Harvard librarian fired after removing posters of Israeli children massacred by Hamas terrorists
The posters in question featured images of the Bibas children, who were recently executed by the terrorist group, Hamas.
A spokesperson confirmed that the ‘Harvard employee involved in an incident during a protest last week is no longer affiliated with the University.’
Harvard University in Massachusetts recently fired a librarian who tore down posters of Israeli hostages who were recently murdered by Hamas terrorists.
The employee was Radcliffe Institute librarian Jonathan Tuttle, who was caught on video ripping down the posters during a March 3 protest organized by the anti-Israel student group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, The Harvard Crimson reported.
The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study is part of Harvard University.
A Harvard spokesperson confirmed that the “Harvard employee involved in an incident during a protest last week is no longer affiliated with the University,” as the Crimson wrote.
The posters that Tuttle took down featured images of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, children who were respectively nine months old and four years old at the time when they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. The Bibas children were killed in Gaza along with their mother, Shiri.
Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin condemned Tuttle’s actions, saying they violated the school’s policies.
While acknowledging the right of Harvard students and faculty to “protest in support of positions that we hold dear,” Brown-Nagin added that “disruptive behaviors—including property destruction or defacement and acts of vandalism that seek to suppress or censor the speech of others—are not protected speech.”
She added that these “are behaviors that constitute misconduct; they violate multiple Harvard and Radcliffe rules and may also be punished under criminal law.”
Following the protest, Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Sherri Charleston, also criticized Tuttle’s actions.
“The response to speech with which we disagree is more speech, not less; it’s more listening, more dialogue,” she wrote. “It disparages those in our community when their perspectives or experiences are negated by destructive acts like these.”
Harvard University is among a total of 60 colleges and universities that the Department of Education is investigating over concerns related to anti-Semitism. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stated that the Department is “deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year.”
Harvard is not the only school to go through such a controversy regarding the dishonoring of the memory of the Bibas family.
On March 11, anti-Israel activists defaced a memorial intended to commemorate the Bibas family at the University of Michigan, spraying it with graffiti and a pro-terrorist symbol.
Campus Reform has contacted Harvard University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
