Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife resigned Thursday from the executive board of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government over the university’s response to a pro-Hamas letter signed by more than 30 student organizations.
“Unfortunately, our faith in the University’s leadership has been broken and we cannot in good faith continue to support Harvard and its committees,” Ofer and his wife, Batia, told CNN. “With so much disinformation being spread by social media it is essential that the world’s great institutions speak with a clear and unequivocal voice at this critical time.” (RELATED: ‘Too Little, Too Late’: Dershowitz Rips Harvard President’s Response To Student Orgs Blaming Israel For Hamas Attack)
The letter that prompted Ofer’s resignation, which was posted to Instagram on Sunday, claimed that Israel’s “apartheid regime” is “entirely responsible” for the Hamas attack that murdered over 1,200 people on Saturday. Harvard President Claudine Gay, along with 17 other university officials, released a statement Monday lamenting the “death and destruction” caused by both Hamas’ attack and Israel’s retaliation but offered no condemnation of the terrorist group’s mass murder of civilians, including infants.
Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer quits Harvard board, blasts university’s president over Hamas student letter https://t.co/oNYeyDPJmx pic.twitter.com/Ff84D2jfdI
— New York Post (@nypost) October 12, 2023
This statement led toward massive criticism of the president. More than 150 Harvard faculty signed a letter that condemned both the student’s letter and the president’s response. The faculty letter argued that the president’s response “failed to condemn the justifications for violence that come from our own campus, nor to make it clear to the world that the statement endorsed by these organizations does not represent the values of the Harvard community.”
In response to the backlash, Gay released a new statement on Tuesday in which she stated explicitly that she “condemn[s] the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” while also acknowledging that pro-Hamas student groups have the “right to speak.”
Ofer and his wife told the New York Post they were resigning “in protest of the shocking and insensitive response by the president of the university, who did not condemn the letter by student organizations who blamed Israel for the massacres.”