Fox News host says Harvard’s Black president fails to address campus antisemitism
Several leaders of prestigious American colleges joined Dr. Claudine Gay on Tuesday as she defended herself during a House hearing against claims that she allowed antisemitism to run rampant at Harvard during the Israel-Hamas war.
Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce didn’t hide her disdain for Harvard University’s first Black president’s testimony regarding the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.
On Tuesday, Bruce blasted Dr. Claudine Gay, referring to her as “that Black woman in power” and alleging she doesn’t care about Jewish students because they’re white, according to The Daily Beast.
“It is heartbreaking to see a woman in such a position of power abandon that power. She sounds like a robot,” said Bruce. “She refuses to answer questions. Everything is at stake. The future of those young people is at stake. This nation’s at stake.”
Several leaders of prestigious American colleges joined Gay as she defended herself during the tense House Committee of Education hearing on Tuesday against claims that she allowed antisemitism to run wild at Harvard during the Israel-Hamas war.
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner aired live coverage of Gay’s testimony, which included her being grilled on Harvard’s code of conduct by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who asked whether students who chanted “from the river to the sea” — which the congresswoman likened to “the genocide of Jews” — would be disciplined or expelled.
She stated that she has attempted to tackle hate while preserving free expression, calling it a challenging task she has not always gotten right.
A recent Anti-Defamation League poll found that 73% of Jewish college students had “experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year alone.”
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It also indicated that just 39% of Jewish students now feel comfortable with others on campus knowing they are Jewish, compared to 64% before the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks.
“As I’ve said, that type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” Gay said. “When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment, or intimidation, we take action. And we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.”
While airing live coverage, Faulkner turned to Bruce to comment on Gay’s remarks, sparking the conservative pundit’s rant against the Harvard official.
Bruce accused Gay of declining to denounce genuine hate speech in her testimony despite the left’s insistence that “speech is violence,” questioning whether the president was waiting on “genocide to happen” first.
She appeared to imply that Gay doesn’t care about antisemitism on campus since it primarily affects white students, asserting that the president would be swift to act if there were anti-Black racism at Harvard.
“So this is what the problem is, is that this isn’t just some slogan or chant,” Bruce said, The Daily Beast reported. “We would be hearing something very different if it was people in robes, in [Ku Klux] Klan robes, shouting ‘Lynch certain people,’ using certain words. It would be inherently and deeply unacceptable.”
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