Coordinated social media campaign attempts to smear Gay's Jewish replacement as agent of 'Zionist control'
Following former Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation, Provost Alan Garber will be serving as interim president of the university.
Following former Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation, Provost Alan Garber will be serving as interim president of the university. Garber, is highly credentialed physician and economist, holding current Harvard professorships in health care policy, economics, and public policy.
After the announcement of Gay’s temporary replacement, a flurry of identical or nearly identical social media posts slammed Garber as a “Zionist” and asserted that his appointment was indicative of “Zionist control.”
“HARVARD UNIVERSITY’S BLACK FEMALE PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY REPLACED WITH ZIONIST ALAN GARBER,” academic Sam Youssef posted Tuesday. “Even education establishments are not safe from Zionist control.”
Is he even qualified for this job, or his qualifications are that he is a jew
— mental ist (@mental98528) January 3, 2024
“Is he even qualified for this job, or his qualifications are that he is a jew,” one user responded.
Youssef’s X post mirrors many others posted by pro-Palestinian accounts around the same time. Some have ben lightly edited, like the below tweet from an account that added a qualifying “probably” before “ZIONIST” but neglected to match the casing of the edit to the rest of the template:
HARVARD UNIVERSITY’S BLACK FEMALE PRESIDENT CLAUDINE GAY REPLACED WITH a probably ZIONIST ALAN GARBER pic.twitter.com/jP3Z8EKOdG
— OLEMELIYO 🪐 (@KINDELEMT11) January 3, 2024
I’m a pretty engaged Jew and Zionist and I don’t know what Alan Garber’s views on Zionism are. A quick Google search doesn’t generate much either.
He is Jewish though. pic.twitter.com/dgNhg4xk1s— Alex גדעון בן װעלװל (@JewishWonk) January 3, 2024
Per Garber’s university bio, he is an “Elected Member of the Association of American Physicians, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,” as well as an “Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American College of Physicians and the Royal College of Physicians.”
“Graduating from the College in 1976 summa cum laude in Economics, Garber later received his masters and doctorate in Economics from Harvard while concurrently pursuing a medical degree from Stanford. He remained a clinical fellow at Harvard until 1986, when he joined Stanford’s faculty as an assistant professor,” the Harvard Crimson reports.