(NewsNation) — Following college protests over the Israel-Hamas war, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced Tuesday that he no longer plans on taking part in fall-semester fellowships at Harvard University.
Hogan’s letter to Harvard, which he shared on X, falls in line with similar backlash college campuses have received in the wake of protests over the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Top donors, such as former U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman and Meghan McCain have pulled their financial support from institutions after the protests began.
Hogan specifically cited “dangerous anti-Semitism” that he said has “taken root on (Harvard’s’) campus.
“While these students have a right to free speech, they do not have a right to have hate speech go unchallenged by your institution,” he wrote. “Harvard’s failure to immediately and forcefully denounce the anti-Semitic vitriol from these students is in my opinion a moral stain on the University.”
Some of the protests on Harvard’s campus have called for ceasfire, with pleas to “Stop the Genocide in Gaza,” the university’s student newspaper The Harvard Crimson reported.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay issued a statement in the days following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, saying the university rejects terrorism, hate and harassment or intimidation based on beliefs.
“We can issue public pronouncements declaring the rightness of our own points of view and vilify those who disagree,” Gay wrote. “Or we can choose to talk and to listen with care and humility, to seek deeper understanding, and to meet one another with compassion.”