Republican in Name Only: How the Harvard Republican Club Was “Captured”

By Keri Collins, Jason Morganbesser, and Daniel Patel

Source: Frank Zhou/Harvard Crimson

In the past week, Harvard’s campus has been abuzz with a variety of religious events. On Sunday, Easter celebrations were held in the middle of Harvard Yard, inside and outside Memorial Church. Harvard Hillel created a 9-foot-wide Sedar plate outside of Harvard’s Science Center and organized a celebratory dinner with Harvard Dean of Students Thomas Dunne. And the Harvard Islamic Society held an Eid Mubarak celebration near Quincy House. The authors of this piece are Jewish, Christian, and Muslim conservatives, and as conservatives, we celebrate this flourishing religious life on Harvard’s typically secular campus.

But, strangely, the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) attacked the presence of religious life on campus. In a recent social media post, they derided Muslims celebrating religious life by declaring that “Harvard has been captured” and spreading lies about what occurred at the event. This attack is indicative of a clique that has taken over the HRC and moved it away from Republican principles. As the American founders understood, once the civil rights of one religious community are restricted, no religion, whether Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, is safe.

The story of the takeover of the HRC starts with Leo Koerner, who assumed control over the HRC last year. As President, he altered the HRC in his vision. As the former head of the John Adams Society, a social organization closely associated with the current leadership of the HRC, Koerner allegedly presided over neo-Nazi Hitler Salutes, which became pervasive under his leadership. He also allegedly proposed the later-conducted removal of all women as members of the organization. Koerner pushed an extremist, exclusionary ideology that departs from conservatism. Republicans are not Nazis. Republicans do not support removing women from the conservative movement. The HRC no longer reflects Republicans.

As president of the HRC, Koerner adopted structural changes to consolidate his influence. He rewrote the Constitution of the HRC, removing elections so that, under the new rules, he could handpick the incoming Board.¹ At this point, HRC leadership rejected the very idea of the Republic in order to keep power. This open rejection of Republican values by removing elections shows the HRC has forsaken its Republican name.

This handpicked, illegitimate board is the current HRC leadership: as such, it is closely affiliated with Koerner’s vision. Koerner handpicked the former Chairman of the John Adams Society as current President of the HRC. The current President has continued to enact Koerner’s vision. If anything, he has displayed support for taking it even further by allegedly implementing the expulsion of all women as Chairman of the John Adams Society. Indeed, in the past month, even after Koerner’s alleged facilitation of Nazi salutes went public, he is the only student who has been retweeted multiple times by the HRC’s Twitter account.

In this context, the HRC’s recent attack on student religious life makes more sense. They are objecting to religious celebrations as an extension of their desire to remove religious minorities from Harvard, just as they have sought to remove religious minorities and women from Harvard conservatism. Indeed, when we look at the comments on the HRC’s post, like “Fuck Muslims. Fuck Jews,” “Why is a Single Muslim at Harvard,” and “It looks like a small village in Somalia,” we can recognize the crowd that the HRC has fostered. The HRC is not motivated, nor does anyone believe they are motivated, by “defending Harvard.” The desire instead appears to be remaking Harvard without women, Jews, or other religious minorities. This is neither an American nor a Republican vision.

When asked, former HRC President Leo Koerner, incumbent HRC President Elliott Detjen, and HRC Treasurer Evan Doerr did not respond for comment.

The HRC leadership, both in practice and in their selection, no longer represents Harvard’s conservative community. We are not interested in expelling women, or Jews, or minorities. We are proud to be American and defend her founding ideals. The leadership of the HRC was not picked by the Republican process, and thus is not representative of Republicans on campus. It is a shame that Harvard’s Republican Club has given up Republican values in favor of something else.

These failings are not just abstract, they have led the HRC to attack Harvard’s religious communities. One of our co-authors, Daniel Patel, provides an account of the HRC’s recent misrepresentation of Harvard’s Eid Mubarak celebration:

My name is Daniel. I am a conservative and a Muslim. I am the Treasurer of the Harvard Islamic Society, the organization that organized the Eid Bazaar.

The blatant lies in the HRC’s post were staggering. What the HRC identified as a “prayer mat” was a simple tarp laid out for seating. What they described as a “capture” consisted of students, faculty, and families gathered around sizzling lamb kebabs and perusing trinkets. The HRC described our guests as “unvetted strangers.” They were families. They were alumni. We had a clear policy of asking attendees to RSVP. That meant the people who attended were families, alumni, and other vetted Bostonians. The HRC’s claimed that “Burqas and Qurans” were being sold. There were no Burqas. There were no Qurans.

It is difficult to imagine how such ridiculous oversights could have been a simple “mistake.” The HRC leadership looked at photographs of a community event and decided to invent a more threatening image. My co-authors have already documented what animates that impulse: an illegitimate leadership selected by a man who presided over Hitler salutes, that abolished member elections, and that has proven itself unbothered by open antisemitism and misogyny in its ranks. What the HRC did to our event is what that kind of organization does. It manufactures threats where there are none to justify illegitimate organizational capture. History has a name for that. It is not Republicanism.

The intellectual roots of modern American conservatism are more entangled with the Islamic tradition than the HRC’s leadership seems to know. In 1981, Ronald Reagan cited the 14th-century Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun by name to justify his economic platform, specifically Khaldun’s argument that excessive taxation destroys the very productivity it seeks to tax. One commenter on the HRC post wrote “Reagan was right.” On Ibn Khaldun, on faith, on the need for moral and religious community in this country, they are more right than they know.

Reagan and Khaldun both understood that a healthy nation rests on a society that exists outside of direct government control. Families gathering in a public square to celebrate their faith and trade goods is an expression of that society. This was a Muslim event, yes. It was also an American event. I know that the leadership of the Harvard Islamic Society consists of American citizens born and raised in this country, and who love this country, because I am one of them. The HRC called it a “capturing” of Harvard. I call it the American dream. I call it religious liberty. And I am genuinely uncertain what they find threatening about it, rather than the mangled, misrepresented event that they shared on social media. Unless, of course, their objection was never really about the event at all.

1. The Salient has put forth an official request through an official request to the HRC to provide their rules prior to 2025 through the Student Engagement Office. While they have not responded, there were elections for the HRC Board as late as 2024, the year before Koerner’s takeover. Article VI of the new rules, ratified in 2025 and linked in the article, removed elections. Several former members of the HRC have confirmed that this change was pursued while Koerner was President.