Nobel laureate accused of employing antisemitic trope in Harvard commencement speech
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa says she was ‘called antisemitic by money and power because they want money and power’; campus rabbi leaves stage after she doesn’t clarify comment
Philippine journalist and free speech advocate Maria Ressa, who delivered the keynote at Harvard University’s commencement ceremony on Thursday, has been accused of using an antisemitic trope in her speech, causing a campus rabbi to walk out of the event.
“Because I accepted your invitation to be here today, I was attacked online and called antisemitic by money and power because they want money and power,” said Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her investigative reporting on former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
“[T]he other side,” Ressa added, “was already attacking me because I had shared a stage with Hillary Clinton,” the former US Secretary of State who has expressed support for Israel.
Harvard Chabad Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi later approached Ressa to request she clarify her “money and power” comment, which, he later told campus newspaper The Harvard Crimson, he had found to be antisemitic.
Realizing Ressa would not oblige, Zarchi left the stage during a subsequent speech, the student newspaper said.
Neither Ressa nor the university spokesman responded to the Crimson’s request for comment.
The President of Harvard Chabad, Rabbi Hershey Zarchi, was correct to ask Nobel laureate @mariaressa to clarify her following words on stage, after her commencement speech.
“Because I accepted your invitation to be here today, I was attacked online and called anti-semitic. By… pic.twitter.com/oqFkRgnHSl
— Avraham Berkowitz (@GlobalRabbi) May 24, 2024
Universities across the United States, now in commencement season, have been roiled for months by pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests calling on their institutions to cut ties to Israel over its war against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.
In some campuses, anti-Israel encampments — characterized by several Jewish groups as antisemitic — have been aggressively dispersed by law enforcement, leading to the arrest of over 3,000 student activists nationwide.
Harvard has been in the eye of the storm over protests on US campuses since October 7, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 252 hostages.
Soon after the shock assault, some 30 undergraduate groups signed a petition placing responsibility for the unfolding violence solely on “the Israeli regime.”
Harvard’s then-president, political scientist Claudine Gay, made headlines in December, when in a congressional hearing alongside two other elite university presidents she answered evasively when asked whether calling for genocide against Jews violated the university’s code of conduct.
Gay was asked whether calls for “genocide” against Jews would violate Harvard’s code of conduct, to which she did not respond with a direct affirmative, instead, staying that it depended on the “context.”
Though she initially weathered the storm, Gay resigned a month later, after accusations of plagiarism against her came to light.
Ressa, speaking on Thursday, drew applause when she thanked Gay for inviting her to speak at the commencement ceremony. She also commended earlier student speakers, who had strayed from pre-approved comments by expressing solidarity with 13 student protesters whom Harvard decided not to let graduate, overriding a faculty vote.
In her speech, the Nobel-winning journalist accused American technology companies of using her native Philippines as a “petri dish” for social media — of which, she said, Philipinos were “for six fateful years” the world’s most prolific users — wreaking societal havoc.
“What happened to us in the Philipines — it’s here: the campus protests are testing everyone in America,” said Ressa.
“Protests are healthy,” Ressa said. “They shouldn’t be violent. Protests give voice; they shouldn’t be silenced.”
The Harvard Crimson noted that Ressa had earlier this month faced accusations of antisemitism when the Washington Free Beacon — the conservative outlet which first publicized the plagiarism allegations against Gay — reported that Ressa’s media company, Rappler, had compared Israel to Hitler.
Ressa pushed back against the accusation, saying in a subsequent statement that the conservative publication had mischaracterized the article, which was originally written in her native Tagalog.
