Selling Out Veritas

The Palestine Exception at Harvard.

Our MBA acceptance letters boldly declare HBS as “a place that inspires true change and lasting impact—and a place where every voice matters.” As an institution, Harvard champions itself as a bastion of free expression and open dialogue. Yet, despite claiming that “your classmates will benefit from your perspective and you will grow from theirs,” recent events expose how our school selectively enforces free speech principles broadly — an institutional hypocrisy that has become especially glaring through its suppression of pro-Palestinian voices. Based on its actions, Harvard’s message is clear: only certain student voices, perspectives, and safety truly matter on this campus.

This hypocrisy became starkly evident in 2024 when Harvard College imposed unprecedented disciplinary measures against more than a dozen graduating seniors, publicly citing violations of campus protest guidelines to justify withholding diplomas and jeopardizing prestigious fellowships for several Rhodes Scholar recipients. Historically, Harvard has tolerated and even refrained from severe disciplinary actions in response to actually disruptive protests, such as the anti-Vietnam War occupation of administrative buildings in 1969, shantytown encampments against South African apartheid investments in 1986, three-week sit-in demanding a living wage in 2001, Occupy Harvard tent city in 2011, and blockades calling for fossil fuel divestment in 2014 and 2015. Harvard’s decision in 2024 was therefore not mere discipline; it was deliberate intimidation designed to silence future dissent by making examples out of the most visible student activists. Harvard’s actions violated a core principle behind free speech: that unpopular or uncomfortable perspectives cannot be suppressed by those in authority or with the deepest pockets. In taking this unprecedented step, Harvard betrayed its professed commitment to integrity, open dialogue, and the free exchange of ideas.

Harvard’s suppression of Palestinian perspectives didn’t end there — it escalated. Just months later, in early 2025, Harvard Medical School canceled a student-organized panel featuring pediatric patients from Gaza receiving medical care in Boston, deeming it “too one-sided.” Consider the heartbreaking context: in December 2024, United Nation Secretary-General António Guterres stated that “Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees per capita anywhere in the world.” The panel’s cancellation was not an isolated incident, but rather part of a troubling pattern in which administrative policies are increasingly wielded as tools of censorship whenever Palestine is mentioned. When Harvard Law students hosted a Valentine’s Day event advocating for Palestinian solidarity, administrators swiftly shut it down, citing vague policy violations after receiving complaints. Time and time again, supporting Palestine requires exceptions, carve-outs, and compromises that no institution would ever impose on other causes.

Most alarmingly for MBA students, HBS itself perpetuated this disturbing trend on March 6 when former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a man who once said “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” was invited to speak at Klarman Hall. As Professor Paul Gompers explained the guidelines on Harvard’s disruption policy, Bennett interrupted and joked, “I think we’ll just give them a pager,” explicitly referencing a 2024 Israeli terrorist attack in Lebanon that killed 12 civilians and wounded at least 3,000 others. This remark — a direct threat to student safety — drew widespread laughter from the audience. The horrific nature of the comment is even more stunning given Bennett’s documented role in the Qana massacre, in which Israeli artillery deliberately shelled a clearly-marked United Nations compound sheltering over 800 Lebanese civilians, killing over 100, as confirmed by investigations from the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. How, then, can Harvard justify hosting him? It is ironic that Palestinian children who survived bombings and lost limbs were labeled “too one-sided,” yet Bennett’s violent rhetoric was not. At the time of writing, three weeks have passed, and Harvard and HBS have offered no condemnation, clarification, or distancing. This is not merely a failure of moral leadership; it is a shameful abdication of institutional responsibility. Harvard’s message is unmistakable: power over principle.

Let us not hide behind a false pretense of “open dialogue.” As Harvard warmly welcomes speakers like Bennett, whose violent rhetoric is celebrated as “dialogue,” the university simultaneously suppresses those advocating for an end to the genocide. Just this month, over 3,000 “affiliates” signed an open letter to University President Alan M. Garber, demanding the permanent dissolution of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee — a group repeatedly targeted for advocating Palestinian human rights. One of their supposed crimes? Hosting Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian poet, writer, and journalist who was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME. His crime? El-Kurd described Israel as a “racist endeavor.” Yet this characterization aligns with assessments by leading international human rights organizations and even former senior Israeli officials. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented Israeli policies toward Palestinians as constituting apartheid, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Following its own investigation and legal review, the International Court of Justice ruled in 2024 that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territories are tantamount to apartheid under international law. Notably, former Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo has also stated unequivocally that “there is an apartheid state here.” So while Bennett is free to openly joke about violent attacks and threaten student safety, students critically examining the actions of the Israeli government face threats of disbandment and disciplinary action. If Harvard truly upheld its professed values of open dialogue, intellectual rigor, and free speech, such glaring double standards could never exist. As former Harvard Hillel Director Bernard Steinberg warned, we are witnessing “the cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.” This is not about combating real hatred, harassment, or threats against Jewish students, which must be taken seriously, but about extinguishing Palestinian advocacy on campus and normalizing authoritarian tactics that punish students for engaging in legitimate political speech.

Harvard’s hypocrisy, however, extends far beyond campus boundaries. Many Harvard and HBS alumni, under the guise of protecting campus safety, have actively funded and advocated for the doxing and threatening of students whose voices they oppose. Yet these same alumni, who threaten the school by withholding donations, publicly disparaging students through hostile tweets, and leveraging their political affiliations to pressure Harvard into silencing voices they oppose, are warmly welcomed back to campus whenever they please. How disgraceful it is that HBS continues to embrace alumni who actively threaten the safety of their students.

