You Harvard University Officials Have Supported Mass Murder For Decades and Now You Discipline Your Students for Protesting Mass Murder. Shame On You!
But hey, Veritas and all that, right?
Harvard University, in its infinite wisdom (Veritas, don’t you know?) is disciplining pro-Palestine protester students.
To all you Harvard University officials deciding whether to discipline students, recall the words of a wise man long ago:
“LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE.”
No doubt the Harvard pro-Palestine protester students violated some campus rule about decorum. Sure. Guilty as charged.
And with equally little doubt, you Harvard University officials have, for many decades, been violating the most basic, fundamental morality by aiding and abetting mass murder.
You say your motto is VERITAS, but a more apt motto would be “Harvard University: Mass murderers are us.”
Where to begin?
#1.
You Harvard University officials specially recruited and then gave a master in public administration degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to Hector Gramajo, arguably the greatest mass murderer in the Western hemisphere.
The ugly role of your oh-so very liberal Harvard University in honoring a mass murderer of Guatemalans is the subject of this article, copied in full here:
Hector Gramajo
Master's in Public Administration (Mason Fellowship), Kennedy School of Government, 1991
Massacres, Torture, and Command Responsibility
Hector Gramajo Morales held a number of senior positions in the Guatemalan military and was Minister of Defense from 1987 to 1990. From 1982 to 1983 -- while Gramajo was Army Vice Chief of Staff and director of the Army General Staff -- the Guatemalan military killed 75,000 people and destroyed some 440 villages in a massive counterinsurgency campaign directed primarily against the country's Mayan inhabitants.
Gramajo studied at the infamous "School of the Americas" (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning, Georgia in 1967, where the US government trained generations of Latin American military officers later associated with human rights abuses and dictatorships.
Apologists for the U.S.-backed genocidal dictatorship in Guatemala considered Gramajo a "moderating force" who scaled back the level of atrocities and supported a transition to civilian rule. As Gramajo infamously remarked in an interview while at Harvard:"We have created a more humanitarian, less costly strategy, to be more compatible with the democratic system ... which provides development for 70 percent of the population while we kill 30 percent. Before, the strategy was to kill 100 percent." [1]
Or, as one U.S. government official put it: "Gramajo understands how we function. He's testified in front of Congress. He speaks good English." [2] [emphasis added]
After stepping down as defense minister, Gramajo went to study at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on a yearlong Mason fellowship while preparing to return home and launch a presidential campaign. He also gave a public address at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics.
In June 1991, while heading to his commencement ceremony in academic robes, Gramajo was handed court papers informing him that he was being sued by eight Guatemalans for abuses perpetrated against them or their family members by forces under his command. Soon thereafter, the suit was combined with one brought by Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who had been raped and tortured by Gramajo's forces filed a similar lawsuit. Both cases were filed under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows lawsuits in U.S. courts for some human rights violations committed abroad.
Gramajo did not contest the lawsuit and eventually left the United States. In April 1995, a federal judge in Boston ruled against him and awarded $47.5 million in damages to the plaintiffs. Gramajo's bid for the presidency later that year failed. Gramajo never paid the award, nor did he ever return to the US, which revoked his entry visa.
On 12 March, 2004, Hector Gramajo died after being attacked on his farm by a swarm of "Africanized" bees.
A personal note: I organized a panel discussion about this at the Harvard School of Public Health where I worked when General Gramajo was to receive his master of public administration degree from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. I invited, in addition to opponents of Harvard giving Gramajo this degree, the dean of the Kennedy School of Government to be a panelist and to defend the decision of that school; he declined to show up. Evidently "Africanized" bees have a better sense of justice than you Harvard officials at the Kennedy School of Government.
At the same time, the world notes whom you Harvard University officials do NOT welcome: Kenneth Roth, who ran Human Rights Watch for 29 years, was denied a fellowship at the Kennedy School. The reason? Israel.
#2.
On May 12, 1996 Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Leslie Stahl that the killing of more than half a million Iraqi children was “worth it.” The very next year who did you Harvard University officials decide to honor by selecting to be the commencement speaker for the Harvard University graduation ceremony? You chose none other than Madeleine Albright, a champion—and executor!—of mass murder.
#3.
You Harvard University officials trained 2nd lieutenants for the Vietnam War in your Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program. The Vietnam War was mass murder. The U.S. government waged the Vietnam war for absolutely no morally defensible reason. American GIs learned when they were in Vietnam that they were not sent there to protect freedom, but the contrary.
The Britannica online encyclopedia reports:
"Not until 1995 did Vietnam release its official estimate of war dead: as many as 2 million civilians on both sides and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters." [my emphases]
So sure, Harvard University officials, go ahead and discipline students who broke some campus rules while protesting Israel’s mass genocidal murder and demanding that you divest from Israel, i.e., that you stop supporting mass murder. Your disciplining of these students makes it all too clear to the world exactly where you stand on the question of mass murder.
The person who said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” would, of course, be ignored by you if he re-appeared today, right? Veritas, and all that, uh?
But he would not be ignored by most people, good and decent people:
Thanks John. You are a beacon of light in this shameful darkness.