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The Harvard Salient, a conservative outlet, used a phrase that was similar to a speech given by Hitler. Its independent board paused its operations over material it called “reprehensible, abusive and demeaning.”
By Vimal Patel, New York Times Service
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The board of a conservative magazine at Harvard University known for its muckraking suspended the publication Sunday, citing the printing of “reprehensible, abusive and demeaning material.”
The magazine, The Harvard Salient, which was founded during the Reagan era and revived four years ago after a decade-long absence, is editorially and financially independent from the university.
The statement from the board, which is made up of conservative alumni, did not provide any detail about what incident prompted the review, but the publication had recently been embroiled in a controversy over an article that included a line similar to one in an Adolf Hitler speech.
The article, written by David F.X. Army, a Harvard student, in the magazine’s September edition, included the line, “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans.” The article argued that Europe’s native populations were being displaced by migration from Africa and Asia.
In a January 1939 speech that Hitler delivered to the Reichstag, in which he predicted that another world war would lead to the annihilation of Jews in Europe, he said, “France to the French, England to the English, America to the Americans, and Germany to the Germans.”
In a separate article in The Harvard Salient, Richard Y. Rodgers, the magazine’s editor, said the similarity to the Hitler line was not intentional. He wrote that “neither the author nor the editors had recognized the resemblance and that the phrase long predates the Third Reich.”
The Salient article by Army also argued for values rooted in “blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own.”
“Blood and soil” was a nationalist phrase used extensively by the Nazis.
In a statement to The New York Times late Monday, Rodgers said that the decision blindsided the magazine’s leadership and came after an unauthorized board meeting, a situation he described as “a mutiny.”
“While I understand that some board members may have acted out of a sense of self-preservation,” he wrote, “their actions have effectively brought The Harvard Salient as we have known it to an end.”
Some on campus criticized the article and the university’s hands-off response, which they described as apathetic. The university declined to comment, referring the matter to the magazine’s board, which made the decision to suspend the publication.
Harvard has been under scrutiny over how it has responded to controversial speech. Republicans in Washington and others have pushed it to be more open to conservative voices, but also to limit speech seen as antisemitic.
“To be clear: Harvard should not censor The Salient,” Adam N. Chiocco, an opinion writer for The Harvard Crimson, wrote this month. “If the university started halting the publication of campus outlets, I worry where they would stop. But it is also obvious that any use of Nazi rhetoric is absolutely reprehensible.”
Amid pressure from alumni, donors and lawmakers who say that Harvard has become a bastion of liberalism, the university has tried to make the case that it is friendly to conservative voices. It embraced a version of institutional neutrality, which says that university leaders should avoid weighing in on social and political matters.
And when The Harvard Salient complained about its access to campus, the university announced in February that it would reinstall boxes on dormitory doors, making distribution of the print edition easier. The move was announced around the time that the university was making a number of moves that some professors and students said were intended to placate the new Trump administration.
One board member, conservative author Naomi Schaefer Riley, celebrated the change this year that made distribution of the paper easier, saying, “The university is embracing the free exchange of ideas.”
The board now appears to be saying that some opinions go too far, even in a conservative magazine.
The board’s statement Sunday did not offer details about precisely which material prompted the review. It said recent articles included material that was “wholly inimical to the conservative principles for which the magazine stands.”
The Salient describes its mission as defending “the university’s legacy of free inquiry, rigorous scholarship, and fearless debate — values now imperiled by the rise of ideological conformity on campus and in the broader culture.”
The statement Sunday also raised concerns about behavior. “The board has also received deeply disturbing and credible complaints about the broader culture of the organization,” it said without elaborating.
Schaefer Riley declined to comment for this article. Alex Acosta, The Harvard Salient’s board chair and a labor secretary for President Donald Trump during his first term, could not be reached for comment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
