DOES RECAP-AND-ATTRIBUTE CULTURE CURTAIL RESEARCH?

AMBRIDGE, Massachusetts, is a picturesque town steeped in the very short history of the United States. George Washington's HQ during the American war of independence is one of the attractions. It is located almost opposite the house where the leading traitor of the period, Benjamin Church, the first surgeon general of the US Army, was held. Across the Charles river, the teas that featured in the Boston Tea Party can be tasted right where it happened.

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Now the university town is in the thick of politics again. Harvard University is the epicentre of an upheaval in academia triggered by Israel's attack on Gaza. It's not restricted to the groves of academe. It's a streetfight, a dogfight. Trucks were parked in busy locations, carrying posters with the pictures and contacts of students who had accused Israel of targeting Palestinian citizens, for the benefit of trolls. For weeks after the Hamas attack, when Muslim students felt threatened, a small propeller plane flew over the town every morning trailing a banner. It's a device peculiar to the US, where products ranging from bubble gum to presidential candidates have been advertised in this manner. 

This particular banner said: "Harvard hates Jews." For variety, it also directed: "Harvard, stop hating Jews!" This advertising did nothing for Jews, but was instrumental in securing the resignation of Harvard's president Claudine Gay, one of three leaders in higher education who flubbed a Congressional hearing about containing anti-semitism on campus. Their responses were regrettably tentative, because there can be no two ways of thinking about minority rights. Significantly, the last straw was not anti-semitism, but charges of plagiarism. In Gay's work earlier in her career, her sources were not sufficiently credited.

The jury is divided. Traditionalists say that it's a problem. Other academics say the transgression is trivial, and that Gay's resignation was an immediate response to a mob attack, which left no time for normal processes of academic scrutiny to work.