Fetterman supports call for Romney to be Harvard’s next president

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Monday supported calls for Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) to retire to become the next president of Harvard University, citing concerns in recent months about the Harvard University’s response. elite school to anti-Semitism on its campus.

The position has been officially vacant since early January, when former university president Claudine Gay finally resigned after facing weeks of pressure from some university alumni and government officials amid fallout from her congressional testimony on anti -semitism on campus and new allegations of plagiarism. Alan Garber, who previously served as provost, is now interim president.

In a statementFetterman pointed to recent concerns about anti-Semitism at Columbia University and suggested that Romney’s leadership could help “recalibrate” academia away “from far-left orthodoxy.”

“As a Harvard alumnus, and after this crazy season of anti-Semitism at Columbia, I sign,” Fetterman said in a statement about Romney on the X social platform.

Fetterman included in his post a screenshot of a Washington Post op-ed — written by American Jewish Congress President Daniel Rosen — titled “Harvard is in a Mighty Mess. Let Mitt Romney clean it up.”

Fetterman added: “This former governor of Massachusetts doesn’t need a salary, but Harvard and its academic peers need to recalibrate toward far-left orthodoxy.”

Neither Harvard nor Romney responded to a question from The Hill about whether Romney is interested in the job or whether there has been any discussion about his theoretical candidacy.

Rosen, in his article, said he is “a longtime Democrat” who “did not vote for Romney when he ran for U.S. president in 2008” and “has no personal connection to him.”

Still, he wrote: “I make this suggestion in the sincere and robust hope that he is someone who can lead the university through painful but necessary reforms and roll back the anti-Semitism that is tarnishing the institution’s credibility.”

“As the grandson of Holocaust survivors and president of the American Jewish Congress, I find it devastating that Harvard has failed to vigorously address rampant anti-Semitism on campus,” Rosen wrote in the op-ed, published a week ago.

Romney was awarded the JFK Profile in Courage Award in 2021 for being the first Republican senator to vote to convict a member of his own party during former President Trump’s first impeachment trial. During the second impeachment trial in 2021, six Republican senators joined Romney in voting to convict the former president following the attack on the Capitol. The vote fell short of the two-thirds threshold required for conviction.

Rosen noted Romney’s often independent streak and said, “Romney has been nothing short of a figure of courage in the Senate.”

“There is no doubt that there are other Americans of similar standing and stature, but Romney’s unique bridge-building character is precisely what Harvard needs in an era of toxic polarization,” Rosen wrote. “An alumnus of Harvard, he is an eloquent and experienced administrator who has consistently demonstrated his political independence in defense of what is right, not what is expedient.”