Harvard's commencement speaker, media CEO Maria Ressa, published an editorial that compared Israel after Hamas's October 7 terrorist attack to Nazi Germany and accused the Jewish state of "targeting" news reporters in an "unprecedented attack on journalist safety."
Ressa, the CEO of the Philippines-based news site Rappler and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, will give the university's commencement address on May 23, at a time when Harvard faces a congressional investigation for what House Republicans have called a "failure to protect Jewish students" and as anti-Semitism has surged on college campuses across the country.
Ressa's comments on the Israel-Gaza war, and her news outlet's editorial stance, could add to concerns about Harvard's promotion of anti-Israel views. Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, as well as holding Israel to standards not applied to other countries, could be considered anti-Semitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition.
In January, Ressa signed a letter accusing Israel of "unabated killing of journalists in Israeli airstrikes since the start of the Israel-Gaza war." The letter called for an "immediate end to the bombardment of journalists and apparent targeting in some cases of our colleagues in Gaza and the region."
There is no clear evidence that Israel has deliberately targeted journalists. The Israeli government warned reporters to evacuate high-conflict areas. Investigators also found that numerous alleged Palestinian journalists killed in the war worked for Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, organizations that often use press badges as cover for terrorist activities.
In a November editorial, Rappler called for a ceasefire and compared Israel's actions to those by Adolf Hitler, according to a translation.
"What Israel is doing is clearly a disproportionate response and its intention is not simply to retaliate, but to launch an all-out war," the editorial said. "In the intensity of Israel's godlike technology, its paleolithic instincts can be seen in the lack of effort to differentiate between civilians and its enemy Hamas."
The editorial said Israel's actions were "about to reach genocide."
"It is a great irony that the [Jewish] race that suffered centuries of oppression, even genocide at the hands of Adolf Hitler, is now [denying] the same aspirations [for] the Palestinians," said the column.
"We like to think that our world is more modern, more aware, and more compassionate, compared for example to the time of Adolf Hitler, or the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima," the editorial went on.
In its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Rappler has also referred to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as "militant" groups rather than terrorist organizations.
Ressa did not respond to a request for comment. Harvard did not respond to a request for comment.
Harvard has been facing controversy over anti-Israel protests on campus, which have at times veered into anti-Semitism and physical confrontations. In February, Harvard's undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee posted a cartoon showing a black man and an Arab man hanging from nooses held by a hand with a Jewish star and a dollar sign drawn on it. In October, an Israeli Harvard Business School student was allegedly assaulted during an anti-Israel protest.
Former Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned in January amid scandals over her alleged plagiarism and failure to address anti-Jewish incidents at the university.