The Free Press
It’s Thursday, May 22. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: the cruel response to Biden’s diagnosis. Our San Francisco debate on artificial intelligence. And a hard truth Trump exposed.
But first: The aggressors of an antisemitic incident who weren’t random protestors—but Harvard faculty.
Everyone has an image that comes to mind when they think about the worst thing that has happened during the outbreak of antisemitism on campuses across America since October 7.
For some people, it is the keffiyeh-wearing protesters at University of California, Los Angeles who blocked a Jewish student wearing a Star of David necklace from going to class. For others, it is the Cornell student who threatened in an online discussion forum to “bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.”
But you might have forgotten about an incident at Harvard on October 18, 2023. An Israeli business school student was surrounded, taunted, and screamed at while trying to record video of protesters at a “die-in.”
Images of the confrontation went viral. Harvard police launched an investigation. Harvard’s president said a decision about disciplining two of the aggressors would be made after police and prosecutors finished their work.
Almost nothing has happened since then. Investigative reporter Johanna Berkman set out to explain why.
What she found raises doubts about how Harvard is committed to addressing antisemitism on its campus. The stakes are even higher now that Harvard is in a legal battle with the Trump administration. Before it was sued by Harvard, the government demanded that Harvard expel “the students involved in the October 18 assault.”
Wait until you find out what two of those students are doing next week. Read our investigation below.
— Rick Brooks
“Will the truth survive artificial intelligence?” That was the question under discussion at the most recent Free Press debate, in San Francisco. We dove into the deep end with four brilliant minds—each with vastly different outlooks—to discuss what the future of AI looks like. And it opened with the thoughts of legendary comedian Colin Quinn. Watch here.
Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis drew sympathy from across the political spectrum, with everyone from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump wishing the former president well. But in dark corners of the online left, it was a very different story.
Trump’s first few months back in power have given everyone a collective case of whiplash. First he raises tariffs, then he drops them. He fires federal workers, then they return to work. But the lasting legacy of these changes is not uncertainty, but a profound revelation about the U.S. government.
Two Israeli embassy staffers were shot and killed Wednesday night outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C, according to The New York Times. Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, called the attack “a depraved act of anti-Semitic terrorism” in a post on X. Both Attorney General Pam Bondi and Jeanine Pirro, the interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, reportedly went to the scene shortly after the attack.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a $6.5 billion deal to acquire io, a start-up founded last year by former Apple design chief Jony Ive. The goal: to build a “new family of products” for the age of artificial general intelligence. The deal is the Silicon Valley equivalent of forming a supergroup, bringing together the architect of the iPhone and the face of the AI boom.
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into former New York governor Andrew Cuomo—now a leading New York City mayoral candidate—after a referral from congressional Republicans who accuse him of lying while testifying about his handling of the Covid pandemic. The inquiry follows the DOJ’s decision to drop a separate corruption case against current mayor Eric Adams. Cuomo still retains a double-digit lead in the mayoral race. Listen to Bari’s interview with the former governor on the latest episode of Honestly.
U.S. intelligence suggests Israel is actively preparing for a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Such a move would represent a major split with Trump, who is in negotiations with Tehran over a new nuclear agreement.
Kevin Spacey was honored with a lifetime achievement award at a gala in Cannes, drawing both applause and raised eyebrows. The event, held alongside the Cannes Film Festival but not officially affiliated, celebrated Spacey’s cinematic legacy. “It’s very nice to be back,” said the Oscar-winning actor, who was cleared in 2023 of multiple accusations of sexual assault by four men. Last month, however, fresh allegations emerged alleging sexual abuse by the actor.
The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a bill that would allow tipped workers to deduct up to $25,000 in tips from their taxable income. Championed by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Sen. Jackie Rosen, the bill also offers payroll tax credits to businesses in the beauty and spa industries and includes income limits and reporting requirements. Both Trump and Harris promised a tax exemption for tips on the campaign trail last year.
A lone air traffic controller at Newark Airport was left unable to see or contact planes in the sky for 90 seconds during a communications blackout on May 9. She is now on “stress-related trauma leave.”
