Graduating tremors

Harvard Yard breathes again, Israel-Hamas truce maybe, and Sinai wonder

Midway through Harvard’s 374th Commencement yesterday, as keynote speaker Abraham Verghese delivered his address, phones buzzed across the wide grassy center of Harvard Yard with breaking news: a federal judge had extended a temporary order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from revoking Harvard’s certification to enroll international students. The decision, though not final, brought visible relief and a ripple of applause.

Graduates in Harvard Yard (via The Harvard Gazette)

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Verghese, the Stanford University School of Medicine professor and best-selling author, brought an American story to graduates, friends, and families who gathered on a campus that’s been in the spotlight, a target of Trump administration efforts to curb immigration and free speech.

An American of Indian origin, Verghese was born in Ethiopia to parents who were among the large community of Syrian Christians from India’s Kerala state. They served as teachers across the country from the mid-20th century onwards, and he grew up in Addis Ababa. The cloistered Christian community of Kerala along India’s Malabar coast is the subject of Verghese’s latest novel, The Covenant of Water. His medical education was spread across Ethiopia, India, and the United States—where he has worked and lived in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, and now California.

“When legal immigrants and others who are lawfully in this country, including so many of your international students, worry about being wrongly detained and even deported, perhaps it’s fitting that you hear from an immigrant like me,” he told graduates.

Verghese, 70, described being recruited “because American medical schools simply don’t graduate sufficient numbers of physicians to fill the country’s need,” and pointed out that one-fourth of U.S. physicians are foreign-born medical graduates.

“A part of what makes America great, if I may use the phrase, is that it allows an immigrant like me to blossom here, just as generations of other immigrants and their children have flourished and contributed in every walk of life, working to keep America great.”

As courts stall legal action on revoking Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, the Trump administration is adopting a long game in its battle with Harvard. The State Department says it is reviewing all Harvard University-affiliated visa holders, not just students, and the administration on Tuesday directed federal agencies to cancel all remaining federal contracts with the university, totaling about $100 million.

The State Department on Wednesday announced it will “aggressively revoke” visas of some Chinese students here lawfully to study. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the government will scrutinize those “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

Other news:

Israel has signed off on a truce with Hamas put forward by the United States, and Hamas says the plan is under “thorough review.” The plan reportedly calls for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and exchange of 28 Israeli hostages of 58 who remain.

• The UN's humanitarian chief in an interview with the BBC said people in Gaza are being subjected to forced starvation by Israel that amounts to a war crime.

Saudi Arabia delivered a blunt message to Iranian officials in Tehran last month: Take President Trump's offer to negotiate a nuclear agreement seriously because it presents a way to avoid the risk of war with Israel. The revelation was the latest wrinkle since Trump made the surprising announcement to restart talks with Iran over its enrichment program. His administration’s approach has veered from allowing limited uranium enrichment to demanding the complete dismantling of Tehran's enrichment program, and it’s unclear whether the threat of war with Israel is part of that approach or instigated independently by Netanyahu with Saudis as brokers.

Egypt today announced it is not closing St. Catherine’s Monastery, after social media posts suggested the site—located at the foot of Mount Sinai and recognized as the world's oldest continuously operating monastery—would be shuttered and converted to a museum.

• ISIS gunmen attacked the site in 2017 but did not fully take control. The monastery’s library of ancient manuscripts, which include the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete written copy of the New Testament, has been digitized in a decade-long project, along with much of its 4,000 rare documents dating to the fourth century.

• The Sisters of Sinai is a great read on this subject.

China continues to force ethnic Uyghur laborers to work in what amount to labor camps, but a new report from Adrian Zenz says the forced labor system extends beyond Xinjiang Province, where they have been confined, to 75 factories across 11 Chinese regions, with links to major western companies like MacDonald’s and KFC and Western automakers, including BMW, VW, and Tesla.

(credit: Adrian Zenz via Twitter)

Zenz, senior fellow and Director in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, was the first to document the compulsory system that forced incarcerated Uyghurs to work in the cotton industry in 2020.

Global climate predictions show temperatures are expected to continue at or near record levels in the next five years, increasing climate risks and impacts. The report on Wednesday from the World Meteorological Organization said arctic temperature increases are expected to continue to outstrip global averages. Meteorologists have narrowed the window on the world warming 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) from an initial assessment seven years ago of 2040 to perhaps now within this decade. Some scientists call it an irreversible tipping point, where polar ice sheets melt and coral reefs will collapse.

I’m reading … well, just finished and highly recommend, Jesus Changes Everything by Stanley Hauerwas. And remembering something Miroslav Volf, the Croatian theologian at Yale Divinity School, said to me in an interview: “The Christian faith is a hope even when the situation is completely without any possibility of change. … Abraham and Sarah cannot have a child, yet they believe, they hope. This newness of hope, notwithstanding circumstances, seems to be one of the great gifts of the Christian faith that we have forgotten how to avail ourselves of.”

Volf will be in conversation with The Trinity Forum on “The Cost of Ambition” on June 6. Details here.