TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2002 -- Last week, Harvard President Lawrence Summers did a very important thing. He used his platform as Harvard’s leader to condemn the upsurge in anti-Semitism here and abroad.

What makes Summers’ action so unique and courageous is that his concern was not directed at easy villains such as the goose-stepping Matt Hale, leader of the racist World Church of the Creator. It was directed at individuals and groups whose expressions of hate often receive a pass from most people in academia because calling them out on their anti-Semitism risks offending people. Summers, for instance, brought up last year’s United Nations World Conference on Racism which devolved into a Jew-bashing forum that would have fit right into the Munich of the 1930s. Summers also explained how traditional criticism of Israel too often ventures into anti-Semitism. He mentioned examples where European academics have attempted to ban Israeli scholars -- many of them peaceniks -- from scholarly associations and journals. Here the only reason these individuals are being singled out is for the fact -- which they cannot change -- that they are from Israel, not their beliefs.

Summers did not mention every instance of global anti-Semitism this year. Even North American campuses have experienced disturbing outbreaks -- which his university, possibly because of his leadership, has been free of. At San Francisco State last Spring, anti-Israel protesters chanted " Hitler didn’t finish the job " and screamed " go back to Russia. " At Concordia University in Montreal, a small group of supporters of Israel found themselves surrounded and in some cases physically hit by protesters. And, just this Sunday, at Colorado College -- the scene of numerous demonstrations on the Middle East issue -- hooligans spray-painted swastikas on a Succah, a temporary wooden structure in which Jews eat in and celebrate the harvest holiday Succot.

This recent record of anti-Semitic actions make Eileen McNamara’s Sunday column in the Boston Globe difficult to understand. Headlined " Paranoia at Harvard, " McNamara likens Summers’ speech on anti-Semitism to Cardinal Bernard Law’s tendency to label criticism of the Church " anti-Catholic. " McNamara demonstrates a profound inability to recognize the international peril caused by the rise of Hitlerite rhetoric around the world. She points to Summers’ inclusion of chants likening Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Hitler along with synagogue burnings as an example of the Harvard president’s " paranoia. " " Well, a German justice minister last week reportedly compared President Bush’s tactics toward Iraq to Hitler’s toward Europe before World War II. Is she anti-American or merely hyperbolic? " McNamara writes.

The fact of the matter is that the German justice minister was being anti-American at best. To liken Bush to Hitler -- even to liken Sharon to Hitler -- reflects a deep misunderstanding of what the Nazis did during World War II. Visiting Dachau as I did this summer and walking on the graves of thousands of people marked only by ovens used to burn their bodies begins to provide a sense of how evil the Nazis were. As much as international critics might revile Bush, or even Sharon, they are far from Hitler. As much as critics of Sharon might hate the Israeli leader for failing to stop the Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila and even his current military campaign in the West Bank, this is a far cry from Hitler.

Summers also didn’t even get into the biggest example of anti-Semitism this year -- the war waged by al Qaeda, which vowed to attack Americans and Jews around the world. The nexus between al Qaeda and anti-Semitism was most grimly demonstrated by the execution of American journalist Daniel Pearl. " I’m a Jewish American. I come from on my father’s side a family of Zionists," the terrorists’ forced Pearl to say before they killed him by cutting his head off. How anybody can take issue with the leader of one of America’s premier universities for warning of the dangers of global anti-Semitism at a time like this is beyond me.