fact that more professors are outraged at President Donald Trump's threatening to withhold federal funds than they are at their own students being followed to class by alleged “security marshals,” Harvard has consistently refused to enforce their internal school policies.

Although the University adopted a half-measured settlement in a seemingly desperate attempt to appease the newly inaugurated Trump Administration, when the spirit of the settlement was broken by numerous unsanctioned protests with mask mandates occurring on campus, the University continued to do nothing.

Given that the expenditure of American taxpayer funds is an expression of values, we are brought to the inevitable conclusion that if Harvard insists on discriminating against a student group on campus, then they have forfeited their right to the privilege of receiving American taxpayer money.

In the same way that the federal government threatened to withhold funds from racist school districts that refused to integrate, the power of the purse is the last tool available to coerce Harvard to treat all its students with equality and justice.

In his latest attempt at moral blackmail, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 insisted that the cutting of such funds would endanger “life-saving” research. If Garber truly believes that the research Harvard conducts is “life-saving,” he should consider two important facts.

First, Harvard shouldn't have normalized antisemitism, knowing full well this would happen. Neither the Trump campaign nor I minced words. We had repeatedly warned that funding cuts were an option. The majority of the American people agreed, and re-elected Trump to do just that.

Second, he can simply dip into its $53 billion endowment to fund the research. It is peculiar that a rallying cry for the campus far-left is that an institution with savings larger than most countries’ GDPs should still be given corporate handouts.

Segregationists experienced the same treatment as Garber. When the federal government threatened to withhold funds from schools that refused to integrate black students in the 1950s and 1960s, such cuts inevitably disenfranchised white children who were caught in the crosshairs.

Yet, aggregate national interest outweighed temporary harm, and all students benefited as a result. I would add that President Garber can skip this painful step entirely by simply choosing to follow federal law, especially Title VI.

Ultimately, Harvard initiated this disaster itself. Rather than treating all students with dignity and respect, they played politics and have jeopardized all programs and departments as a result.

Will the withholding of federal funds entirely solve antisemitism on college campuses? Certainly not. But that doesn’t mean the American taxpayer should be subsidizing it.

Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School. He is the lead plaintiff in an ongoing Title VI lawsuit against Harvard.