Harvard’s Class of 2003 doesn’t think much of one of its classmates – the one who works for President Trump.
Writing in the Red Book – a Harvard tradition in which alumni write what they’ve been doing for the last five years as a run-up to reunion festivities – some writers bypassed the opportunity to tout their own accomplishments and instead trumpeted their dislike for Jared Kushner.
The Boston Globe recounted in detail the insults tossed at Kushner – son-in-law and senior adviser to the president.
It noted the effort to do this began six months ago when “organizers of the anti-Kushner effort set up a private ‘Shame on You, Jared Kushner” Facebook page and urged their 2003 peers to use the Red Book as a platform for personal protest.”
“Part of the goal is to let Kushner know that his service in the Trump White House will have lasting consequences, resulting in his potential ostracization from a valuable social network of his peers,” the Globe wrote.
It quoted classmate Jon Sherman, an attorney, as saying he is glad people are speaking out.
“This is a free country, and there are going to be consequences for the way they’ve behaved during this time,” he wrote. “Social consequences … They can’t just return to their old life and walk around and go to restaurants in New York and D.C. and not get constant backlash.”
Jews took Kushner to task, even though Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, improved ties between Israel and much of the Arab world to levels not seen since the country’s founding and prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say Israel was “eternally grateful” to Trump for all he has done to promote peace in the Middle East.
Sherman, who said his grandmother survived Auschwitz but 35 other family members did not, wrote: “I, for one, am actually glad that our Class of ’03 finally has a real, live fascist among us. Why says Harvard isn’t diverse?”
The Globe reported that most of the classmates kept their comments to providing personal updates, which was deeply disappointing to Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who said, “It’s emblematic of Harvard culture. I think people thought it was rude and didn’t want to be rude. But I think genocide is rude. And I was happy to be rude.”
“He was in Jerusalem with his wife while people were being massacred,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “I feel so emotional about that. He’s a person who is doing horrible things. As a black woman and a Jewish woman, I think it’s disgusting. He’s not alone in doing these disgusting things, but he’s certainly one of the active participants.”
The article did not say how many of the Class of 2003 wrote about Kushner, and all the quotes in its story are attributed but to four people. And one of them, Sophia Macris, appears to have written only the words, “Shame on you, Jared Kushner.”
The Globe contacted Macris to give her the opportunity to say more.
“For me, I definitely felt like it was more impactful to say you’re not going to hear from me for another five years. This is a one-shot deal,” she said. “Would I have liked to have told my classmates to buy my book? Yeah. That would have benefited me a lot more. But that’s not where my head is.”
Prescod-Weinstein also was given an additional forum for her remarks, and she sounded a word of caution about America’s oldest institution of higher learning.
“We should be uncomfortable with the way Harvard functions as a steppingstone for people in power who may have terrible values,” she told the Globe.
Brian McNicoll is Editor of Accuracy in Media, where this article first appeared.
