Torres: Harvard ‘has no one to blame but itself’

Harvard is “confronting a reputational crisis of its own making,” Rep. Ritchie Torres said on Saturday, responding to the disappointment of the university’s President Alan Garber with its fundraising efforts.

“More disappointing than Harvard’s fundraising is its failure to combat campus antisemitism. Therein lies the true disappointment!” tweeted Torres, the Progressive Democrat whose district includes Riverdale, adding that the university “has no one to blame but itself.”

Speaking ahead of the publication of Harvard’s 2024 financial report late last week, Garber told The Harvard Crimson that “there are also some indications that we will see improvements in the future. I can’t get more specific than that right now.”

Garber was appointed to lead the university until at least 2027, after filling in as the interim president following Claudine Gay’s resignation in January. Gay presided over the Ivy League institution during seething campus tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists.

She submitted her resignation following remarks on antisemitism that caused public outrage. Testifying to the House Committee on Education on Dec. 5, Gay said that whether calls to commit genocide against Jews violated Harvard conduct was “context dependent.”

On-campus tensions intensified with an anti-Israel encampment that lasted for 20 days in April and May.

Three days after the college’s fall semester began, Harvard students again rallied for a pro-Palestinian protest on Sept. 6. The protest was led by a group named Harvard Out of Palestine, which subsequently held a meeting with Garber and other officials, the Crimson reported.