J’ Acusse Harvard University and its sister elite American universities for promoting an alien new apostasy to undermine 3400 years of Western civilization, whose foundation resides in Jewish legal systems, cultural interactions, and religious convictions. Furthermore, to covertly shelter their unpardonable sin of ingratitude for Jewish contributions to the creation of the most fortunate societies in human history, these academic establishments allowed anti-Semitism to become the scapegoat for their educational malpractice.
Last week, Harvard University began dogging a $9B shot across its bow by the federal government for its handling of anti-Semitism protests on its campus since October 7, 2023. Yale, Brown, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell, and Dartmouth also received notices of federal grant reviews for anti-Semitic or other federal guideline violations.
More egregious than anti-Semitism within America’s elite Universities, however, is their unpardonable sin of ingratitude to the Jewish Heritage. That heritage provided a most significant but unacknowledged contribution to the foundations upon which Western Civilization was built. Jewish tradition helped the West define its legal systems, cultural interactions, and religious convictions, which developed the freest, prosperous, and open societies on the planet.
English common law principles evolved from Mosaic Law and the Talmudic traditions of Rabbinic Judaism. The legal systems in every American state, except Louisiana, are based on English common law that can be traced to the Hebrew Bible.
Moses came down from Mount Sinai 3400 years ago carrying the tablets that formed the legal, moral, and ethical guidance within Western institutions. Jewish belief in the Truth of one God is now almost universally acknowledged by its other Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Islam. Judaism’s moral beliefs and monotheism deconstructed ancient pagan concepts of multiple competing gods ruling the Universe. The foundation for civil toleration within states and among states drawn from Jewish law provides the minimum identifiable moral standard to assess and judge any people or nation throughout the planet.
Following the Norman Conquest in 1066, English common law was influenced by Biblical ideas and Jewish law. Soon thereafter, the English implemented stare decisis, the system of gradual, incremental change via judge-made case law and precedent.
English national laws limited the power of the Crown just as Jewish kings were limited in the Mosaic constitution in Deuteronomy by the traditional Jewish national laws.
The Hebrew Book of Exodus admonished: “Distance yourself from a false matter; and do not truly kill an innocent person or one who has been declared innocent”. From it, the English developed Sir William Blackstone’s ratio, “It is better for ten guilty persons to escape free than for one innocent to suffer wrongly”. This principle has been internalized by America’s collective civil conscience and constitutional culture.
Many of our nation’s Founders compared America’s struggle for political emancipation from England to the escape from Egyptian bondage by the ancient Israelites under Moses. Benjamin Franklin believed Divine Providence was a guiding force in human affairs. During the founding era, Hebrew was spoken of approvingly for making Hebrew the national language of the new republic by Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Jewish culture was so highly regarded and well-studied that Benjamin Franklin even proposed a national seal picturing the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, parted by Moses.
During a visit to Newport in 1790, President George Washington assured Jews that they would be welcomed in this new Republic. Based on this declaration, America’s core principles were extended to all religions. Church and state were to remain separate.
The historical contributions of Jewish legacy as key factors in developing Western and American civilization are unquestionable. In recent years, though, elite American universities have promoted a counter-culture critical of Western culture. American founders have come under academic revisionism and condemnation questioning the fundamental belief systems upon which our society was established.
Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot, who served forty years from 1869 to 1909, expunged from its curriculum Western monotheistic religious traditions that had developed over the last three thousand years. Secular student-directed transcendentalism became the new foundation for the University’s curriculum.
In August 1912 Eliot gave life to this new internally directed morality when he warned against the mixing of races and was an outspoken supporter of forced sterilization for numerous categories of “flawed” citizens – feebleminded, physically disabled, or criminalistic. In 1924, a group of graduating students supporting eugenics posed with the iconic John Harvard statue in the hooded robes of the Ku Klux Klan. Two decades later, Hitler gave eugenics a bad name, however, Eliot’s eugenic programs persisted in the U.S. as late as 1981.
Developed in 1643, Harvard’s shield emblazoned with the university’s motto ‘Veritas,” symbolized the University’s pursuit of knowledge and dedication to seeking truth. The degree to which this lofty commitment had become degraded was fully exposed in 2023 when departing President Claudine Gay explained that “My Truths” somehow justified her explanation of Harvard’s anti-Semitism.
The history of recorded anti-Semitism at Harvard dates back over one hundred years, when incoming Harvard President Albert Lawrence Lowell in 1909 tried to institute a “Jewish quota” to limit the percentage of Jewish students on campus. Jewish student admissions quotas were implemented beginning in 1922.
Harvard abandoned the universal ‘self-evident truths’ underpinning the U.S. Constitution and the legal foundations upon which Western society was established. As a result, after October 7, 2023, no one in power at Harvard felt secure enough to proclaim, “We apologize for our failure to instill a sense of moral clarity in our students and to educate them in the basics of Western civilization. We will eliminate any anti-Semitism from within the University; its presence at Harvard will no longer be allowed!”
Had the University leadership promptly implemented reasonable, self-correcting measures, loss of federal funding and governmental monitoring at Harvard would not now be threatened.
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Something is Rotten in the Halls of Harvard,
While The Emperor wears no Clothes.
Next Year in Jerusalem
TW3
April 17, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins, Harvard Business School, Class of ‘63
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