Harvard speaks freedom of expression, but the silence of Palestine education

My sister was standing with a few other students under the low glow of the old Lampposts in Harvard Yard, smoking and chatting accidentally. “Oh, are you Palestinian?” One of them asked to light his cigarette from her salary. “My cousin in the Israeli Defense Army (the Israeli army).”

Then put the cigarette in his mouth back, and the lighting ends between his teeth. “This is how my cousin was smoking during the shooting of the Palestinians on the border,” he said. “So these idiots were unable to see the flame.”

In that evening, she was shaken, my sister and our parents contacted and later informed the accident to her resident teacher. I looked for a way to file an official complaint, but she did not find anything. The Arabs were not considered a “protected category”. In the political climate charged in late 2001, only a hate speech was not tolerated – it was invisible.

After more than two decades, little changed. A report issued in April 2025 of the Harvard University Presidential Labor Squad was described by combating anti -Muslim Muslims, and the Palestinians “a deep sense of fear” between Muslim, Arab students and employees. The report indicated that the campus climate was distinguished by “uncertainty, abandonment, threat and isolation.” Nearly half of the Muslim students who were surveyed said that they felt physically insecure at Harvard University, while 92 percent of Muslim students, faculty and employees revealed that they were afraid of professional or academic consequences to express their personal or political opinions.

Harvard University formed itself as k Freedom Warrior Freedom On the national theater, he refused to negotiate with the Trump administration regarding its overwhelming demands for the university to drop its diversity measures, equality of stocks and inclusion and punishing students.

However, inside the walls of the campus at Harvard University, we saw President Alan Garper supervising a systematic erasure for teaching, research and scholarships around Palestine, at a time when more than 51,000 Palestinians were killed, and hundreds of thousands of displaced people face hunger under an Israeli cars. A long time before Harvard escaped the hostile acquisition of the billionaire chief, she surrendered to the demands of the managing billionaire on matters of students ’discipline, campus and academic freedom.

To satisfy the right -wing donors, Harvard University has adopted a unilateral concept for the safety of the campus, as speaking against the violence of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians is a threat. As a result, university officials rush to address anti -Semitism on the campus, as it should, but also penetrate and remove the speech and scholarships that criticize Israel in the name of anti -anti -Semitism. Meanwhile, the anti -Palestinians, the combat of Arabic, and Islamophobia are less than a later idea. University officials are still silent, as students, faculty and employees test the threat, harassment and threats of murder to talk about Palestinian human rights. They have International Student Information With the Ministry of Internal Security, where students were kidnapped on the nearby campus by migration and disguised customs benefit officers, who were arrested and deported to object to the violations of international law of Israel.

In addition to having to intimidate and misuse, university leaders also take useful measures to erase speech, scholarships and Palestinian scholarships.

Last year, the Harvard Foundation, the unleashed university board of directors, canceled the faculty members and banned 13 elderly people from graduating to protest the genocide in Gaza, with contracts from the precedent disciplinary. The university banned the defense group for the only Palestine twice, through its inconsistent enforcement of the mysterious and extremist event policy at the university, which warned the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), “raised (s) the specter of distinction of the view.” In the settlement of Chapter Six of January, the US Department of Education found that Harvard University failed to investigate a useful investigation or respond sufficiently to 125 cases of discrimination and harassment that was reported through its unknown hot line, especially those based on the Palestinian, Arab and/or Muslims. Although President Garper said Harvard should condemn the “hateful discourse” under the institutional sound policy, this did not apply to the heinous “jokes” delivered by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett about giving students their explosion to see his speech at Harvard Business College in March 2025.

A handful of teaching and research programs, where faculty members study Palestine at Harvard University, have been canceled, or threatened with the judiciary. Within months, Harvard University canceled a committee that includes Palestinian children from Gaza at the Harvard University Faculty of Medicine, ending its only partnership with a Palestinian university, and spent the debt and public life program at Harvard School for the end, which addressed Israel/Palestine as a case study. Harvard University also rejected the leadership of the Middle East Studies Center, as a “display of its types”, according to the New York Times.

The elimination of Harvard’s programs on Palestine chopping in particular, given that all the universities of Gaza have been demolished, more than 80 percent of their schools were destroyed or damaged, and professors, teachers, and students in Gaza were caused systematically. The United Nations calls this “Scholasticide” – the systematic fabric of education by destroying educational infrastructure, accreditation, detention, or killing students, employees and teachers.

The erasure of knowledge production and its elimination by the Palestinians and Palestine at Harvard University and other universities calms the speech in defending Palestinian human rights in the United States, and thus materially affects the safety of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

At this time last year, universities throughout the United States witnessed an unprecedented mobilization to support Palestinian freedom, which shed light on the overwhelming public opposition to Israel’s attack on Gaza. Ultimately, opposition to Israel’s behavior against the Palestinians became so vocal that the then President Joe Biden-who is an enthusiastic supporter of Israel-threatens the arms embargo against Israel if the humanitarian situation in Gaza has not improved.

Today, after Harvard University and other universities have suppressed the protests against the full Israel war on Gaza, the Palestinian suffering and death were increasingly silent in the United States. As the public’s attention and the media outrage from Gaza, pressure on American leaders to intervene – or even recognize the size of the crisis – has disappeared.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is now the worst in 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities.” Jonathan Whital, the local president of OCHA, stressed that what is revealed in Gaza is no longer similar to the traditional war. He said: “People in Gaza tell me that they feel that it is the deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life in the sight of the horizon.” Malnutrition is increasing, as Israel closed the borders on food, medicine and all humanitarian aid for more than two months. Meanwhile, the scenes that should shock the world – the bodies of children in the air due to the explosions, have become the alive and survived families – the “daily atrocities”.

The Trump administration and the billionaire collectors at Harvard University clearly realize the important role that universities play in forming American society and public opinion. While Harvard University leaders declare their commitment to “the diversity of the point of view”, we can assure that we will hear more speakers such as Jared Kushner, who spoke at Harvard Kennedy last year about his plan to “finish the job” and develop “water water property” in Gaza.

It is encouraging that hundreds of university presidents signed a speech opposing the attempt to seize President Trump for American Higher Education. But for decades, their institutions have eagerly bowed to the will of the Manadeer billionaire. In the past year and a half, these donors have formed everything from the campus letter to the discipline of students – even the course of the training course. In this corrupt deal, the concept of “campus safety” was arrested to suppress speech about what the United Nations and other human rights organizations called genocide. The anti-discrimination language was twisted to dismantle diversity, fairness, and integration programs-Harvard’s Dei’s Dei’s desk is now quietly calmly “the office of community life and university campus.”

This moment cannot be separated from a broader date. He repeats the 1971 Luis Powell note, which made it clear how companies can infiltrate American institutions – especially universities – to align the interests of companies. Today, the “Exclusion of Palestine” has become a major entry point to capture ideological for higher education, and decades.

For Harvard and its peers to resist federal transgression while undergoing oligarchy, it is not resistance at all – it is a surrender. If we do not fight both powers together, we may soon be unable to fight at all. So, as President Garbar wrote, “The pursuit of fear and unrestricted for the truth is to liberate humanity”, then – and all of us – must demand the liberation without exceptions, warnings or fear. Each of us has.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the editorial island.