Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan was protested by pro-Palestinian Harvard University students during his first public appearance since joining the Harvard Kennedy School faculty earlier this month, a campus newspaper reported.
Eight “Harvard affiliates” unfurled banners at a Tuesday John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Massachusetts university’s Institute of Politics where Sullivan was discussing U.S. foreign policy, according to the Harvard Crimson.
While the demonstrators — members of unrecognized student group “Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine” — did not “verbally interrupt” the event, they held posters denouncing Sullivan’s new role on the faculty, which he started on April 1.
“War criminals are not welcome here,” one sign reportedly read.
“First stop Harvard next stop The Hague,” stated another.
When directly asked about his refusal to refer to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “genocide,” Sullvan replied, “I have not called it a genocide, because I do not believe it is a genocide.”
“I think Israel was trying to defeat a terrorist group, and in doing so, acting excessively. And I think that is quite different from calling it a genocide,” he explained, before adding that the events of October 7 and the subsequent violence are a “horrible, god awful tragedy.”
Campus police officers allowed the protesters to remain with their signs before they voluntarily left on their own accord “shortly before the end of the forum,” the Crimson reported.
While Sullivan, who severed as the Biden administration’s pro-China lackey, did not address the demonstrators during his talk, where he boasted of the “many, many hours” he spent with the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the former Harvard Kennedy School dean who moderated the event defended their right to protest.
“I thought the way they handled it — the way that the people who had their contrary view expressed their view — was acceptable,” the former dean, Graham T. Allison, told the Crimson. “I think it was actually the way things should be done.”
“That’s what the First Amendment at an open debating space is,” he added.
Sullivan’s brags about his work with the Biden administration and China can be found here.
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, D.C. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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