Harvard’s application crash should scare other elite schools on antisemitism

Harvard’s applications dipped this past year following then-President Claudine Gay’s House hearing about antisemitism on campus. Getty Images

Harvard is learning an ancient lesson: You reap what you sow.

On Thursday, the college announced that applications dropped 5% from last year.

This, after early-admission applications fell 17%, to a four-year low.

And it’s all a natural, rational response to the series of scandals that exposed Harvard’s leaders as prioritizing woke ideology over excellence, free speech and student safety.

The first blows: A wave of campus antisemitism after the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, followed by then-President Claudine Gay’s disastrous House hearing in December, where she defended hateful intimidation at anti-Israel protests as “free speech.”

Then came the flood of allegations of plagiarism: First against Gay (which the Harvard Corp. tried to cover up), then against Harvard’s chief DEI officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, then Shirley Greene, another school DEI officer.

Jewish students plainly can’t rely on Harvard’s leadership for protection from antisemites on campus, and how can any student trust a school so eager to push “diversity, equity and inclusion” that it holds DEI hires to laughably low standards?

The students that top schools hope to attract — ambitious, practical and academically oriented — are clearly drawing the obvious conclusion: Harvard’s brand isn’t worth the sky-high cost, and will only get worse until its leaders change course.

Let all of US higher education be warned: If you don’t kick the radicals off campus and off the school’s board, shut down the DEI offices and focus on offering an education worth the cost of tuition, you could be next.