Six Alums to Watch Out For
Henry A. Kissinger ’50
War crimes, genocide, racism — you name it, he’s done it. Time Magazine’s 1972 Person of the Year and Harvard triple-graduate Henry Kissinger was a true renaissance man, equally comfortable propping up oppressive regimes abroad and enabling corruption at home. Besides being Richard Nixon’s point man for the Vietnam War and the illegal invasion of Cambodia that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, Kissinger also directed genocides and death squads in Bangladesh, East Timor, and much of Latin America and southern Africa. Few people in human history have had as much blood on their hands as Kissinger — according to one biographer, nearly three million people’s worth. However, his 400-page tome of a senior thesis is the reason why most departments at Harvard have word limits on their theses, so that’s something, I guess. Thanks, Henry! If you want to commemorate him, feel free to attend a lecture by Jake Sullivan, one of the architects of the genocide in Gaza and the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order. Harvard truly is a place of unbroken tradition.
Napalm ’42
Napalm is one of Harvard’s longest-lived and best-traveled alums: since its invention in a secret lab on Oxford Street in 1942, this flammable gel-like weapon has been used to kill hundreds of thousands and injure many more in Korea, Zimbabwe, Syria, and most infamously in Vietnam. Wherever America wants to kill and maim, Harvard’s finest drops from the skies. Napalm does more than just inflict brutal burns, cause the loss of limbs, and leave lifelong scars; it also destroys the environment wherever it is dropped and leaves dangerous chemicals that last for generations, causing cancer and congenital diseases for decades. Napalm has been used to defend apartheid, bolster colonialism, and of course, enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Lawrence H. Summers
When you pull up Larry Summers’s personal website, the website icon is the Harvard shield, almost like it’s his personal coat of arms. In a sense, it is: when this former Chief Economist of the World Bank and Secretary of the Treasury was president of Harvard, he acted like he owned the place, and he still thinks he does. According to Larry, women are simply unsuited to technical education, and Black professors are an embarrassment to the university. This, of course, makes him the ideal person to call Harvard out for antisemitism in the past year. Do not let his annoying relationship to Harvard distract you from the rest of his career: in an infamous memo published under his name in 1991, he said that the World Bank should be “encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to [Least Developed Countries],” and that “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.” Ask him about that in his economics class.
Bill A. Ackman ’88
Alums, usually, are supposed to help you find a career. Ever have one try to get you fired? As protest erupted on Harvard’s campus in response to the genocide in Gaza, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman did that and more. According to him, everyone who stands up to the university and to Israel should be named, shamed, and doxxed, so that he never has to experience the indignity of hiring anyone on the right side of history. Since then, he’s been using his considerable resources to work with the Israeli government to suppress dissent against the Gazan genocide, up to and including asking New York City Mayor Eric Adams to break up Columbia University’s encampment by force. Don’t try to network with him anytime soon.
Héctor A. Gramajo
Hang around the Kennedy School long enough and you’ll hear the rumor that the Mid-Career Master’s program is full of spies. Few hid their past lives worse than Héctor A. Gramajo, a Guatemalan general who oversaw the American-sponsored genocidal campaign against the Maya in his country, which murdered an estimated 70,000 people and destroyed hundreds of villages. His academic career at Cambridge was remarkably successful; Gramajo managed to pull off the coveted HKS double-degree program, graduating with both a Masters in Public Administration and papers served for human rights violations. However, shortly after his return to Guatemala, he was stung to death by a swarm of killer bees, in perhaps the only objective evidence to date that God exists. Checkmate, atheists.
Elise M. Stefanik ’06
As advocates of a “transformative liberal arts education” never fail to remind us, the purpose of this education is not to teach us what to think, but rather how to think for ourselves. Clearly something went wrong with former Harvard Institute of Politics vice president and current US Representative for New York Elise Stefanik. As one of Trump’s best toadies in Congress, she is responsible for leading the legislative charge against immigrants and trans people, besides being vocally in favor of repression of student speech. What’s more, she helped defund UNRWA, the UN agency that provides services to Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. While critical thought remains a ways away, Stefanik is doing a wonderful job serving as a fascist mouthpiece!