The letter was signed by representatives of thirty student organizations at Harvard University, a center with a long tradition in defending freedom of expression. But it did not include the names of the signatories. The letter had been written in the early hours of Saturday, October 7, when all the details of the horrendous massacre caused by Hamas in the kibbutz communities near Gaza were not yet known.
By the time photographs and videos of the massacre began to circulate, the letter had gone viral and the controversy had escaped the control of the university authorities.
In the days after the publication, a truck on which a digital board had been installed spread the photographs and the names of the signatories. It had been financed by a conservative group, Accuracy in Media, which has already led cases like this at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley.
They weren't the only ones. The website of a Stanford graduate, Maxwell Meyer, disseminated the list with the names and all personal information so that “they would not be hired inadvertently.” Bill Ackman, a Harvard-educated hedge fund billionaire, publicly congratulated this initiative. “I am in favor of freedom of expression,” he said, “but whoever makes these types of statements must be responsible for their actions and assume the consequences that this may have.”
The public exposure of the signatories – a technique called doxxing – has even affected their relatives, who have been contacted by right-wing militants.
Economist and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard between 2001 and 2006, blamed the current president, Claudine Gay, for having reacted too late and allowing the controversy to escalate.
The letter has also had practical effects for the finances of this university. Israeli millionaire Idan Ofer – son of a powerful shipowner – has refused to be on the board of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government after expressing disappointment with the opinions of the students.
