Harvard Responds After Backlash Over Students Blaming Israel for Hamas Attacks

Harvard University President Claudine Gay wrote a 119-word letter after student groups blamed Israel for the Hamas attacks.

Students walk through Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on March 12, 2020. Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Harvard University issued a brief statement after the institution was criticized for its silence on Hamas’s deadly attacks on Israel and students blaming the “apartheid regime” for the war in the Middle East.

Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, published a 119-word statement condemning “the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas” and wrote that “such inhumanity is abhorrent” regardless of individuals’ views concerning the origins of the conflict in the region.