Larry Summers’s Lease Hath All Too Short a Date

In 2023, weeks after the October 7 attack, Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard and current professor at the very same institution, spoke at a Shabbat gathering in Cambridge. He addressed Jew-hate at Harvard and elsewhere in academia. In his remarks, Summers made use of an analogy to a medical phenomenon to describe what he was seeing:

Since 20 years ago, when I spoke of anti-Semitism in effect if not in intent in response to the Divest Israel movement, I have been alarmed. More recent developments—from Crimson endorsements of BDS to testimonials by Israeli students regarding in-class discrimination, to vile social-media posts—only heightened my concern.

Even so, I am shocked and appalled by what I have seen on university campuses, including ours, since October 7. I should have raised my voice louder. It is not a mistake I will make again.

We come together at a moment of danger. Anti-Semitism is a cancer—a lethal adversary best addressed as rapidly, thoughtfully, and aggressively as possible. Harvard has not been swift in its response.

“Anti-Semitism is a cancer,” Summers said. This is a comparison whose like we see often; hatred of Jews is frequently described as a disease, a moral malady that afflicts and spreads in societies. Another version of this linguistic maneuver can be found in the perhaps even more prominent description of anti-Semitism as a virus that changes over time. Thus after the massacre of Jews in Pittsburgh, PBS gave us a documentary titled Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations.