Honorary Degrees Awarded in Genocide Profiteering
Today, Harvard celebrates the achievements of nearly 2,000 graduating College seniors and almost 8,000 more students graduating with advanced degrees. But with all the attention on these graduates, we may overlook those in the Harvard community who have contributed most to the University’s intellectual vitality: members of the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers. So today, after a rigorous selection process, we have chosen to bestow Honorary Degrees in Genocide Profiteering upon two distinguished members of the corporate class. If you see our prestigious honorees around the Yard today, be sure to congratulate them on this achievement and their rapacious contributions to our collective future!
Penny Pritzker
Oft-mistaken for Hermey the Elf, Penny Pritzker ’81 is, in actuality, a total girlboss-nepo baby-genocide profiteer-multi-hyphenate! Pritzker was the first woman to lead the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body responsible for, among other duties, managing its $53.2 billion endowment. The sixth wealthiest family in the United States, the Pritzkers built their fortune on Hyatt Hotels, which you may recognize from its innovative practices of union busting, tax evasion, and political bribery. Unlike the loafing hotel workers that Penny nickels-and-dimes, the Pritzker work ethic — the truest form of generational wealth — just does not quit. Their grindset is so serious that they’ve earned Hyatt the reputation of the worst hotel employer in the country with the highest frequency of injuries for its housekeeping staff. Their labor abuses include turning heat lamps on a picket line in 99-degree heat and threatening to fire an employee who did not come back to her shift three days after a C-section. The Pritzkers are a family business, after all, so just bring the kid to work!
But if you’re picturing Penny as yet another rich Harvard legacy alum who has never known a day of true work in her life, you would be dead wrong. When she was a little girl, she would accompany her father on trips to the hotels he owned and check the women’s restrooms to make sure that the housekeepers had cleaned them to her standards. Her knack for labor control propelled her to become the chairperson of the Superior Bank of Chicago, which, in a lucky twist of fate, was 50 percent co-owned by her own family! Unfortunately, the bank was shut down by federal regulators in 2001 and Penny was sued for financial racketeering, but you’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet.
Here at Harvard, Penny has put her extensive experience to use. Since becoming the Senior Fellow of the Corporation in 2022, she has grown the size of Harvard’s endowment by $1.3 billion, largely by investing in Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians through corporations like Alphabet, Meta, and Nvidia. Just a few months ago, Penny reinvested $150 million in Booking Holdings, which rents out stolen land in the West Bank to Israeli settlers. Unsurprisingly, since history repeats itself, the Pritzkers themselves paved the way for the Booking model when they built a Hyatt Regency hotel on land stolen from Palestinians in Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem. That’s right, Harvard grads: The next time you vacation in Israel, you will have the Pritzker family and their empire of holdings — in land, corporations, and universities — to thank!
Not only has Penny far surpassed the expectations of any graduate in Genocide Profiteering, but her accomplishments also merit an honorary minor in Imperial Engineering. In fact, Penny Pritzker is often credited with pushing Barack Obama towards a more Zionist politic during the beginning of his political career. As the Secretary of Commerce under President Obama, Pritzker showed us that women in politics can do it all: bolstering Obama’s support for Israeli apartheid while allowing him to order a record number of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. If Obama apologized to one victim of his drone strikes every day, it would take him three years to finish the task, but luckily for their busy schedules, neither he nor Pritzker show any sign of seeking penance anytime soon.
In the end, Penny Pritzker isn’t just a girlboss — she’s the whole neoliberal empire in a pantsuit.
Theodore V. Wells
As a graduate of both Harvard Law and Harvard Business Schools, Theodore V. Wells has shown us two new ways to utilize our world-class Harvard educations: defending the plunder of our world’s natural resources and the exploitation of the working class! Wells has rushed to the defense of darling clients like the ExxonMobil Corporation, which had been sued by the State of New York for misleading investors about the risks of climate change. Here at Harvard, we are proud to say that the poor, huddled, defenseless masses — multi-billion dollar corporate polluters — have our Corporation members fighting in their corner. Thank you, Teddy, for your tireless service, and we agree with you: Fuck the polar bears!
But Theodore’s noble legal advocacy inspires us to go even further. As new Harvard alums, you, too, can rise to the gallant defense of little tyrants who flaunt the spoils of colonial conquest inside tacky mansions decked out like the British Museum! While serving the Harvard Corporation, Wells has also moonlighted as a crony — er, attorney — for billionaire hedge fund manager Michael Steinhart. A firm believer that the settler colony of Israel is the “Jewish miracle of the 20th century,” Steinhart has made a fortune by looting land and cultures that are not his own. Despite Wells’s best attempts, his client was forced to surrender 180 stolen relics from around the world, valued at around $70 million. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office — almost certainly a Hamas outpost — even went so far as to impose on Steinhardt a lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities, and forced him to return one of his many Palestinian artifacts over to members of the Palestinian Authority. Despite an otherwise unheard-of flop of a case, Wells still worked tirelessly with the State of New York to ensure that Steinhardt’s remaining loot would not be returned to Palestinians but their Israeli oppressors.
It is with great admiration that we extend our warmest congratulations to Penny Pritzker and Theodore V. Wells — true stewards of Harvard’s highest ideals. As new Harvard graduates, you, too, can join the ranks of such tireless and altruistic citizen leaders!
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