Students at Harvard University believe tension persists despite resignation of school’s president

By Islam Dogru

NEW YORK (AA) - Harvard University is making more news now than the conflict in the Gaza Strip, said a senior at the famed Ivy League school in the US.

"We seem to pick up more headlines than Gaza unfortunately, these days,” Guillermo Silva, a senior studying politics and philosophy at the country’s oldest university, told Anadolu.

Due to campus protests against Israel's attacks on Gaza, the school is feeling the heat from sectors of society friendly with Israel.

Although debates about the university have somewhat died down, student movements on campus continue to make headlines.

After returning from winter break this week, students said tensions at the school persist despite the resignation of the school’s President Claudine Gay, who stepped down after being on the job for only six months.

She left ostensibly due to plagiarism, but activists said it was actually due to pressure from pro-Israel lobbies who lambasted her for calling student protests against the killing of thousands of Palestinians part of "freedom of expression."

Silva said Harvard has been subjected to “outside pressures,” especially from numerous donors and politicians, for the "suppression of pro-Palestinian freedom of expression.”

-Fear, caution prevails on campus

“The situation, the feeling on campus for a lot of pro-Palestinian activists right now is mostly scared and cautious because we don't know what's going to come next,” he said.

“We know that President Gay was forced down, mainly whatever the public excuse was, the main reason was that she feared she faced a lot of criticism for not banning our association. So we're scared that we're going to end up with a future president who will be more willing to do that, but we don't know,” said Silva.

He said when Gay decided to step down, the school was on winter break, and as students, they were unable to provide a necessary response.

“Students will be getting back to campus and you should expect a lot of activism because we're not gonna stop speaking up about Palestine about Gaza just because we face intense opposition. Because people in Gaza don't get to stop facing what they face just because it's uncomfortable. And we're not going to stop speaking out about it because someone has to,” added Silva.

Stressing that the new president comes from within the institution, and currently, there is no reason to believe that the school will be more aggressive toward students, Silva said: “What we do know is that Harvard is facing more and more pressure to come after us and other people who are putting pressure on putting us on the spotlight are not going to stop.”

-People see hypocrisy, attacks full of bad faith

Silva underlined that Harvard has investments associated with illegal settlers in Palestine, without providing details.

He stressed that it is appalling and expressed the belief that the school has not done a good job in supporting Palestinian students during the crisis and showing sympathy to those who have lost family members, or acknowledging the challenging conditions faced by Gazans.

On the other hand, Silva pointed out that the majority of students on campus sympathize with Palestine, and he noted that most anti-Palestinian incidents at the school are primarily organized by external groups.

He also indicated that right-wing politicians in the US exploit events to attack Harvard.

“It's not normal for Congress to be wasting time calling up a university president to try to ruin her career because she hasn't silenced college students. It's not okay. So, people see the bad faith attacks, they see the hypocrisy. They see the attempts to slander us and to destroy your professional futures and to target us.

“That upsets people, that radicalizes people because they start asking. ‘Why are you so eager to make sure that we don't hear out their points? Why are you so eager that we don't read a report by Amnesty International? Why are you so eager that we don't discuss these ideas and that is counterproductive at the end of the day,’” Silva added.

Silva said that activists believe Republicans in Congress would not cease targeting university students, hence anticipating that the pressures would continue to escalate.

But he reiterated their determination not to back down on the issue of peace.

-‘We’re on the right side of history’

Silva pointed out that students against Israel never advocate for violence and seek only to bring attention to the experiences of Palestinians.

“And I think the fact that they're coming for us so strongly suggests that there's fears that public opinion could be shifted because the public opinion ministry in America -- it's shifted really fast in favor of Palestine, but also across the international community.

“In my own country, Spain, has taken a pretty strong stance against those reductions in Gaza, which will be proud of, but you're seeing more and more pushback against Israeli policy, and that's going to keep happening even if you come after college kids like myself and blacklist and target us aggressively. People were guardians who realized what's going on and we're hopeful for that. That's good,” he said.

Silva drew attention to resources that pro-Israel factions invest in smearing and attacking students at Harvard, yet he stressed that activists will not give up.

“It's overdue for all the public attacks, for all the attempts to mischaracterize us, to present this as sympathetic to terrorism or as anti-Semitic. We have faced the Palestinian solidarity committee as just a group of college kids at Harvard, who care about Palestine, about international law, about avoiding the suffering of civilians.

“Anyone, who thinks that targeting us aggressively is going to get us to stop caring about these issues is wrong. Because Palestinian suffering isn't going anywhere as Palestinians' suffering has been there since the Nakba and before the Nakba. We think it will be unacceptable to the world in a matter of years. We know we're on the right side of history like those protesters against the Vietnam War were. So, we're gonna keep going at it and they can hit those with what they've got,” said Silva.

*Writing by Esra Tekin in Istanbul