The backlash against the letter, and Harvard’s slow response to demands that it denounce the Hamas attacks as terrorism, led to strife on campus. Pro-Palestinian students were doxxed, their names and faces circulated on trucks around campus; Jewish students were attacked with antisemitic slurs on social media; and wealthy donors withdrew their money.

By January, Harvard’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, was forced to resign, after mounting charges of plagiarism in her academic work…