Harvard Law School Students Vote To Divest, Boycott, And Sanction Israel; University Of Chicago Investigated For Racial Discrimination

You wanna know why I’m depressed? Stuff like this:

Today, the Harvard Law School student body (72%) voted to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

The Harvard Law School student government voted last year to do the same thing.

No other international issue has ever been voted on.

The Harvard Law School Alliance for Israel… pic.twitter.com/jm17dNfc6P

— Shabbos Kestenbaum (@ShabbosK) March 14, 2025

Yep, the Law School at my Ph.D. alma mater is showing a bit of antisemitism (I no longer believe that this is completely about Israel’s actions, because the Law School never had any resolutions about Hamas or its actions). As it says above, “no other international issue has ever been voted on.” Why, then they’re singling out the world’s only Jewish state? No resolutions about Syria, where there was far more carnage? Not on your life.

Here’s the article about it from the Harvard Crimson (click headline to read).

An excerpt:

The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.

The resolution, which called on Harvard to “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.

The results — announced late Thursday night — mark the second vote by a Harvard student body in favor of divestment. Students at the Harvard School of Public Health voted in June to urge Harvard to divest from Israel, and governments at the Law School, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate School of Design have all urged divestment. But its passage is unlikely to result in change from Harvard, whose leaders have rebuffed calls for divestment at every turn.

All those misguided students, uninformed about the war but bent on flaunting their virtue! Fortunately, the people who have the power to divest, the administration, aren’t having it. They’re institutionally neutral, like Chicago:

The Law School moved swiftly to distance itself from the referendum outcome.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in a statement that “although it has historically administered leadership elections for student government, and offered to do so again this year, the law school administration played no role in the referendum conducted by student government.”

“As explained in a message to students, the administration expressed deep disappointment with student government’s leadership’s decision to proceed with a needlessly divisive referendum which runs contrary to student government’s stated objectives of ‘fostering community’ and ‘enhancing inclusion,’” he added.

Sadly, Mr. Neal doesn’t know that Jews don’t fall under DEI protection. We are “white adjacent.”

The referendum was first proposed in a petition by Law Students for a Free Palestine, an unrecognized student group, which passed the 300-signature threshold to trigger a Student Government referendum Feb. 18.

Of course Harvard is one of the schools (there are nine total) under investigation by the Department of Justice for allowing a climate of antisemitism to arise (a Title VI violation, I believe). This won’t make it any easier on the school.

More depressing news. My new academic home, The University of Chicago, is one of 45 schools being investigated for racial discrimination. Click below to see the Chicago Maroon article:

An excerpt:

The University of Chicago is one of 45 schools under investigation by the Department of Education for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance.

The announcement alleges that the University has engaged in “race-exclusionary practices in [its] graduate programs” through its partnership with the PhD Project, an organization that works to expand diversity in business school Ph.D. programs. Booth School of Business’s Stevens Doctoral Program is included on the Project’s website as a university partner.

The PhD Project, the Department of Education’s announcement reads, “purports to provide doctoral students with insights into obtaining a Ph.D. and networking opportunities, but limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”

By “race-exclusionary,” of course, they mean “violation of DEI strictures”, and, indeed, some of that has been going on here. But since those violations are kept quite quiet, with phone calls used instead of emails (or so I hear), so it’s hard to know what’s going on.  As far as I can see, DEI initiatives are still pervasive at Chicago, (here’s the main website), but I don’t know if they rise to the level that would cause the government to withhold federal money—as they did for Columbia University.

A bit more. The link at “has quietly removed” below tells you how DEI sites are being muted here. However, if we follow the model of other schools, they’re not being shelved but just put into a file cabinet with a different name.

The investigation follows a February 14 letter sent by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, which informed educational institutions and agencies that they had 14 days to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs or “face potential loss of federal funding.”

In the letter, Trainor wrote that universities’ “embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia.”

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the University has quietly removed many mentions of DEI from its websites.

In a statement, the University informed the Maroon that it had received notice of the Department of Education’s investigation.

“The University has been notified that a complaint was filed with the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and an investigation was opened. The University prohibits unlawful discrimination and will cooperate with OCR on its investigation,” the statement read.