Harvard University told a Jewish organization to pack up its menorah every night during Hanukkah, fearing the display could be vandalized and create bad press for the university. Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who head’s Harvard Chabad, discussed this in a YouTube video.
“On our campus in the shadow of Widener Library, we in the Jewish community are instructed, ‘We’ll let you have the menorah, you made your point, OK. Pack it up. Don’t leave it out overnight because there will be criminal activity, we fear, and it won’t look good. It pains me to have to say sadly, that Jew hate and antisemitism is thriving on this campus,” he said.
The College Fix reports that “on other campuses, Jewish students and leaders have said much the same after seeing a swastika and hearing calls of “intifada” during Hanukkah.”
At Harvard, Jews gathered each night to light the menorah. And every night they had to take down the display afterwards due to college officials’ worries about vandalism.
The College Fix reports that the rabbi “longs for the day when Harvard “has our back” and “doesn’t force us to hide [the menorah] at night.” He also hopes that some day, when college officials hear “hateful calls to the death of Jews,” they “don’t walk by and say nothing” but rather “speak” out against it.
The rabbi recounts that a Jewish student looks in the mirror every morning before leaving home to make sure nothing betrays the fact that he is a Jew. “That’s the reality of the Jewish community at Harvard today. We have to pack up the menorah when we’re done. Some students feel they have to remove anything about their physical appearance that suggests they’re a target.”
“You know when change is going to happen on this campus? When we don’t have to pack up the menorah,” he said.
The New York Post reported that at New York University, campus administrators were likewise accused of denying Jewish students “their annual Hanukkah lighting on Kimmel steps” last week. A campus official claimed to the New York Post that the university recently barred all events at the location, not just the Hanukkah display.
The College Fix says that “since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Jewish faculty and students have reported a huge rise in antisemitism on U.S. campuses, including messages that ‘Hitler was right,’ ‘gas the Jews,’ and ‘Holocaust 2.0.'”
Our schools have bad values. Some of them think vandalism and theft aren’t a big deal if the perpetrator is a member of a historically disadvantaged group. “An ‘equity audit’ of North Providence School District says ‘taking or attempting to take personal property should not result in suspension because it can be a result of…cultural mis-understandings.’” In essence, if you are a thief, you can say, “Sorry I stole your stuff. It’s my culture,” notes Nicole Solas.
Colleges apply campus rules against inappropriate remarks in ways that are discriminatory and also violate academic freedom. Washington University in St. Louis investigated a professor for anti-Hamas remarks that some people viewed as dehumanizing toward Palestinians. The University of Southern California suspended a professor for calling for the death of Hamas members. But at Cornell University, there was no investigation of a professor who called the Hamas terror attacks that killed over 1200 people “exhilarating” and “exciting.