In a tense Oval Office meeting, President Trump urged South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to protect white Afrikaner farmers from what he suggested is a genocide. Ramaphosa pushed back, calling the violence the product of a national crime problem, rather than a racially targeted campaign. The meeting came after the Trump administration granted refugee status to about 50 Afrikaners earlier this month.
It's sickening but not surprising that Harvard has chosen to celebrate the perpetrators. They were merely carrying out the activist agenda promulgated by their university which has been a prime purveyor of the toxic oppressor/oppressed ideology that has permeated academia for years, beginning in elementary school. This insidious ideology is at the root of the anti-Semitic, pro Hamas movement. Schools like Harvard have indoctrinated students into believing that all minorities are virtuous victims of imperialism, colonialism and oppression committed by white Europeans and in order for true social justice to be achieved, all victim groups need to align against the common oppressor.
Not only does the activism of these Harvard student perpetrators perfectly align with an acceptable victim group (Palestinians-- who are perceived as darker skinned) against a perceived oppressor (Jews -- who are perceived as white Europeans), but the middle east players in this conflict are the perfect proxy for the entire discriminatory framework advanced by an educational system obsessed with teaching the importance of resisting power. This is not, and was never about the Palestinians specifically (most protesters couldn't find Gaza on a map). They just represent the ideal modern day exemplar of the oppressed in the faux righteous performative fight against racism, homophobia, capitalism and white settler colonialism. Students have been taught since elementary school of the evils of America and Western civilization and the Palestinian - Israeli dynamic has been molded (by reprehensible and intentional lies and by vile and age-old anti-Semitism) into the global social justice movement of our time -- a battle of good vs evil, where the terrorist-rapists are the good guys.
This is why these activists don't give a hoot about the horrors in Sudan or Syria or Myanmar etc.....in the same way they don't care about the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa or the torture of the Uyghars by the CCP. Those conflicts don't fit the oppressor/oppressed narrative because they don't fit their fabricated paradigm of a Black/White, Indegnous/Colonialist conflict.
But here, these activists can cluelessly pretend that the Palestinians are the darker skinned indigenous people displaced by imperialist white European Jews and, voilà -- the perfect paradigmatic conflict for progressive leftists to rally around.
This explains why Yale students complained that an Israeli speaker on campus would cause not Palestinians or Muslims, but all Black and brown students to feel physically and psychologically unsafe. It also explains why we get cult-like call and response incantations like "Queers For Palestine," "Climate Justice Equals Palestinian Rights," "Hands Off Medicare, Hands Off Gaza," and "Free Women, Free Palestine" -- screamed with fervent urgency about a people and a region the protesters obviously know nothing about.
As a result of this academic indoctrination, we have gone down a rabbit hole and have lost our moral compass. American culture is under the sway of this leftist propaganda and now everythjng is inverted: criminals are victims, evil is good and bitter is sweet.
Look no further than October 7th itself where Hamas committed acts of medieval barbarity. These terrorists gang raped women breaking their pelvic bones. They cut off their breasts and shot bullets into their vaginas. They burned babies alive in their cribs and used shovels to decapitate dying men. They executed fleeing families with toddlers and took women and children hostage in underground torture chambers. And they filmed all of their butchery with gleeful ecstasy, boasting to their proud parents of mutilating Jews.
And yet, within hours, students on college campuses across the nation (mostly white upper class kids) rallied in support of this satanic depravity -- before Israel made a single move at retaliation. The most profound irony is that these students were raised in the #metoo era but the cause takes a backseat when the rapists occupy the highest rung on the victim hierarchy ladder and the rape victims are perceived to be the quintessential embodiment of western imperialism. Palestinians can do no wrong and Jews can do no right. Rape is resistance. And the fact that Jews are the indigenous people of the Land of Israel dating back thousands of years is just an inconvenient fact swept aside for the sake of the fabricated narrative.
The reason these kids keep getting rewarded is because at the heart of these campus wars are administrators and faculty that not only sympathize with the protestors, but see in them the carrying on of the baton. Claudine Gay being unable to concede that calling for the genocide of Jews was harassment is not an anomaly but a symptom of the deep and pervasive rot in the belly of our education system.
And so, the lunatics are running the asylum. Or, as Arthur Miller wrote in The Crucible: "the children are jangling the keys to the kingdom and common vengeance is writing the law."
Nuke it [Harvard] from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.