Harvard faces lashing for hosting Pakistan conference days after Pahalgam attack
World | Pakistan: Some Indian students at Harvard even mocked Pakistan, ridiculing it as a country that is so poverty-stricken that it required an Indian billionaire to host its conference.
The Harvard University’s Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, funded by Lakshmi Niwas Mittal, an Indian steel magnate based in the United Kingdom, is drawing a backlash for having hosted a ‘Pakistan Conference 2025’ on April 27, just five days after the targeted killings of Hindu tourists after identification and segregation in the horrific terror attack at Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, by terrorists of The Resistance Front, or TRF—an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Pakistan’s finance minister, Muhammed Aurangazeb, and its ambassador to the US, Rizwan Shaeed Sheikh, were among the delegates to the conference.
Harvard’s South Asia Institute is financed by Mittal, who is the executive chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s second-largest steelmaking company, as well as chairman of stainless steel manufacturer Aperam.
The institute has disassociated itself from the conference hosted on Sunday after a backlash from Indian students.
Controversy erupted after two Indian students, Surabhi Tomar and Abhishek Chaudhuri, wrote a letter to the university management, urging it to “ensure its campus does not become a platform for whitewashing state-enabled religious terrorism” in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terrorist attack that killed 26 people.
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The two students also wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, saying, “Welcoming representatives of a government that enables or justifies terrorism risks Harvard being complicit. The United States must not host representatives of a state that protects and promotes organisations targeting civilians based on faith,” the students said in a separate letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
The students also asked the Harvard management to issue a public statement condemning the Pahalgam attack and provide emotional and institutional support to affected students, seeking, “clarity, courage, and compassion for Hindu and Indian students grieving the targeted killing of members of their faith.”
After the controversy, a South Asia Institute administrator said the conference was organised by Pakistani students and the institute did not host it beyond providing ‘some support’.
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The institute’s executive director, Hitesh Hathi, however, took part in a discussion at the conference on “The Enlightened Muslim: Examining the intersection of religion, modernity, and state formation in Pakistan.”
The institute later removed the conference and panel discussion from its website, and the link lead to a page showing the message, “The page you requested could not be found.”
Some Indian students even mocked Pakistan, ridiculing it as a country that is so poverty-stricken that it required an Indian billionaire to host its conference.