Harvard’s Shift: How Islamist Influence Took Root on Campus

[Social Media]

 

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Harvard’s Shift: How Islamist Influence Took Root on Campus

 

Harvard University, once a symbol of American academic excellence, has gradually transformed into a stronghold for leftist grievance groups, with antisemitism acting as the common thread binding them together. Having taught at Harvard from 1993 to 2014, I have little confidence that current federal interventions will succeed in reversing this cultural shift. Harvard’s leadership still does not grasp the full danger that this ideological transformation poses to the nation, nor the reasons it demands serious attention.

 

The world changed dramatically on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda’s Islamists turned American planes into deadly weapons. Fast forward to October 7, 2023, and Hamas militants similarly exploited Israel’s openness to launch a brutal attack, massacring civilians and kidnapping innocents. These jihadist strategies represent a new type of warfare, one that attacks from within rather than conquering outright. Most concerning is how elite American institutions like Harvard have been captured as ideological outposts for these movements.

 

Harvard’s direct involvement became undeniable on October 8, 2023, when the Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, supported by over 30 student groups, released a statement blaming “the Israeli regime” as “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Shortly after, Students for Justice in Palestine declared October 12 a “day of resistance,” complete with a “toolkit” to organize the demonstrations and encampments that soon spread beyond campus. In a bold move, SJP asserted that Palestinian students were “PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”

 

Back in 2001, Harvard had no such student organizations openly supporting Islamist causes. However, the university had already become a soft target for foreign ideological penetration. Its adversarial stance toward the American government began in the 1970s, when antiwar activists pushed the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps off campus for four decades. Later, exclusion of military recruiters was justified by opposition to the military’s policies on homosexuality, even as the university continued to accept government funds. The curriculum took a similarly critical turn, increasingly portraying America and Western civilization in a negative light.

 

As civil-rights legislation of the 1960s left some activists unsatisfied, Harvard responded by embracing group preferences in hiring, elevating grievance-based identity groups and embedding itself firmly in the progressive activist camp. Conservatives found themselves unwelcome, both in faculty hiring and in the ideas taught. By the 1990s, campus groups invited Afrocentric and Nation of Islam speakers who spread hostility toward whites and Jews. In 1992, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. warned: “This is anti-Semitism from the top down, engineered and promoted by leaders who affect to be speaking for a larger resentment.”

 

 

The coalition expanded to include Marxists, anticapitalists, anticolonialists, and anti-imperialists. The Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011 were permitted to close Harvard Yard for months, reflecting how campus activism had been normalized. However, a unifying cause eluded these groups until the Palestinian issue provided a convenient rallying point. Students long discouraged from expressing patriotic sentiments or criticizing minority groups found in Israel a target sanctioned by political correctness.

 

This shift was compounded by the influx of Middle Eastern money. The Department of Education reported that between January 2020 and October 2024, Harvard received over $100 million from countries including the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bangladesh. In 2007, I began warning Harvard’s leaders that academic standards were being compromised by anti-Israel propaganda within the Center for Middle East Studies. While acknowledging the problem privately, administrators refused to take meaningful action, reasoning that other universities were just as complicit.

 

The consequences became starkly visible after October 7, 2023. Students and faculty members not only excused but even celebrated the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians. A committee formed by the new Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance found that campus “hatred” was “worse than we had anticipated.” Ideological anti-Zionism had permeated departments across Harvard, from the School of Public Health to the Divinity School, from anthropology to music, and even into the medical school.

 

At the very moment when Harvard should have reaffirmed its proud heritage, it instead degraded its biblical studies programs and marginalized its Christian and Jewish traditions. Meanwhile, Islamist influence continued to grow amid America's broader cultural decline. There remain good people and valuable programs at Harvard. However, if Harvard continues to abandon its responsibility to uphold the pillars of American society and allows itself to be overtaken by an Islamist-fueled grievance movement, it cannot reasonably expect the support or trust of the American government.

 

Related Topics:

Harvard Advisor Resigns Amid Accusations of Aiding Hamas Operations in Gaza

Harvard Becomes Resistance HQ in Trump’s Campus Culture War

Biden's Surprise Visit to Harvard Marred by Protests, Gaffes, and Ice Cream Slip

 

  Adpated by ASEAN Now from Wall Street Journal  2025-04-28

 

 

 

 

[Gsxrnz]

Yuri Besmenov was right. 

[Equatorial]

1 hour ago, Gsxrnz said:

Yuri Besmenov was right.

