“A Number of Complex Issues” That Are Not Very Complex

Harvard University has had a troubled relationship with the Orange Man who occupies the Oval Office.

The latest issue has to do with a prestigious Harvard-based American Educational Journal and its worldwide investigation, focusing a Special Issue devoted entirely to “education and Palestine.” The Harvard Educational Review put out a ‘call for submissions,’ asking academics around the world for contributing articles grappling with the education of Palestinians, as well as education about Palestine and its citizens, including related debates in schools and colleges in the US.

If I had any connection to Harvard, I’d have made a submission myself. But I’m cut of less tailored cloth, having attended Michigan State University.

A hot topic it was, and one that brought serious international response.

Among the vast number of victims the Orange Man has chosen to take on, anything to do with university students criticizing Israel is close to the top. Thus far in his second term, 171 executive orders have been issued, covering a wide range of policy areas—from immigration and energy to technology and the environment.

But the Israeli genocide in Gaza is a don’t-go-there issue for this president, possibly because every bomb and bullet fired has America’s name on it and the first hug Netanyahu got was from Joe Biden.

I shudder to recall the circumstance.

At any rate, On January 29, 2025, Trump issued Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Anti‑Semitism”). It directed various federal agencies to monitor international students and staff for participation in pro‑Palestinian protests or antisemitic behavior.

No matter that 13 U.S. presidents, from Harry Truman to Joe Biden, have attempted in some form to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s un-American and antisemitic for students to voice an opinion.

Personally, I have no idea what’s antisemitic about protesting a genocide. I rather thought genocides were unpopular throughout civilized society, but Israel may feel it has forever absolution, directly from God, due to a Holocaust that occurred eighty years ago.

Remember Israel’s “Never Again” pledge?

I fully supported it, until I found by their actions that they meant only for Jews. It’s now open season on the Palestinian civilian population, particularly women and children, in whose pirated Jews currently exist.

The Executive Order warned that such otherwise peaceful demonstrators could face visa revocation or deportation if implicated in “illegal” protests or terrorism support. An accompanying fact sheet stated: “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro‑jihadist protests … come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses…” ‘We’ quickly turns to ‘I’ and, without any legal or congressional approval, the Orange Man took a step further by withholding government funding from such ‘criminality’ among American universities.

The protests were not ‘pro-jihadist,’ they were ‘anti-genocidal.’

Trump posted on Truth Social that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests.”

“Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled … NO MASKS! Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you … I will cancel visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Radicalism, I would remind him, is the thread woven into the American flag. We American citizens are agitators above all else, just as we are, and will always be, an immigrant society.

At a donor event in May 2024 (reported afterward), he said, “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country … As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave” and “If you get me reelected … we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years.”

We did re-elect him, and in six months he’s set the entire nation, and its international reputation back at least forty years, more likely fiifty.

So, Harvard bent the knee, losing well over $2 billion in research grants and contracts. The Orange Man threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, require sweeping changes in admissions, hiring, and governance, and block its international enrollment unless it complied.

The Department of Homeland Security formally revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effectively blocking enrollment of new international students and jeopardizing the status of about 6,800 current foreign students.

Hear that, Yale, Cornell and Princeton. It’s late innings, and you’re already down three runs. Do any of you you have the nerve to stand up at the plate?

Harvard is suing the administration, alleging unconstitutional retaliation and violations of academic freedom and First Amendment rights.

They will no doubt win, but it means little. Meanwhile, the damage is done and relief from the courts takes years. But that’s the way this president works, and has always worked in business, scamming contractors out of signed and completed contracts—”take half, or sue, pay the legal expenses, and wait.”

Once a con-man, always a con-man.

The Department of Education just opened investigations into several universities for allegedly fostering “hostile environments” for Jewish students. Apparently, Palestine is no longer a hostile environment, at least for innocent citizens, as the death toll there exceeds 61,200, 50-70% of them women and children. They are being gunned down at food and water distribution points as you read this.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am.

As Harvard’s feud with Trump escalated, so did tensions over the ‘Education and Palestine’ issue of Harvard’s prestigious journal.

Scholars blame the ‘Palestine exception’ to academic freedom.

If you’re unmfamiliar with the term, it was popularized by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Palestine Legal in a 2015 report titled "The Palestine Exception to Free Speech," documenting how criticism of Israel often leads to suppression that wouldn’t be tolerated for other political issues.

Why It Matters:

The "Palestine exception" illustrates how academic freedom and free speech are never applied evenly, and how political pressure and ideology can override the principles of open inquiry, especially on contentious foreign policy topics.

According to a recent Guardian article, “Against that backdrop, a prestigious American education journal decided to dedicate a special issue to “education and Palestine”. The Harvard Educational Review put out a call for submissions, asking academics around the world for ideas for articles grappling with the education of Palestinians, education about Palestine and Palestinians, and related debates in schools and colleges in the US.

“The field of education has an important role to play in supporting students, educators, and policymakers in contextualizing what has been happening in Gaza with histories and continuing impacts of occupation, genocide, and political contestations,” the journal’s editors wrote in their call for abstracts.

Contextualizing, are we? That’s an interesting use of language.

How do you contextualize a genocide, as determined by the UN? More than 50 nations supported South Africa claiming Israeli genocide in a recent case at the International Court of Justice, and roughly a dozen governments and leading officials have publicly labeled Israel’s Gaza operation as genocide. Many scholars, rights investigators, and UN mechanisms also consider that the legal threshold for genocide has likely been met.

Back to Harvard and its “Education and Palestine” Special Issue of its prestigious journal.

That special issue, which was slated to be published this summer, was ready for publication – contracts with most authors were finalized and articles were edited. They covered topics from the annihilation of Gaza’s schools to the challenges of teaching about Israel and Palestine in the US.

But on 9 June, the Harvard Education Publishing Group, the journal’s publisher, abruptly canceled the release.

In an email to the issue’s contributors, the publisher cited “a number of complex issues,” shocking authors and editors alike.

Those ‘issues’ are not, in any way, complex.

They are as simple as the shadow of the Orange Man, which hovers over the ongoing destruction of all the levers of freedom in mankind’s best yet chance at republican democracy.

As Ben Franklin remarked at America’s inception, “We have given you a republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

Who would have conceived that an American president, himself guilty of 34 felonies, would boast of the destruction of a nation he was elected to “preserve and protect, so help me God?”