Larry Hogan pulls out of Harvard fellowships amid backlash over university response to Israel attack

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan added to the denunciation of Harvard University as he announced Monday he is withdrawing his offer to participate in two fellowships amid the Ivy League school facing backlash for its response to the Hamas attacks on Israel.

Mr. Hogan, a Republican, wrote a letter to Harvard President Claudine Gay saying that he will not participate in fellowships at the university’s Kennedy School of Politics and the Chan School of Public Health.

“I cannot condone the dangerous antisemitism that has taken root on your campus, especially by more than 30 Harvard student organizations attempting to justify and celebrate Hamas’ terrorism against innocent Israeli and American civilians,” his letter stated.

“This horrific terrorist attack was the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust and it should be universally condemned as exactly what it is: pure evil,” Mr. Hogan wrote. “While these students have a right to free speech, they do not have a right to have hate speech go unchallenged by your institution. Harvard’s failure to immediately and forcefully denounce the antisemitic vitriol from these students is in my opinion a moral stain on the university.”

Mr. Hogan was referring to a letter written by a group of more than 30 Harvard University student organizations saying that the “Israeli regime” is “entirely responsible” for the surprise attack from Hamas on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,400 Israelis.

Mr. Hogan’s announcement comes after the Wexner Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on the development of Jewish leadership, announced last week that it was ending ties with the school for the “dismal failure” of university leadership to take a stand against Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and his wife Batia also took a stand against the school by quitting a Harvard executive board they were on.

The letter from students’ groups, titled “Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine,” had clubs like the school’s Amnesty International affiliate, Harvard Jews for Liberation, the Harvard Islamic Society and more, join in on the statement.

“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the letter read.

“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” it stated. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison.”

The student organization’s letter said that the “apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”

The letter immediately faced backlash from lawmakers who were Harvard alumni, and others, who also called out university leadership for their lack of response.

In a statement, Ms. Gay wrote that there should be no doubt that she condemns “the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.”

Rep. Elise Stefanik, New York Republican, and other university alumni in Congress called on Ms. Gay to resign after she released a video statement on the Ivy League’s YouTube account that said the university rejects terrorism, hate, and harassment of any groups of people, and embraces free expression “even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”

“We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views,” Ms. Gay said in the video. “But that is a far cry from endorsing them. It’s in the exercise of our freedom to speak that we reveal our characters and we reveal the character of our institution.”

Days after the letter was released, students started getting doxxed, while others revealed that they had no idea their student group was signing the letter. Some groups have taken back their endorsements.