On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) said that there is work to do on antisemitism on Harvard’s campus but “what doesn’t happen in America is for an authoritarian government to come in and tell you what you can or cannot teach, to tell you who you can or cannot hire, to tell you what you can or cannot read.”
Host Kate Bolduan asked, “[T]he demands are coming as part of an effort by the administration, officially, to combat antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. You have been outspoken in the past against the incidents that occurred on Harvard’s campus. You said at one point you were embarrassed of your alma mater, and you said, what’s happening at Harvard right now is intellectually weak and morally repugnant after one incident, I read your press release. Does Harvard still have work to do? Do they still need to address some of this?”
Moulton answered, “Yes they do. They do have work to do. They’ve also made a lot of progress, and I’m very proud of the progress that they’ve made. But that’s the way it works in a free society is that people get to criticize you and people get to disagree with you. And you know what? In response to my very pointed criticisms at my alma mater, they have done some things, including having the president come and meet with me and talk about the changes that he is undertaking to make sure that they do crack down on antisemitism. But what doesn’t happen in America is for an authoritarian government to come in and tell you what you can or cannot teach, to tell you who you can or cannot hire, to tell you what you can or cannot read. It’s just so fundamentally anti-American. It’s like a fascist or a Communist regime what we’re seeing from this administration. Of course, the whole hypocrisy about it is that this is also the administration that’s saying you do have — we want to preserve freedom, we want to expand liberty. They’re doing the opposite.”
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