Harvard Poison Ivy

It’s time for Elvis Presley’s estate to re-release the King’s underrated 1964 song from the movie Roustabout.

This tune is called “Poison Ivy League.” Its moment has arrived, after the Congressional hearing Tuesday with the two college presidents from the Poison Ivy League as well as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of the one non-Ivy (but probably even more prestigious) MIT.

Demands for genocide are… nuanced, you see. Hate speech involves context, to use their new favorite word. For example, fataphobia, whatever that is, is violence. But “Globalize the intifada,” not so much.

Everything is turned upside down in the Poison Ivy League. On the Harvard Hit Parade, Silent Night now trails far behind Kristallnacht. Forget “With Crimson in Triumph Flashing.” The new Harvard fight song is Deutschland Uber Alles.

At the House committee hearings, all three of the college presidents were obtuse. They couldn’t answer the Republicans’ recurring question: would any of their snowflake students be disciplined for calling for genocide of the Jews?

It’s complicated, the eggheads harrumphed. They were obfuscating and dissembling in all the ways that seem to work so well for all the comrades. The investigation continues…. They can’t speak to sources and methods…. These are personnel matters….

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY and Harvard ’06, kept asking both Magill and Gay if demands for genocide violate the schools’ codes of conduct or rules?

Gay: “It depends on the context.”

Magill: “It is a context-dependent decision.”

Was there an echo in there? As terrible as Kornbluth of MIT was, Gay and Magill were worse. But Harvard being Harvard, Gay took the brunt of most of the slings and arrows of outraged commentary all day.

But then Liz Magill, the absolutely tone-deaf Penn president, somehow one-upped Gay with a groveling apology. She tweeted it out at 6:56 p.m., in other words on deadline for most of state-run media.

“There was a moment during yesterday’s Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies,” she began reading from the teleprompter. “In that moment, I was focused on our University’s long-standing policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which says the speech alone is not punishable.”

The Constitution? You’re blaming your condoning of racist, genocidal, Nazi hate speech on… the Constitution? You know, the thing, as Dementia Joe says.

Well, there it is. Those damn Founding Fathers, those Eurocentric slave owners! It’s their fault.

“I was not focused, but should have been, on the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil, plain and simple. I want to be clear….”

Now she wants to be clear!

So does President Gay. She issued her own mea culpa, and it too went over like the proverbial lead balloon.

“Let me be clear,” Gay tut-tutted. “Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”

For the record, this was Gay’s second “let-me-be-clear” moment since Oct. 7. The first one came after she issued a tepid statement when the local Nazis of Harvard Square cheered on the terrorist massacres.

That first let-me-be-clear clarification from Gay began:

“Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities….”

Let me be clear. If you have to say “Let there be no doubt” you can assume there is… plenty of doubt.

You know who was clear the first time? Elvis Presley. He didn’t need take two or take three. He was takin’ care of business way back when. Elvis knew these eggheads:

“Poison Ivy League, boys in that Ivy League/ So loaded with cash, they give me a rash/ So let it be told/ I won’t touch them with a 10-foot pole!”

They don’t care, Elvis. Because they are so loaded with cash. Harvard’s endowment is $53 billion, MIT’s $23.5 billion. Penn has $21 billion.

Harvard and Penn are the worst, though. They’re like two peas in a pod. In the most recent annual survey of freedom of speech on American campuses, Harvard finished dead last, 248th. Coming in at number 247 was Penn.

Or consider the squalid career of the fake Indian, Sen. Elizabeth Warren. After she began her racial grifting, her first jackpot came at the UPenn law school. And it wasn’t many moons before she was soon making even more wampum at Harvard Law. Her scam was so successful she was soon running for Great White Father.

The fake Indian never paid a price for any of her cynical grifts. They never do.

Until now, nobody has ever called out any of these people. Forget the old Harvard motto, Veritas. The real motto is, “Do You Know Who I Am?”

All of them, not just these three, must be in a state of shock over the blowback. Until now, the only way you could ever get jammed up was if you said something like, “All Lives Matter.”

Remember when the president of Smith College uttered those cancellable words a few years back? Members of the protected classes blocked traffic on campus, they were so outraged.

Within 6 hours, the Smith College president was issuing her own “Let-me-be-clear” statement….

What happened Tuesday, though, must have shocked the fellow travelers in the Poison Ivy League. Their fellow travelers turned on them. Even Joe Biden, flush with Red Chinese cash laundered by Penn, denounced them. Ditto Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.

Even the New York Times said yesterday that the situation for the privileged, pampered-puke presidents was “eroding.” Next they’ll be calling them “embattled.”

Think of this as a small silver lining in a very dark cloud. The Poison Ivy League finally getting a taste of its own medicine.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Am I right, Elvis?