Supporters of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard University. Photo: Harvard PSC

Harvard University president Claudine Gay said on Thursday that the members of 31 student groups who signed a statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s terror attack on Saturday should not be punished.

“Our university embraces a commitment to free expression,” Gay said in a videotaped message. “That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views, but that is a far cry from endorsing them.”

Gay’s comments, in which she also disavowed “the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” comes amid calls for the university to disclose the names of any students who signed the pro-Hamas statement, which accused Israel of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza and said “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame” for the violence. Israel withdrew from Gaza entirely in 2005.

Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, demanded the release of names earlier this week, arguing that Wall Street firms and other companies that hire graduates of prestigious colleges and universities deserve the right to decline employing anyone who supports terror.

“One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts,” Ackman said.

At least one firm, prominent international Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, has rescinded an offer of employment to a law student at New York University who sent a message to the school’s Student Bar Association expressing “absolute solidarity” with the “Palestinian resistance” and blaming Israel for what transpired.

Other companies have taken action against those expressing support for Hamas and attacking Israel as well. Air Canada on Tuesday announced that is has grounded a commercial pilot who posted antisemitic messages across his social media accounts calling for Israel’s destruction, even after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas murdered well over 1,000 Israelis in a multi-pronged invasion of the Jewish state.

“F—k you Israel. Burn in hell,” First Officer Mostafa Ezzo, who piloted an Air Canada-branded B787 plane out of Montreal, wrote in an Instagram Story earlier this week. A separate image showed him in his Air Canada uniform wearing a Palestinian flag necktie.

The presence of radical anti-Zionists on Harvard University’s campus has been the subject of numerous news stories and reports, prompting critics to question the quality of education and leadership the institution is fostering. At the start of this academic year, a student and anti-Israel activist interrupted a convocation ceremony held by the school, shouting at Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana, “Here’s the real truth — Harvard supports, upholds, and invests in Israeli apartheid, and the oppression of Palestinians!”

According to a 2022 report by antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative investigating previously unexamined ways that anti-Israel activists attack and undermine Jewish identity, more antisemitic incidents occurred on Harvard’s campus than on any other  during the 2021-2022 academic year.

“No other campus identity group is routinely subject to the kinds of well-orchestrated campaigns of identity assault that Zionist and pro-Israel students have had to endure for the last several years across the country,” the report said.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.