It should come as no surprise, then, that students across Harvard College, HLS, and HBS have lost internships and full-time career opportunities for expressing pro-Palestinian views or being associated with statements critical of Israel, often due to direct pressure from the very alumni who use their influence to punish dissent and pressure companies to rescind offers.

Every November for as long as anyone can remember, all HBS RC sections host Flag Day to celebrate the global diversity that our HBS class collectively represents through food, presentations, and a ceremonial flag-raising. However, not many know that there was intense pressure from alumni and students to cancel Flag Day both last and this year in order to restrict Palestinian representation. The delayed Flag Day for the Class of 2026 wasn’t an accident, nor was the introduction — for the first time — of a formal qualification criteria list. Until this year, students of all backgrounds were welcome to represent any country they felt connected to. The rules only changed to marginalize and silence pro-Palestinian voices because, at Harvard, even the symbolic representation of Palestine is seen as threatening. Harvard administrators watch passively as Palestinians and their allies are systematically silenced and vilified — their identities portrayed as threats, trauma weaponized against them, and calls for basic justice criminalized.

The hypocrisy at HBS and Harvard isn’t just an issue for those advocating for Palestinian human rights; it’s also fundamentally about the integrity of free expression. Today, it’s Palestine; tomorrow, it will be any viewpoint found inconvenient. Every HBS student should feel deeply betrayed — we’re investing over $160,000 in tuition to be lectured about values that Harvard itself refuses to uphold. If our institution silences us the moment our voices become politically inconvenient, what kind of moral clarity, courage, or ethical leadership are we paying to be taught? We spend countless hours at HBS analyzing case studies about integrity and leadership, where protagonists risk their careers to uphold truth and ethical principles, yet Harvard administrators clearly prioritize their personal job security, endowment growth, and alumni appeasement over institutional values. Political headwinds inevitably fade, but Harvard’s core principles must endure. Harvard can no longer credibly teach values it refuses to uphold. If Harvard folds like a cheap suit and abandons its values whenever pressured, we must ask ourselves: what does Harvard truly stand for? 

Harvard students must recognize that the current atmosphere of fear surrounding pro-Palestinian expression isn’t isolated; it’s part of a growing authoritarian chill across academia, fueled by fear-mongering rhetoric and political pressure from the U.S. administration. Columbia University and Johns Hopkins recently saw federal funding totaling approximately $1.2 billion abruptly canceled over politicized allegations. Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung, both Columbia students and permanent U.S. residents, have been targeted by the Trump administration for their pro-Palestinian activism — Khalil detained without charge, and Chung threatened with deportation. And at Georgetown, Professor Badar Khan Suri was torn from his home in front of his family by masked federal agents, detained without charge, and held in a Louisiana immigration facility. This campaign isn’t just targeting individuals; it’s also now impacting classrooms and curricula. Georgetown Law’s dean was forced to rebuke government threats to deny employment to students if the school did not alter its curriculum — an unprecedented and alarming attack on academic freedom. These cases represent a horrifying reality: weaponized prosecution rooted not in criminal conduct, but in McCarthyite tactics. 

When America’s “leading” universities bend to appease political power, rather than defend their values, they normalize a direct assault on our fundamental civil liberties. Columbia’s troubling history illustrates precisely this danger of institutional complicity. In 1933, Columbia students protested Nazi violence against Jews, only for Columbia’s president to warmly welcome Nazi Ambassador Dr. Hans Luther, legitimizing Hitler’s supposed “peaceful intentions.” Nearly a century later, as Jewish-American historian Dr. Zachary Foster has pointed out, history repeated itself: Columbia responded to student protests against Israeli violence in Gaza by inviting Bennett to a closed-door meeting with select students and faculty in early March. If Harvard administrators believe such compromises could never happen here, they need only look to Columbia’s rapid and shameful collapse as a chilling preview. Continuing the pattern of submission to power, on March 21, Columbia capitulated to Trump administration demands, surrendering institutional independence to regain $400 million in federal funding. Harvard’s selective enforcement of free expression threatens to set our university on the same dangerous path: trading core academic principles for political and financial expediency. 

Make no mistake: if Harvard and HBS remain on this course, this authoritarian impulse will not stop at students and campus activists. Such intimidation always begins by targeting minorities, scapegoating vulnerable groups to justify broader crackdowns on speech and civil liberties. Today, it’s students and Green Card holders; it is hardly far-fetched to believe citizens may be next.

It is time for Harvard and HBS to practice the Veritas they preach. Our university must clearly affirm a universal commitment to free expression and hold accountable those who threaten student safety, even when they hold political power or wealthy alumni status. In moments like these, universities must unequivocally defend their role as vital hubs for diverse ideas and courageous dissent. With American democracy itself on the line, we must stand up, speak out, and actively lead a public defense of our fundamental right to speak and study freely. This isn’t a momentary issue; it’s a defining test. With the world watching closely, history will judge our response.

Omar Hamade (MBA’ 26) is originally from California. He holds a degree in Biology from Santa Clara University and a Master’s in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he was a Schwarzman Scholar. Prior to HBS, he worked across the biotechnology and quantum computing industries.