Harvard’s Double Standard on Racism

Harvard University has shown appropriate sensitivity to the African American community by agreeing to relinquish seven photographs of half-naked Black slaves, which a professor commissioned in 1850 because he believed their physique proved they were racially inferior.

This follows other steps Harvard has taken in recent years to make amends with African Americans, including acknowledging that it once owned slaves, promising reparations to their descendants, and changing its official seal because it included the crest of a slaveowner.

But when will Harvard finally acknowledge other racist stains on its record—such as the friendly relations it pursued with Nazi Germany in the 1930s?

Adolf Hitler’s foreign press spokesman, Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, was given the red carpet treatment when he visited Harvard in 1934 for his 25th class reunion. Harvard maintained strong ties to Nazi-controlled German universities, especially the University of Heidelberg—even though Heidelberg fired its Jewish faculty members, instituted a Nazified curriculum, and hosted a mass book-burning. Harvard also participated in student exchange programs with Nazi universities, even though a German official said publicly that the students who were being sent to the United States would serve as “political soldiers of the Reich.”

Harvard also hosted the officers and crew of the Nazi warship Karlsruhe when it docked in the Boston harbor in 1934. And Harvard allowed the Nazi consul-general in Boston to place a swastika wreath in the university’s chapel (in honor of Harvard alumni who fought for Germany).

All this was exposed by Prof. Stephen Norwood in his book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, back in 2009. Sixteen years have passed, yet Harvard still has not apologized for the pro-Nazi skeletons in its closet, even as it has been acknowledging its racist actions against Blacks. Why the double standard?

Harvard is not the only example of an American university that has belatedly come to grips with some of its past racism, while refusing to face up to its friendliness to the racist Nazi regime.

Columbia University hosted a speech by Nazi ambassador Hans Luther, in 1933. Like Harvard, Columbia participated in student exchanges with Nazi universities and sent its representatives to the 550th anniversary celebration at the University of Heidelberg, in 1936. Columbia’s delegate, Prof. Arthur Remy, gushed about the “very enjoyable” reception for American visitors that was hosted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. When Columbia students organized a rally to protest their university’s policy, president Nicholas Murray Butler responded by permanently expelling protest leader Robert Burke.

George Washington University invited Nazi representatives to its D.C. campus in 1933, 1934, and 1937. The university hosted screenings of films that were “procured through the German Consul” (according to the campus newspaper, The Hatchet). At least one of those events included a display of Nazi Germany’s swastika flag. The Hatchet regularly published advertisements from the Nazi government’s tourism department, and touted upcoming summer tours by GW students to Europe that included visits to Nazi Germany.

During those years, GW maintained a junior-year student exchange program with the Nazi-controlled University of Munich. GW students returned from Germany with upbeat reports. One, Mary-Anne Greenough, described attending a Nazi rally celebrating Hitler’s failed 1923 putsch; she said she found the event “worthy of admiration.” Some GW faculty members who visited Germany likewise had nice things to say about Hitler. Prof. Christopher Garnett reported to the campus historical society that “[t]he optimism which permeated the Germans, even those who at first opposed the present regime, is almost unbelievable.”

Yet GW has never publicly acknowledged that it was wrong to maintain friendly relations with Nazi Germany. Nor has it revoked the honorary doctorate that it presented in 1985 to Mircea Eliade, a religion scholar who was a Nazi collaborator during the Holocaust.

GW has been appropriately sensitive to the feelings of some minorities. It removed the name of its longest-serving president, the late Cloyd Heck Marvin, from the student center because he advocated racial segregation. And it changed the school moniker from “Colonials” to “Revolutionaries” because of the many injustices associated with colonialism. But when it comes to the feelings of the Jewish community concerning the Nazis, GW has been tone deaf.

Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, invited Nazi official Friedrich Auhagen to campus in 1934. Wesleyan professor Paul Curts repeatedly visited Nazi Germany, and then presented pro-Nazi reports to Wesleyan’s students; the university responded by promoting him to head of its Board of Publications. Wesleyan participated in student exchanges with Nazi universities, and took no action against German students at Wesleyan who spewed Nazi apologetics. One was Gerhard Hess, nephew of the number three leader in the Nazi regime, Rudolf Hess, a relationship that was known on campus at the time yet did not prevent him from being given platforms to defend Hitler. The campus newspaper, The Argus, ran Nazi government ads urging tourism to Germany and published a front-page report by American students in Germany praising the Hitler regime.

In recent years, Wesleyan has appropriately devoted some resources to the preservation of the Beman Triangle, a historic African American neighborhood near its campus. That project cannot make up for the fact that some of Wesleyan’s early presidents advocated the mass migration of blacks from the United States to Africa, or the fact that the university implemented a whites-only admissions policy for many years. But the Beman project indicates the university is sensitive to the feelings of the African-American community.

So why have none of these universities exhibited similar sensitivity to the feelings of the Jewish community? Why are they acknowledging—however belatedly—their past embrace of anti-Black racists, but not their friendliness toward the anti-Jewish racist regime of Nazi Germany? Why the double standard?