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The Yad Vashem Holocaust museum says it is alarmed by the US congressional testimonies by Harvard President Claudine Gay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Sally Kornbluth and the University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill.
“The positions taken by the three university presidents in their testimonies highlight a basic ignorance of history, including the fact that the Holocaust did not start with ghettos or gas chambers, but with hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric, decrees and actions by senior academics, among other leaders of society,” the statement says.
The memorial says the universities had an inadequate response to campus antisemitism that has flared during the Israel-Hamas war.
In a statement, Yad Vashem accuses the presidents of “minimizing” and “contextualizing” antisemitism.
In recent weeks, the federal US government has opened investigations into several universities, including Penn and Harvard, regarding antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.
The university presidents told a House committee yesterday that there is a fine line between protecting free speech and allowing protests, while also combating antisemitism.
They pointedly refused to say that calls for the genocide of Jews breach their rules on harassment and bullying, saying, it “depends on the context.”
Billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman called on the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to resign “in disgrace.”
Ackman, the CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, accused the University President’s of exhibiting “profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed leadership.”
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