Harvard University, which has been named 2023’s worst school for free speech by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), is now, ironically, stressing its “commitment to free expression” in the wake of more than 30 of its student groups issuing a statement in which they blamed Israel for the Hamas terrorist attack that left more than 1,300 Israelis dead.
“Our university embraces a commitment to free expression. That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views,” Harvard President Claudine Gay said in the university’s third public statement on the matter.
“But that is a far cry from endorsing them,” Gay continued. “It’s in the exercise of our freedom to speak that we reveal our characters and we reveal the character of our institution.”
Ironically, however, Harvard “has never performed well” in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s “College Free Speech Rankings,” finishing below 75 percent of the schools surveyed in the past four years, the organization said in a newsletter last month.