 

https://bigthink.com/the-present/yuri-bezmenov/

[thesetat]

Let's face it. When 9/11 happened and it was learned that the terrorists who flew the planes into those buildings were taught to fly in US Schools. The government should  have made laws and screening procedures to eliminate their influence and threat to future incidences being brought about by foreigner students influencing Americans in the schools. 

Schools do not care where the money comes from and will make adjustments to their curriculum and campus rules to allow those foreigners to come and feel at home. This includes allowing them to create dissent in protests and actions normally not available to them outside of the school system. The Biden/Obama era did nothing to make the schools or their students to follow immigration policies and left it up to the schools to enforce what they chose. Thus making the schools a open target for more opportunities to have foreigner extremists into their institutions. It is easier to brainwash students than adults. Foreigners influence in schools to other students would be a good plan so future plans can be used to be covert in their infiltration by changing how Americans feel about certain situations. 

Also, Kids like to go against the norm, ready to accept or create a fight with the system. 

[novacova]

2 hours ago, Social Media said:

I have little confidence that current federal interventions will succeed in reversing this cultural shift.

Of course not, they’re Marxist communist and have no interest in the American constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. They only want division conflict and chaos to further propagate their social toxicity.

[Chomper Higgot]

Well to be fair, it is an opinion.

 

Though we are not told who’s.

 

 

[Bkk Brian]

1 minute ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Well to be fair, it an opinion.

 

Though we are not told who’s.

 

 

Straight for attacking the messenger again from the WSJ

[Yagoda]

3 minutes ago, novacova said:

Of course not, they’re Marxist communist and have no interest in the American constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. They only want division conflict and chaos to further propagate their social toxicity.

Tax their endowment.

Sue them for unlawful discrimination.

[Yagoda]

1 minute ago, WDSmart said:

"...Islamist Influence Took Root on Campus" and elsewhere because of Israel's relentless attempt at genocide of Palestinians after the Dec 7 attack. 

Islamic influence took root on campus because the antisemite Socialists reveled in the murder of Jewish children and used the useful idiots of Harvard to push their sick, murderous program.

 

There are still American hostages held by Hamas. Therefore, until they are released, every Gazan is the enemy and must be destroyed. 

 

 

[Yagoda]

Just now, Chomper Higgot said:

All on the basis of an opinion.

Are you denying that Harvard violates anti-discrimination laws?

[Chomper Higgot]

Harvard’s real crime is facing down Trump’s attempt to corral universities.

 

We expect more attacks on the university.

[Chomper Higgot]

7 minutes ago, Yagoda said:

Are you denying that Harvard violates anti-discrimination laws?

 I don’t need to.

 

If there is evidence of laws being violated, investigate and prosecute.

You know the due process and right to defense in an open court of law.

 

[Social Media]

A troll post has been removed @Chomper Higgot 

 

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[300sd]

3 hours ago, Gsxrnz said:

Yuri Besmenov was right. 

[Yagoda]

23 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

f there is evidence of laws being violated, investigate and prosecute.

Done once and ongoing. 

[Yagoda]

7 minutes ago, 300sd said:

Socialism cannot exist without firing squads. History proves it. The rhetoric in this Forum proves it.

[ujayujay]

1 hour ago, Yagoda said:

Islamic influence took root on campus because the antisemite Socialists reveled in the murder of Jewish children and used the useful idiots of Harvard to push their sick, murderous program.

 

There are still American hostages held by Hamas. Therefore, until they are released, every Gazan is the enemy and must be destroyed. 

 

 

Adolf would be delighted with you👍

[Chomper Higgot]

1 hour ago, Yagoda said:

Islamic influence took root on campus because the antisemite Socialists reveled in the murder of Jewish children and used the useful idiots of Harvard to push their sick, murderous program.

 

There are still American hostages held by Hamas. Therefore, until they are released, every Gazan is the enemy and must be destroyed. 

 

 

Which hostages are being held by Harvard Iniversity?

 

Or are you conflating issues in your eagerness to promote collective punishment of Gazans?

[Yagoda]

3 minutes ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Which hostages are being held by Harvard Iniversity?

 

Or are you conflating issues in your eagerness to promote collective punishment of Gazans?

They provide support to terrorists. I care not if they shut down.

[Yagoda]

26 minutes ago, ujayujay said:

Adolf would be delighted with you👍

No, Im not a Socialist like he was. Only Socialists kill for their dreams.

[thesetat]

3 hours ago, Yagoda said:

Socialism cannot exist without firing squads. History proves it. The rhetoric in this Forum proves it.

There are more worse way to kill someone other than putting them in. front of a firing squad. History proves that shooting someone ends their problem but creates more dissent.