Harvard University interim president Alan Garber on Tuesday announced that he'd reached an agreement with the student radicals who have camped out on his lawn for nearly three weeks: They'd pack up their illegal encampment, and he'd do his part to make sure suspended students are swiftly reinstated.
That's not all. Garber, who is gunning to replace his disgraced predecessor Claudine Gay, said that he would arrange meetings between the protesters and a member of the Harvard Corporation who oversees "shareholder responsibility." Garber himself will also meet with the reprobates "to hear their perspectives on academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East," according to Garber's announcement.
The group behind the encampment, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, posted the image above to its social media accounts. They don't exactly seem like the negotiating types.
Garber may have notched a short-term truce, or what Hamas would call a hudna—he avoided calling in the cops and cleared the lawn ahead of graduation ceremonies—but it will come at a great cost.
The protesters have learned the lesson: Give the president of Harvard the middle finger, same to the rule-followers and law-abiders, and of course and especially to the Jews, and get richly rewarded for your malconduct.
The students are just getting started. They accurately characterized Garber's concessions as "side-deals [that] are intended to pacify us away from full disclosure & divestment," adding, "Rest assured, they will not."
"Encampments are a tactic—a big and beautiful one—in a larger strategy of divestment," the students announced on Tuesday, declaring their intention to "carry out this protracted struggle through other means."
The protesters, playacting as Hamas, have been indulged in the same way Hamas was for the last 20 years—temporary ceasefires granted in exchange for amnesty, consideration, and legitimacy. And Harvard, like the Israelis before October 7, has kicked the can down the road.
Tuesday's "peaceful" conclusion to the fracas in Cambridge brings clarity on two matters. First, Garber is unfit to assume the Harvard presidency on a permanent basis if university leaders have any interest in restoring the school to the pantheon of great American institutions. Second, Garber and the rest of the university will pay the price for this bad deal when students return to campus in the fall.