Prominent rabbi resigns Harvard board position, diagnoses the rot infecting universities: 'Endemic and evil'

David Wolpe, a prominent American rabbi, announced Thursday that he had resigned his position in Harvard University's Anti-Semitism Advisory Group.

In late October, Harvard President Claudine Gay announced the formation of the committee in response to growing outrage over blatant anti-Semitism coming from Harvard students. Wolpe, a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School who was once named America's most influential rabbi, was named to the committee along with other influential Jewish leaders.

But after Gay's disastrous testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Wolpe resigned his position on the committee.

"Without rehashing all of the obvious reasons that have been endlessly adumbrated online, and with great respect for the members of the committee, the short explanation is that both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped," Wolpe said.

Wolpe said he believes Gay is a "kind and thoughtful person" and that Harvard is a "repository of extraordinary minds and important research," but revealed he believes the rot infecting Harvard — and American universities overall — runs too deep.

He explained what he means:

The system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil. Ignoring Jewish suffering is evil. Belittling or denying the Jewish experience, including unspeakable atrocities, is a vast and continuing catastrophe. Denying Israel the self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.

The solution, according to Wolpe, isn't a committee because the problem isn't a single institution.

"This is the task of educating a generation, and also a vast unlearning," he prescribed.

As pressure mounts on Gay to tender her resignation, the university president issued an apology for not explicity condemning anti-Jewish hate on Harvard's campus as a violation of the university's policies.

"I am sorry. Words matter," she told the Harvard Crimson. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret."

Reacting to the viral exchange between herself and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Gay claimed she got "caught up" in a "combative exchange about policies and procedures."

"What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged," she said.

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