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She also criticized the late Queen Elizabeth II for hiding ‘bloody history of decolonization’
Professor Maya Jasanoff, likely the next chair of Harvard University’s History Department, has a reputation for making disparaging remarks against the United States and conservative figures, including President Donald Trump.
An unnamed source told The Washington Free Beacon this week that Jasanoff is expected to assume the new leadership role on July 1.
Her expected appointment comes as another prominent Harvard historian, James Hankins, leaves the Ivy League institution over its increasingly leftist ideological leanings.
Jasanoff teaches classes on the British Empire and “imperial history,” according to her faculty bio. She also frequently shares her political views online.
When President Joe Biden won office in 2020, Jasanoff celebrated by posting an image on Instagram that referred to Donald Trump as a “narcissist white supremacist habitual liar lunatic.”
“America’s nightmare is over,” the post stated. “… It’s a beautiful day!”
She has been involved in campus anti-Israel protests, too, according to the Free Beacon:
[Jasanoff] said she brought oranges and bananas to the anti-Israel protesters who erected an encampment in Harvard Yard in violation of university policies. The professor also marked the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack by “reflecting on the terror this country wrought on others,” and she called for President Donald Trump to be subjected to “prosecution for negligent homicide and reckless endangerment.” …
In 2024, Jasanoff was involved in an effort to resurrect an introductory history survey course, History 10. The Harvard Crimson quoted her at the time as saying, “One of the fundamental things about history as well is there’s no right answer, and there’s no single answer.” The Crimson also quoted her as saying, “The idea that we would require everyone to do a European history survey just seems like a thing very much of an earlier generation. … So that went away.”
Additionally, she criticized Queen Elizabeth II not long after her death in 2022, The College Fix reported at the time.
“We should not romanticize her era,” Jasanoff wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times. “The queen helped obscure a bloody history of decolonization whose proportions and legacies have yet to be adequately acknowledged.”
Harvard has been facing criticism for its political activism and leftist biases, especially in recent months.
In a December podcast, university President Alan Garber admitted that faculty activism is a problem.
Garber said that when he worked as a policy research leader at Stanford University, the faculty and staff “would never take a policy position, for a variety of reasons, one of them, and maybe most importantly, it would call into question the objectivity of our work.”
He also said it used to be that “one of the characteristics of excellent teaching” was not allowing personal views to influence classroom discussions.
More recently, long-time history Professor James Hankins penned an essay describing the campus activism as out of control, The Fix reported in January.
In his piece for Compact titled “Why I am Leaving Harvard,” Hankins criticized the university for discriminating against brilliant scholars just because they are white males.
Hankins is now a visiting professor at the University of Florida’s Hamilton School of Classical and Civic Education.
“The reason why is that the Hamilton School is committed to teaching the history of Western civilization,” he wrote. “When late liberal pedagogy replaced Western civilization courses with global history, serious harm was done to the socialization of young Americans. When you don’t teach the young what civilization is, it turns out, people become uncivilized.”
MORE: Harvard president admits faculty activism is a problem
