Harvard was founded in 1636 as a divinity school, a school to train Christian ministers. The badly flawed Reverend Parris in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible was a Harvard graduate. To this day, Harvard retains a divinity school—sort of.
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In recent years, Harvard, like many universities, has, for years, been the scene of vicious antisemitic “protests,” many of which have been violent. Called before Congress, then Harvard President Claudine Gay and other University presidents were glaringly deficient in their defense of the rights and safety of Jewish students, so much so that Gay was forced to resign. By March 2026, the Department of Justice sued Harvard:
After Hamas’ attacks on October 7, 2023, Harvard has tolerated antisemitic mobs of students, faculty, and visitors allegedly expressing their opposition to Israel by assaulting, harassing, and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students with perceived racial, ethnic, and national connections to Israel. Harvard has been deliberately indifferent to its Jewish and Israeli students’ plight and failed to prevent such conduct by selectively enforcing its campus rules to permit it to continue. Harvard ignored what its own Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias deemed the “exclusion of Israeli or Zionist students from social spaces and extracurricular activities.” Harvard failed to meaningfully discipline the mobs that occupied its buildings and terrorized its Jewish and Israeli students. Federal law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in schools that accept federal funding.
Facing loss of its federal funding, Harvard remains unrepentant, and so does the Divinity School, as a Free Beacon article with this title suggests:
Harvard Divinity School Launches Journal Devoted to ‘Queerness,’ ‘Palestinian Liberation’
‘We are not scholars,’ the editors write in volume one, with ‘support’ from dean’s office
No, they self-evidently are not. “Asherah” is a Canaanite goddess banned by the Bible, an obvious antisemitic insult.
The first issue of touts “Innovations in Jewish Prayer and Ritual.” It is really something to behold, even by the provocative and sophomoric standards of student publications.
While the journal’s website describes it as “a student publication of Harvard divinity school,” it also says it was “Created by Shaul Magid,” who is not a student but rather the Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in Residence at Harvard Divinity School and a member of the executive committee of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies.
Magid’s politics? This provides a clue:
In his 2023 book, The Necessity of Exile, Magid declared that “Israel is mired in an increasingly chauvinistic ethnonational project,” and said that he doesn’t think “that liberalism and Zionism can be seen as compatible in any easy way.”
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One would think a professor of “Modern Jewish Studies” would have at least some affinity for Jews and Israel, but alas, it doesn’t appear to be so. The Journal’s student editors remove all doubt:
Next up comes a statement from the student editors in chief, Daisy Jacobs and Lila Rimalovski, who write, “Please know we are not scholars of the ancient texts, we did not go to yeshiva, nor are we Rabbis.”
Instead, they write, they are coming from “the sidelines of mainstream Jewish life, largely because of our queerness, our anti-racism, our support for Palestinian liberation.”
Oh, but it’s worse:
“We must also note that this publication finds itself in a moment encumbered by war, by fascism and genocide, by religious- and ethno-nationalism, by a reckoning with the rapid development of AI and its impact on planet and people, by climate collapse, by pandemics, and by the pervasive presence of disconnection and loneliness,” they write, tossing in a reference to “What was suppressed by the Holocaust, by the whitening hand of Zionism, or by the global project of Christian conversion,” as if Zionism or Christian evangelism belong on the same list as the Holocaust.
There are 14 contributors to the Journal. Four list their pronouns, and four admit involvement with Harvard Divinity School Jews for Liberation, an antisemitic organization. Among the Journal’s offerings, queer, erotic, antisemitic poetry.
One would think that with the threat of the loss of federal funding looming, Harvard wouldn’t so blatantly support an equally blatantly antisemitic student publication sponsored by a Divinity School professor and blessed by the Divinity School Dean. But this is Harvard, the oldest university in America, and how dare Jews and the government think Harvard must obey federal anti-discrimination law, or practice common decency and sanity.
The witch trials of The Crucible are a powerful argument for reason, humanity, and not using religion to justify hatred. Harvard has abandoned them all.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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