Students, profs interrupt Harvard Med School celebration to protest AMA’s neutrality in Israel-Hamas War
The protestors expressed their frustration with the American Medical Association’s refusal to condemn Israel.
‘ . . . the AMA doesn’t value Palestinian lives as much as Ukrainian lives, or non-white lives as much as white lives,’ said one protestor.
Anti-Israel protesters recently disrupted a celebration at Harvard.
On March 15, more than 50 pro-Palestine demonstrators, including both students and staff members from the Harvard Medical School (HMS), came to the school’s “Match Day”--when “applicants learn of the [medical] residency programs in which they will train”--in order to express their anger at the American Medical Association’s (AMA) neutrality regarding the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Boston Globe.
AMA leader Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld was giving a speech for the occasion of Match Day on campus, the Globe reported.
[RELATED: Anti-Semitic speaker doubles down on pro-Hamas comments during Harvard event]
The protesters held up signs with the messages “Let Gaza Live!” and “AMA is complicit in genocide,” placed red tape over their mouths to protest alleged censorship from the HMS, and demonstrated both before and during Ehrenfeld’s speech, the Globe wrote.
As the Globe related, the AMA released an announcement following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Jewish civilians. The statement noted: “The conflict unfolding in Israel and Gaza has caused suffering and death on an immense scale. We have heard from many of our physician and medical student members expressing heartbreak and outrage about the human toll afflicting Israelis, Palestinians and others,” and also noted that “[i]t is critical that medical neutrality is observed because physicians and health care professionals must have the ability to carry out their work and administer urgent care to those in need.”
Hibah Osman, a professor at HMS and one of the protesters, claimed that the AMA is “usually very vocal about what happens to health care workers overseas,” adding that the AMA “has refused to make any comments about what’s going on in Gaza despite the killing of hundreds of doctors and nurses and dentists and medical students,” wrote The Harvard Crimson.
[RELATED: Stanford activists disrupt ‘Family Weekend’ event with anti-Israeli chants]
HMS Dean George Q. Daley warned in an email before the event that “those who do not respect the guidelines expressed in the HMS statement, the University-wide statement, and the January 19 guidance will be subject to review and possible disciplinary sanction,” which made Osman react, saying: “To threaten students who want to protest a genocide is awful,” The Harvard Crimson reported.
One of the protesters, commenting on the fact that the AMA spoke out against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, seemed to blame the AMA of racism: “It shows that the AMA doesn’t value Palestinian lives as much as Ukrainian lives, or non-white lives as much as white lives,” she said, according to the Boston Globe.
In a statement to Campus Reform, the HMS insisted that the protestors “followed the school’s guidelines and community values on peaceful and respectful expression of ideas.”
Campus Reform has reached out to the Harvard Medical School for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
