Harvard was once a reputable institution. Now, though, it’s a joke, and, moving forward, any parent who pays for it or young person who goes into debt for it has inadvertently taken an IQ test and proved to be only in the double digits. The latest example of Harvard’s fall, not just from grace but from decency, is the fact that two days after its president, Claudine Gay, insisted that its devotion to free speech was so absolute that even genocidal rhetoric deserved its day, Harvard canceled a Democrat congressman who had spoken slightingly of Gay’s remarks.

I’m sure you’re familiar by now with what Gay said. However, if you were without internet for the past week, she, along with the presidents of UPenn and MIT, stated that her institution would never simply ban offensive speech. Instead, “context” was everything. In the case of speech calling for genocide, context demanded that it become action (as in actual genocide) before Harvard would even think about shutting it down.

For her brave stand, Gay earned the approval of both the Harvard faculty and board. Hundreds of the former signed a statement supporting her, and the latter just voted to keep her in her place. That they kept her shouldn’t have been surprising, given that Gay is Harvard’s first black president. No matter her incompetence, she’s not going anywhere. Oh, and it also doesn’t matter that she’s a Joe Biden-level plagiarist. Pointing that out is just so, you know…racist!

Image: Claudine Gay. YouTube screen grab.

Gay made her risible statements in the House about Harvard’s devotion to free speech even though, in September, The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) gave Harvard FIRE’s worst score ever when it issued its annual report on free speech on America’s campuses. That low score was well earned, given Harvard’s aggressive efforts to silence any speech opposing its fealty to the leftist victim hierarchy.

It turns out, though, that Harvard has a new victim class that it will also protect from any speech that is critical or could be deemed hurtful: Harvard itself! Sohrab Ahmari reports on the steps Harvard took when a Democrat congressman hurt its collective Harvard feelings:

As Gay herself said in her opening remarks to the lawmakers, “I have sought to confront hate while preserving free expression.... The free exchange of ideas is the foundation upon which Harvard is built.”

A mere two days after Gay mouthed these words, however, Harvard canceled a student event featuring two Democratic lawmakers—one of whom had been critical of Gay’s testimony.

On the afternoon of Friday, December 8, Harvard’s John Adams Society, a conservative-leaning student group, was to host a discussion on the future of U.S.–China relations and their ramifications for American industrial policy, featuring Reps. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Ro Khanna of California.

It turns out that the John Adams Society worked carefully and diligently with Harvard to bring a speaker to the campus. But suddenly, the whole event was shut down. Writes Ahmari:

What happened between December 5 and December 7? Gay’s congressional testimony took place on December 5. Auchincloss published a statement on December 6 mocking her for her supposed commitment to free speech. “Harvard ranks last out of 248 universities for support of free speech,” Auchincloss said. “But when it comes to denouncing anti-Semitism, suddenly the university has anxieties about the First Amendment. It rings hollow.” On December 7, the event was canceled.

There are a couple of things happening here. First, tyrants cannot bear ridicule and criticism, and the Harvard administration is, within its four walls, an absolute tyrant.

Second, the Harvard tyranny, like all tyrannies, doesn’t hold itself to any standards other than those that serve its immediate interests. There are rules, of course, but they are fluid (and you know how leftists love that fluidity). For people opposed to Harvard, the rules flex constantly to keep them in a one-down position. And for Harvard and its “allies”—another word leftists love—the rules’ fluidity operates in a way that always benefits them.  

For those of us neither within Harvard nor trying to curry favor with the institution, Harvard doesn’t look powerful. Instead, it looks ridiculous: Hypocritical, hate-filled, narcissistic, and the antithesis of the knowledge it purports to impart.

I’ll leave you with a very good video from Ben Shapiro, in which he discusses what universities were meant to be and how they devolved into leftist institutions that issue credentials to those who have accepted the statist mindset that governs them. He notes that they are in exactly the same position today as the universities were for the Nazis in the 1930s. I’ll add that the similarity extends right down to the genocidal antisemitism.

The whole discussion about what’s happening in academia is good, but the history lesson starts at 17:30 or so if you want to skip ahead.