Op Eds
A Passover Plague: Harvard’s Israel Apartheid Week
Witnessing how people rise against Jewish communities in this generation has been a burden for many Jewish students, but they will remember the first verse of the Vehi Sheamda prayer: “It is this that has stood for our ancestors and for us,” this meaning the promise that God made to Abraham, that our ancestors would be redeemed from Egypt and make it safely to the biblical Land of Israel. It is this promise of a national homeland that we proudly sing at the end of the seder, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
A White Man’s Voice: The Role of the Privileged Actor
There are many things I can and should do with the platform my privilege affords me. Telling someone else’s story for them is not one of those things.
It Doesn’t Have to Be ‘Apartheid’
Aside from sacrificing honesty for the sake of provocation, these words alienate students who, like me, are genuinely upset about and disillusioned by Israel’s decades-long disenfranchisement, displacement, and oppression of the Palestinian people. I hate to get caught up in semantics, but with conversations that hit close to home, the words we use really do matter.
A More Democratic Student Government Wouldn’t Have Elections
The original sin of this school comes with awkwardly fitting a fractured template for representative government from the outside world onto a community small enough to lead itself cooperatively. To absolve it, we must choose something different, better — a politics of direct democracy, of personality, and of action.
Usually, Racism is Mundane
To many Asian Americans, racism has become a normalized fact of being. It’s not always — in fact, it’s usually not — as explicit as it was that night in Allston. It’s a less visible kind of racism than the hate crimes that make the news. It’s also a less terrifying kind of racism, but an exponentially more tiresome one. It adds a tiny weight to every aspect of your life; even though the added weight is usually unnoticeably small, when it’s aggregated over every day and every week, it becomes exhausting.
Reflections of a Multiracial Asian-American Woman
Being multiracial has only begun to show me my role in the movement toward equality, and I want to make sure that my self-reflection continues well after #StopAsianHate stops trending on social media. I may never feel comfortable in an entirely Asian space or a completely white one, but for now, I am proud to say that I am fully mixed.
We’re All Going to Die
This isn’t an optimistic op-ed about how if we all sober up, we can band together to solve the climate crisis. This isn’t even a deceivingly cynical op-ed meant to be proven wrong by do-gooders. This is, instead, a simple exposition of my personal opinion: that Harvard’s inability to recognize the gravity of the situation at hand only confirms Camus’ view of humanity’s disbelief in death.
Literally Allergic To The Cold
The next time you look out your window to a frosty Cambridge day, you may mull over grabbing a sweater or jacket, or dread the frigid walk to class. On these days, I wake up and wonder if today’s the day I freeze to death — literally.
Notes from Day 4 of Isolation: The Harm I Cause
I miss outside. I miss Eliot dining hall, and lying on friends’ carpets, and unmasked laughter. I miss normalcy. If Harvard’s Covid years saw time freeze, isolation is the most hellish version of that. But come the end of my day five, I will follow the isolation policy to the best of my ability. If I’m still symptomatic, I’m locking myself in here again. This will harm me, no doubt. But crucially, I do not want to harm other people.
Preregistration is the Enemy of Liberal Education
Harvard’s view used to be that undergraduate education was about discovery. Students are admitted to no department or major; they have the entire first year and more to learn about academic offerings and to settle on a concentration. It has been considered a mark of personal growth to choose a concentration different from the one on your Harvard application.
The Omission of a Harvard APIDA Graduation Reflects the Community’s Invisibility in American Society
The unfortunate reality of American society today is that many APIDA graduates will face unconscious biases, microaggressions, and structural barriers to advancement in their lives due to their racial and ethnic identity. By working together to advocate for the needs of APIDA students, we can ensure these do not occur during this year’s Commencement festivities.
Dear Ketanji Brown Jackson
Dear Judge Ketanji — pronounced “kuh-tahn-jee” — Brown Jackson ’92, you are my role model. You are the embodiment of a successful Black woman and the blueprint for Black girls everywhere. You are the coalition of the strength of our Black mothers and our ancestors’ greatest pride. You are the inspiration of my Harvard experience and a pioneer for defining what Black excellence is within white America.
Nowruz: The Day Filled with Joy and Hope at Harvard
Participating in the Nowruz Festivals like this one held at Harvard not only lifts Uyghurs' spirits but also gives us an opportunity to display our strong will to preserve our culture
America’s Free-Speech ‘Reckoning’ Threatens Liberalism Abroad
To those free-speech activists rising up against undemocratic regimes in other countries, it would be advisable to find another liberal model for now. Here in the U.S., we’re still figuring out what we think of ours.
Nothing Happens in Isolation
At the end of the day, the students in quarantine should be the ones who have the virus. And as much as Harvard shifts the blame to undergraduates, they caused their own outbreak with their callous, short-sighted alternative housing policy. They know the right strategy to control Covid-19, because they used it for a year and a half. It’s due time for it to return.
