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Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player... The Harvard Salient, the lone conservative outlet on one of the most liberal of campuses, was suspended from publication after language echoing a Hitler speech appeared in an article. The bigger story is one of a collision between defenders of free inquiry and the boundaries that define expression in elite institutions. It comes at a very bad time, as Harvard and President Donald Trump themselves battle over the limits of free speech on campus. The Salient magazine, originally founded in 1981, was brought back to life in 2021 to provide a conservative counterweight at Harvard. It is editorially and financially independent from the university, but subject to the oversight of a board of directors made up of faculty and alumni, and they are unhappy. At issue are several lines from the magazine, according to multiple sources including the New York Times. In its September print issue, the Salient published an article by student David F.X. Army that included the lines “Germany belongs to the Germans, France to the French, Britain to the British, America to the Americans,” echoing the words Hitler used in a January 1939 speech to the Reichstag in which he gleefully forecast that another world war would lead to the annihilation of Jews. The Salient piece also argued “Islam et al. has absolutely no place in Western Europe,” and called for a return to values “rooted in blood, soil, language, and love of one’s own.” The article went on to argue Europe’s native populations were being displaced by migration from Africa and Asia. There was also another Salient story, published following the September killing of Charlie Kirk, that described the left as “our enemies.” The board of directors fired back, stating, “The Harvard Salient has recently published articles containing reprehensible, abusive, and demeaning material—material that is, in addition, wholly inimical to the conservative principles for which the magazine stands. The Board has also received deeply disturbing and credible complaints about the broader culture of the organization.” The statement did not specify which articles it found reprehensible or what complaints it had received. An investigation is underway, and while that is ongoing the Salient is not to print. Its editor, however, has vowed to ignore the shutdown order, claiming this was all a mistake. Editor-in-Chief Richard Rodgers wrote an email to the Salient’s mailing list calling the suspension an “unauthorized usurpation of power by a small number of individuals acting outside the bounds of their authority.” He pushed back against criticism in the school newspaper “branding The Harvard Salient as little more than a hate group that should be monitored and, if need be, silenced." Rodgers said the Hitler line was not intentional. He wrote “neither the author nor the editors had recognized the resemblance and that the phrase long predates the Third Reich,” though the Hitler quote should be well-known to students of history, forming the philosophical backbone of the Nazis’ plans to eliminate the Jews from Europe. Rodgers did not appear to address the use of the term “blood and soil.” “Blood and Soil” (Blut und Boden) was also a well-known central part of Nazi ideology. It combined racial mysticism (blood) with agrarian nationalism (soil), expressing the belief the German people (the Volk) were spiritually bound to their native land. It appeared in propaganda posters, speeches, and art glorifying Aryan farmers plowing German soil, visual shorthand for racial and national unity. It strains belief that Harvard students would be unaware of those associations or their emotional weight they carry in the context of an article on third world immigration into Western Europe. This should have been just basic free speech stuff familiar to Salient’s overreacting board members. Though Harvard, as a private institution, isn’t bound by the First Amendment, it claims to uphold the same values of free expression; it would be expected that an independent group claiming Harvard affiliation would do the same. It is heavy-handed of the board to suspend publication based on what is known at present. If there is something more, the board is obligated to surface that immediately to support their decision and maintain credibility. Their reflexive punishment risks confirming the narrative that elite institutions can’t tolerate ideological diversity. At the same time, the Salient should understand when dealing with subjects as emotionally laden as Nazi philosophy, explanation and context are crucial. Ignorance is a poor excuse here. Somewhere in the vast Harvard educational complex, there are journalism, history, and law classes that in 2025 teach just those very things. Everyone should learn their lesson and move on. The problem is we live in 2025, where dispassionate classroom wisdom often fails on the ideological battlefield. The Salient case arrives in the middle of Harvard’s and America’s broader struggle between the political right and left. The university has spent months under fire from Donald Trump, who accuses it of ideological bias and hypocrisy. Though Harvard has distanced itself, noting the Salient is governed by an independent board, the controversy inevitably reflects on the university. Harvard cannot duck the larger issues here. As Rodgers wrote about the censorship, “The traditionalist student becomes the bigot. The publication that prints their ideas becomes the threat. ‘Fascism’ is no longer a historical reference but a weaponized cliche, a way to place opponents outside the moral guardrails of the University.” He concludes Harvard is a campus that proclaims free expression while quietly cultivating fear of it. Truth, veritas, Harvard’s motto, emerges through debate, not censorship. Harvard remains a mirror of America’s polarization, a place where liberals preach tolerance but struggle to practice it, and conservatives at times crudely test the limits of provocation in the name of free speech.
