HKS Used Free Speech as a Cop-Out

The Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance recognized this when, in August, they asked HKS to withdraw Kristof’s honor.

Official response and confirmed impact

The group did not ask Harvard to bar Kristof from campus or prevent him from being heard. It asked Harvard not to decorate him.

HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein said no. Withdrawing the invitation, he argued, would call into question the school’s commitment to free speech.

But this is not a question about free speech.

It is one of institutional integrity, character, and obligation — values as important as speech, if not more so.

By labeling HKS’ decision to honor an individual as an uplift of free speech, Dean Weinstein makes any challenge sound like an attack on free speech itself.

It turns a choice about prestige into a test of principle and shifts attention from what Harvard is really doing: conferring esteem.

An invitation to an endowed lecture reflects institutional judgment.