An apology has been extended to the faculty, staff, and student organizations of Harvard University for the distribution of a cartoon that contains antisemitic tropes. The institution is reviewing the decades-old despicable message and has denounced it.
Several groups affiliated with Harvard University published an infographic on Instagram that depicted a dollar sign and a hand tying ropes around the necks of two non-white guys. The hand also bore the Star of David. The second arm was shown cutting the rope with a machete; the words “Third World” were written beside it, and the machete bore the phrase “Liberation Movement.”
Between June and July of 1967, the cartoon appeared in a newsletter sent out by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
According to the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, the infographic was shared by two student groups: the African and African American Resistance Organization and the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee. Harvard University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine also shared the photograph.
In the late 1960s, there was a historical foundation of cooperation between Black liberation movements and Palestinian freedom, according to the infographic, and African people have a profound grasp of occupation and apartheid. Placing Zionism and the Palestinian resistance in opposition to racism, imperialism, and Zionism, the Black Panther Party joined forces with the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, which compared Zionism to an imperial goal.
After receiving criticism for posting the cartoon infographic on Instagram, the Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine removed it and apologized. They express their deepest condolences for the pain these photographs have caused and offer an apology.
A number of American universities, including Harvard, have been in the middle of debate ever since the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7 by Hamas, which killed at least 1,200 people.
