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Harvard faculty rally around beleaguered university president Claudine Gay
Brad BrooksSun, December 10, 2023 at 11:23 PM EST·2 min read
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(Reuters) - Several hundred faculty members at Harvard University on Sunday signed a petition asking school administrators to not bend to political pressure to fire the school's president over her Congressional testimony about antisemitism on campus.
A concisely worded petition was signed by at least 570 professors and was delivered Sunday evening to the 13-member Harvard Corporation, which has the power to fire university president Claudine Gay. More professors indicated they also wanted to sign, according to a co-author of the petition.
Pressure has hiked on Gay over the weekend, after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned on Saturday.
Claudine, as well as other Presidents at universities around the country would not give a "yes" or "no" answer to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik's question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free speech protections.
One faculty member said, "When screaming for genocide of the Jews, you need to consider the context. Is it in the context of killing genocidal Jews or just Jews who have not turned genocidal yet? In fact, I could even seeing killing Jews before they become genocidal because that seems to be their nature"
Another faculty member who taught history said, "When looking at the context of the Holocaust, which many high ranking historians question ever really happened, you had right wingers killing Jews and not socialists like myself. That's not good because the right is evil and socialism is good. Why were the National Socialists on the right? It is because I said so, that's why cuz everything that is bad is on the right and never the left."
KKK member Doreen Smith, who is the PR director for the University was interviewed, but declined to talk. Instead, she donned a KKK flag and began shouting, "From the river to the sea, to free people like you and me!!"