If Harvard University was hoping to smuggle Joe Biden onto campus without Donald Trump noticing, it didn’t work.
Biden’s appearance at the Ivy League school’s Institute of Politics was supposed to be a surprise.
Maybe the college authorities were worried about welcoming the former president at such a sensitive time, when it was going to war with the Trump administration, or perhaps they’d read the glut of books about his mental decline.
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The event was reportedly planned weeks in advance, but the timing wasn’t great, as it turned out, with Harvard battling a $2.2 billion funding freeze and threats to its tax-exempt status.
Either way, the clandestine plot for Biden to talk to about 50 students at the Kennedy School was a bust.
First, he was forced to talk over pro-Palestinian protesters outside ringing bells, banging drums, and chanting: “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide. You’re committing genocide,” according to the Harvard Crimson.
The demonstration, involving about a dozen people, was said to have been organized by a group called Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine.
So much for the discrete preparations with students being told in advance only that they were invited to listen to a “special guest.”
Then the 82-year-old made the wrong kind of headlines in the college news coverage with the kind of gaffes that led to him quitting his re-election campaign last year after a disastrous televised debate with Trump.
Biden’s loyal adviser, Mike Donilon, now a resident fellow at Harvard, who accompanied him, had to correct him after he mixed up Ukraine with Iraq as he discussed the war with Russia.
Then he clumsily dropped a melting ice cream bar on the floor after biting into it after his speech, the Crimson reported.
The Trump administration is trying to force Harvard to agree to its demands to fight antisemitism on campus by banning DEI policies, identifying activists, and agreeing to an independent audit of its teaching standards. But thus far, Harvard has refused to play ball.
“Harvard stepped up in a way no one else has. You should be really thankful,” Biden had reportedly told the students.
Neither Harvard nor Biden’s spokesperson would discuss the event.
