Harvard to give controversial grant to students

On Saturday, Harvard University plans to launch a $650,000 annual undergraduate fund in New Republic Editor Martin Peretz's name despite criticism of Peretz' stance on Islam.

Peretz, a former Harvard instructor, will not be making a formal address at this weekend's ceremony for the university's Social Studies department, where the award will be inaugurated, Harvard announced on Tuesday.

Still, more than 550 people have petitioned against accepting Peretz's donation for a grant in his name, The Harvard Crimson reported.

On his blog, Peretz called for Muslims to speak out against violence perpetrated by Islamic extremists worldwide, saying that this violence was "the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood."

"So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse," Peretz wrote.

He later apologized for this sentence after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof used it as a "glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become" in a column published on Sept. 11.

However, Peretz disputed that other comments he made were bigoted, including one stating that "Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, especially for Muslims."

"This is a statement of fact, not value," Peretz later wrote.

Peretz habitually makes Islamophobic statements, some critics alleged.

"This is all about firepower," wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates, a writer for The Atlantic, in a blog post saying that Peretz had previously displayed a pattern of publishing racist articles in TNR.

"The fact is that Peretz has the social and economic guns to be a bigot, to then be defended by even those who acknowledge his bigotry, and finally be honored at the highest levels of American academia," Coates said.