Harvard Loves Jihad

...And the house system...

...Then, as if to prove that this was no isolated outbreak of Parisian amorality, a faculty committee selected as one of the three student speakers at the June 6 commencement senior Zayed Yasin, former president of the Harvard Islamic Society...

...My stand on this particular issue has to do with my country's generally unconditional support of the state perpetrating the moral injustice to which I am objecting," wrote Nagy, arguing that Israel has a right to defend itself against other states, but not against stateless Palestinians...

...I consider it wrong for any state to undertake and maintain an illegal occupation of a territory containing millions of people who are left without recourse to human rights...

...He plays coy, saying that he may not even have voted for Yasin's speech, which he nonetheless terms "wonderful...

...Another Harvard house master, William Graham, first signed the divestment petition and later recanted...

...But, he adds, "it cannot curtail my sense of duty to utilize free speech as part of the democratic process...

...Harvard law professor Alan Der-showitz, a vocal foe of the divestment petition, is less interested in the usual gang of left-leaning ideologues who signed it and more concerned about those members of the Harvard community with direct contact with students' daily lives—namely, the house masters...

...A prominent teaching post at the nation's finest university evidently does not grant one the power to see what is in plain sight...

...It's a dark room with crimson curtains, crimson carpeting, and old chairs upholstered in aging crimson leather...

...Rather, he takes issue with the petition organizers' decision to put his name up on their website (harvard-mitdivest.org/petition.html...

...It was the night of the senior dinner...

...under the house system—fashioned after the English model and established in the 1930s under President A. Lawrence Lowell—house masters act as a combination dormitoSeth Gitell is the political writer of the Boston Phoenix...

...Hanson agreed to do just that...

...asks Dershowitz...

...The working title of his address: "American Jihad...

...I said I didn't think it was a night for politics," remembers Waldman...

...Yasin's protests that he intended to distinguish his use of the word jihad from the terrorist use of the Islamic term for "struggle" might have met a friendlier hearing were it not for his history of defending the bona fides of a charity called the Holy Land Foundation, "whose money," President Bush declared in December, "is used to support the Hamas terror organization...

...Since they had a website and were putting things up beyond my control that I had nothing to do with, that led to the decision that I did not want to be a part of that...

...So why sign it...

...Richard Thomas, Nagy's colleague in the classics department, can be considered something of a two-fer...

...Waldman contends this violated the spirit of the agreed-upon dialogue, which was supposed to be for the "Winthrop community...

...ry head, college president, and parental figure...

...It's here that Harvard senior Ari Waldman experienced something he didn't bargain on when he entered the college almost four years ago...

...Can you imagine a house master signing a petition against affirmative action...

...Waldman, unmoved by Hanson's call for a Socratic dialogue, has asked that another Winthrop House official, not the house master as is Harvard practice, hand him his diploma on June 6. Perhaps there is something that connects the ancient (never mind modern) Athens of Socrates with being anti-Israel: Several of the most visible signers of the divestment petition are members of Harvard's prestigious classics department—including its charismatic star and Homer expert Gregory Nagy and its chairman and Rome specialist Richard Thomas...

...Hanson likens his signing the divestment petition to his protests during "the Vietnamese period...

...Hanson, a 62-year-old divinity school professor who specializes in both the Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Languages, warmly greeted the students, comparing his joy in witnessing their achievements to the pleasure he took in watching his own children grow up...

...Graham says he did not feel pressure because of his role as a house master...

...He says "it simply is predicated on one fact that I have been very, very concerned about violence on both sides of the conflict in Palestine and Israel...

...He'd be fired instantaneously for creating tension in the house...

...Nagy was in Paris and not available for an interview...

...Asked about the fact that the petition makes little mention of the Palestinian targeting of civilians (calling it "unacceptable and abhorrent" with no indication of what Israel should do to protect its citizens), Hanson says, "The problem with a petition is you're signing on to somebody else's words...

...In his Robert Kennedy: A Life, Evan Thomas describes how Kennedy attended classes in his Navy uniform and considered Eliot House his "ship...

...Asked whether one might see a disturbing connection between an anti-Israel petition and the selection of a graduation speech on "jihad" for a year in which America was the victim of a major terrorist attack in the name of "jihad," Thomas replies, "I don't see a connection...

...As the call for divestment is modeled on the crusade against South African apartheid, the politics of the petition could not have been more obvious—the international left's Zionism-is-racism smear campaign had come to Cambridge...

...During the discussion the house master repeatedly diverted the conversation away from terrorism and divestment and onto Israel...

...Waldman, who grew up in East Brunswick, New Jersey, arrived at the Junior Common Room smartly dressed—jacket, tie, and yarmulke — to relax and mingle with his fellow graduates for the senior cocktail party several weeks ago...

...But at Harvard in recent weeks, the actions of the faculty have helped to ensure that the senior year of Wald-man and other soon-to-be Harvard graduates is all about politics...

...That's the kind of thing that would be in a complete statement if I would have composed it...

...Why focus moral outrage on Israel and not, say, Saudi Arabia, from which 15 of 19 of the September 11 hijackers came and which continues to promote a hateful extremist religious ideology that preaches violence against Jews...

...They put up a website, which I didn't know when I signed the petition, and there was one link that had nothing to do with Israel and Palestine and which I found offensive," says Graham...

...Waldman arrived to find the discussion "packed with at least 10 of Paul's divestment supporters...

...He not only signed the divestment petition, he also sat on the six-member faculty committee that selected Yasin as the graduation speaker...

...That way the house master could soothe the hard feelings created when he signed so one-sided a statement...

...He had another message for Waldman, however, asking the student if he had seen the news about his signing the divestment petition in that day's Crimson, the Harvard student daily...

...He did send me a lengthy e-mail statement about his decision to sign the petition...

...All this is a far cry from how Harvard reacted the last time America fell victim to a surprise attack...

...Ari, how do you justify settlements...

...Thomas bitterly opposes any attempt to link these two developments...

...Prior to the discussion, however, he notified an Arab student of the upcoming event and invited others to attend...

...Hanson has no such regrets...

...It was a festive night, and the wine was flowing," Waldman recalls, noting that a few hours earlier he had learned of a petition being circulated among the faculty at Harvard and M.I.T., calling for the universities to divest themselves of funds invested in companies that do business in Israel—IBM and McDonald's, for example...

...Several dozen high-profile Harvard academics put their names to the divestment petition, which amounts to a whitewash of Palestinian terrorism at the expense of Israel...

...Thomas says the speech—whose title was changed late last week from "American Jihad" to "Of Faith and Citizenship"— has nothing to do with terrorism, adding that it includes a discussion of the "misunderstanding and corruption of the word" jihad...

...For his part, Hanson readily acknowledges that the discomfort of some of the Jewish students in the house "pains me greatly...

...Concerns about other states are not pertinent to the concern I am addressing," Nagy responded...

...During World War II, the university was fully supportive of the war effort, creating, for example, the V-12 program to train Naval officers for war...

...the professor asked...

...Because, says Hanson, it fosters a "Socratic pedagogy" between himself and residents of the house...

...It doesn't strike precisely the balance that I would have in a personal statement...

...Among the signatories of the petition: Paul D. Hanson, the Winthrop House master...

...A portrait of Ronald M. Ferry, the first master of Winthrop House, and his dog hangs above a piano...

...For example, one cannot address the crimes of 9/11 by placing sanctions on Saudi Arabia, because it was not the Saudi government that perpetrated those crimes...

...Bothered by his encounter with Hanson at the Senior Dinner at Winthrop House, Waldman decided a house discussion of Hanson's decision to sign the divestment petition was in order...