Harvard University’s president has come under fire for being slow to issue a statement following Hamas’ attacks on Israel last weekend and then for not condemning Hamas when university leadership did speak out.

President Claudine Gay’s handling of the situation has drawn criticism from notable alumni Larry Summers, a former Harvard president himself who also served as U.S. treasury secretary, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass.

While the university initially stayed silent about the war, a coalition of more than 30 pro-Palestinian groups at the school released a statement Saturday blaming Israel for “all unfolding violence.”

“Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum,” the statement read. “For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced. Palestinians in Gaza have no shelters for refuge and nowhere to escape. In the coming days, Palestinians will be forced to bear the full brunt of Israel’s violence.”

Harvard University President Claudine Gay (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Summers voiced his frustration with Harvard’s silence on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. He wrote Monday that Harvard had appeared “at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”

“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” wrote Summers, who noted Gay’s predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, quickly released a statement denouncing Russia following its invasion of Ukraine last year.

Moulton said in a statement Monday he could not “recall a moment when I’ve been more embarrassed by my alma mater.”

“Terrorism is never justified nor someone else’s fault,” he said. “As hundreds of Israelis and others, including several Americans, remain kidnapped or dead, the 31 Harvard organizations that signed a letter holding Israel ‘entirely responsible’ for Hamas’ barbarous terrorism should be condemned, as should Harvard leadership for whom silence is complicity.”

Harvard’s leadership ultimately issued a statement Monday saying it is “heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas that targeted citizens in Israel this weekend, and by the war in Israel and Gaza now under way.” It neither condemned Hamas nor the statement by the student groups. 

The statement did not satisfy Summers, who wrote that it failed “to meet the needs of the moment” and lacked “moral clarity.”

By Tuesday, Gay issued a follow-up statement that finally denounced Hamas.

“As the events of recent days continue to reverberate, let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” she said. “Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.”

Gay added that “while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group — not even 30 student groups — speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.”

The pro-Palestinian student groups had planned a vigil at Harvard on Tuesday but postponed it, citing “credible safety concerns and threats against student security.”