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WASHINGTON — Add Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman to the list of Harvard alumni who want to see Utah Sen. Mitt Romney as president of the university.
Fetterman posted his support Monday on the social media platform X along with an image from a Washington Post op-ed by the president of the American Jewish Congress calling for Romney to "clean up" the university's "almighty mess" over escalating hate speech.
"As an alumnus of Harvard, and after this mad season of antisemitism at Columbia, I co-sign," wrote Fetterman, a Democrat who holds a master's degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School.
"This former Governor of Massachusetts doesn't need a paycheck, but Harvard and its academic peers needs to recalibrate from far-left orthodoxy," his post continued. Fetterman is seen as one of the most vocal Democratic supporters of Israel amid increasing demands for cease-fire in Gaza.
With anti-Israel protests erupting around the country, including at Columbia University in New York City, Fetterman has been critical of tactics that include blocking traffic and confronting customers at various businesses. Wearing his trademark hoodie, he told Fox News Digital on Friday that doesn't "make you noble. It just makes you an (expletive)."
The case made for Romney becoming president of Harvard made in The Washington Post by Daniel Rosen, also a Democrat, focuses on the Utah Republican senator's "political independence in defense of what is right, rather than what is expedient." Romney, who holds an MBA and a law degree from Harvard, is not running for reelection this year.
Rosen wrote, "Romney has the moral courage and independence to identify the root sources of antisemitism at the university, address the decline in Jewish student applications and enrollment, and teach a new generation of young adults the importance of mutual tolerance and civilized coexistence."
Romney, the GOP's 2012 nominee for president, has not commented on the suggestion that he should lead Harvard.
In January, Claudine Gay, Harvard's first Black president, resigned after a congressional hearing where she responded to being asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews violate(s) Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment" by saying, "It can be, depending on the context." Gay also faced allegations of plagiarism.
