Bill Maher, host of “Real Time,” blasted universities such as Penn and Harvard for siding with Hamas and playing host to students he characterized as “useful idiots.” Maher’s comments come as Harvard University President Claudine Gay recently appeared before Congress to account for the sudden rise in anti-Semitism on campus.
Maher kicked off the segment with FIRE CEO Greg Lukianoff, asking him about the organization’s ranking system of colleges and universities concerning free speech. Harvard and Penn reportedly appear at the bottom of a list of 250 schools throughout the U.S.
“So these are two of the colleges who are now on Team Hamas,” Maher said. “Is that a coincidence? Or what is the connection?”
Fox News Digital reported that Maher listed off a series of slogans heard during pro-Palestinian rallies on school campuses, including “intifada,” which the host described as a vague term analogous to “jihad.” However, he went on to mention the use of the phrase, “From the river to the sea,” which he suggested was “a little more genocide-y.”
“But, you know, let’s give the benefit of the doubt – that could be ‘Well, we just want the Jews to move and not die,'” Maher said. “And then there’s the phrase ‘by any means necessary.’ Okay, now I’m kinda peeing my pants.”
Concerning the term “intifada,” Lukianoff mentioned that the term is “absolutely protected” by free speech, but he qualified his statement by saying that it could also be used as a threat or harassment, which is when it can become a problem.
“It was kind of embarrassing to watch these university presidents of the top institutions in the country not being able to answer that clearly,” Lukianoff said.
“What irks me is that look, I’m always going to be on the side ‘as far as you can push free speech,'” Maher said. “What bothers me is the double standard… Say they don’t want to say ‘Kill the Jews,’ but I certainly have heard chanted ‘F**k the Jews, f**k the Jews.’”
“I cannot think of any other group that you can say ‘f**k the blank’ and have it be acceptable,” Maher added.
Later on in the segment, Maher referred to the college students at these prestigious universities as “useful idiots,” going on to say that the “bigger scandal here is that these are the biggest, most esteemed colleges in the country and they’ve raised a bunch of f**king idiots.”
“Do I really think they want to wipe out the Jews? I don’t, but, you know, they live by these buzzwords and what they read on TikTok,” Maher continued. “They want to be an ‘ally,’ an ‘ally’ of people who have more melanin and less money. That’s what you have to be, an ally. Don’t think of it more than that.”
Maher did not stop there. He continued by jabbing at his “dear liberal friends” who are glued to “MSNBC” and read “The New York Times,” who have consistently dismissed what has been playing out on college campuses in recent years.
“If anything good that has come out of this, it’s that now you see what we’ve been talking about. We were not making it up!” Maher said.
Fox News Digital reported that they reached out to Harvard and Penn for comment on Maher’s claims, but they have not yet responded.
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