Harvard grads petition alumnus Jared Kushner to stand up for refugees
A Harvard University graduate and grandson of Holocaust survivors has organized fellow alumni to sign an open letter to Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, urging him to use his influence in the administration “in a positive way” and telling him that “the millions around the world who are fleeing conflict … are counting on you.”
The open letter was drafted Sunday night, posted Monday morning, and has been circulating on university alumni class pages on Facebook and through BCC’d emails from one classmate to groups of others since then. To date it has drawn more than 2,000 signatures.
“It really was the ban, the refugee ban that came through at the end of last week,” that prompted the petition, said New York attorney David Rochelson, who — like Kushner — attended Harvard as an undergraduate and then New York University School of Law. “Just spent the whole weekend shocked and upset and was looking for something to do,” he explained.
Rochelson’s paternal grandfather survived the Holocaust and then lived in a displaced person’s camp before coming to the United States in the 1940s. Kushner’s paternal grandparents both survived the Holocaust in Europe and came to the United States as refugees after the war. An oral history of the Holocaust by his grandmother, Rae Kushner, has recently drawn new attention online.
Trump’s executive order, signed Friday, prohibits entry of new refugees of all faiths to the United States for 120 days and halts the entry of people from seven majority-Muslim nations for 90 days. The implementation of the order on Friday and Saturday sparked major protests at airports around the nation, as well as a spontaneous Sunday march from the White House to the Trump International Hotel and the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Announced on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the ban drew widespread condemnation from Jewish groups.
“This great nation has afforded you and your family all the opportunities in the world, and you have succeeded beyond your ancestors’ imaginations,” says the letter to Kushner. “You have earned great material success and, now, enormous power. We ask that you use it to help ensure that this nation remains a beacon of freedom, opportunity and hope throughout the world.”
It also urged him to recall Harvard’s motto — “It is just a single word: Veritas. Truth.” And it asked him to let that word —“the guiding value of your alma mater” — “be a value in the Administration.”
The letter illustrates what a cultural minefield Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism, have to navigate now that he is a high-profile political aide. The synagogue that runs the preschool one of the couple’s three children attends in Washington, D.C., issued a statement on Sunday condemning the temporary refugee ban. “The leadership and clergy of Adas Israel Congregation stands with the entire Conservative movement and other local organizations … in advocating for the rights of immigrants, rejecting the targeting of individuals based on religion, and calling on the U.S. government to reject policy proposals that would halt, limit, or curtail refugee resettlement in the U.S. or prioritize certain refugees over others,” the synagogue said in a Facebook post.
Over the weekend the couple was also chided for what critics called a tone-deaf tweet showing Ivanka Trump wearing a silver ball gown, which was published during the height of the anti-ban protests. And Vanity Fair magazine has begun asking if the couple’s image can survive the Trump administration, with a story suggesting that Kushner has been losing power within the White House and has at times been “furious” with the president’s actions.
Classmates from NYU law school earlier penned a letter to Kushner also seeking to use their institutional ties to influence him, and through him, the president.
