|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2023 6:23:48 GMT
The presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) are responding to a backlash against their testimonies on campus anti-Semitism at the United States Congress.
In a five-hour hearing on Monday, Harvard’s Claudine Gay and Penn’s Elizabeth Magill, joined by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Sally Kornbluth, testified on how their colleges are combating campus anti-Semitism – which observers say has been on the rise since Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The testimonies have made the presidents – particularly Gay and Magill – targets of criticism from supporters of Israel and Palestine alike, with some even calling for resignations or legal action.
House members contested that under the guise of free speech protections guaranteed under the First Amendment of the US Constitution, anti-Semitic comments and behaviour have been enabled within their college communities. Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian students have pushed back, saying that calls for Palestinian liberation should not be conflated with anti-Semitism.
What did the presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn say?
All three presidents were repeatedly questioned in the congressional hearing about what kinds of expression and values they allow on campus. The presidents maintained that they are committed to free expression and a diversity of viewpoints, even if comments are “offensive” so long as speech does not cross into conduct or calls for violence.
They also said that action is already under way to support students facing threats, and to hold code of conduct violators to account. The presidents noted that Muslim and Arab students on their campuses have also been experiencing high levels of threat and grief since the October 7 attack.
Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Harvard alum and the college’s toughest critic on the panel, asserted that campus members call for the genocide of Jews when they chant phrases such as “from the river to the sea” and “Intifada” – a term she described as a “call for violent armed resistance” against Israel and Jews. Intifada is an Arabic word that translates to “uprising” and involves freedom from occupying powers.
Gay said that terms such as Intifada are “personally abhorrent” to her and at odds with Harvard’s values, but do not violate the code of conduct. She also rejected characterisations that Harvard ranks low for free expression.
When asked if calling for the genocide of Jews counts as bullying or harassment under code of conduct rules, Gay, Magill and Kornbluth, who is Jewish, said it would depend on the context and would violate rules if directed towards an individual, and if the calls were “severe and pervasive”. Stefanik grilled Magill over not answering yes to what she called “the easiest question” possible.
Chairwoman Virginia Foxx asked each president if they recognised Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation, to which they agreed.
|
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 11, 2023 22:04:58 GMT
Liz Magill was forced to resign Saturday as president of the University of Pennsylvania—by all indications because, at a congressional hearing, she could not bring herself to declare that calls for the genocide of Jews are punishable speech. She would more justly have lost her job for being a bald-faced hypocrite when it comes to campus free expression. The future of higher education depends on which of these motives governs such decisions in the future.
Magill was part of a triumvirate of college presidents who testified before a House committee last week. Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay, and MIT president Sally Kornbluth had been called to discuss the anti-Israel hatred embroiling their universities since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel. To call their performance robotic would insult robots. When asked a repeated question after their first evasion did not satisfy the questioner, these intellectual role models repeated their first evasion verbatim, maybe adding a cryptic non sequitur.
Congressman Jim Banks (R., Indiana) grilled Magill, for example, about a conference on Palestinian culture that the University of Pennsylvania had hosted two weeks before the Hamas terror attacks. Critics had demanded that Penn cancel the conference, due to the presence of alleged anti-Semites among its speakers. Penn allowed the gathering to continue, however, citing academic freedom.
Banks focused on invitee Roger Waters, founder of the rock group Pink Floyd and a vocal proponent of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement: “Why in the world would you host someone like that on your college campus to speak?” he asked.
Magill: “I appreciate the opportunity to discuss this. Antisemitism has no place at Penn.”
Banks: “Why did you invite Roger Waters? What did you think you would get out of him?”
Magill: “Antisemitism has no place at Penn, and our free speech policies are guided by the United States Constitution.”
It was on the question of condoning the “genocide of Jews” that the presidents were not only robotic but breathtakingly duplicitous.
Congressman Elise Stefanik (R., New York) parlayed this line of interrogation into national fame. Stefanik to Harvard president Claudine Gay: “Can you not say here that [calling for the genocide of Jews] is against the code of conduct at Harvard?”
Gay: “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment.”
Stefanik: “Is that speech according to the code of conduct or not?”
Gay: “We embrace a commitment to free expression and give a wide berth to free expression, even of views that are objectionable.”
The other two presidents took the same substantive position: whether speech constitutes actionable conduct depends on the context, including whether it is targeted at specific individuals.
Stefanik to Magill: “I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment,”
Magill: “If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.”
Stefanik: “So, the answer is yes.”
Magill: “It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.”
Stefanik’s questioning was relentless, but was it fair? As MIT president Kornbluth noted plaintively, she was unaware of anyone at MIT calling for the genocide of Jews. Stefanik was extrapolating from the ubiquitous student chants of “intifada” to explicit calls for Jewish genocide, but the former expression is more ambiguous, especially in the mouths of ignorant American students.
Nevertheless, Stefanik’s interrogations went viral. “American college presidents tongue tied regarding the genocide of Jews!” was the common takeaway, even among liberal defenders of academia, such as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe.
And this failure to agree that alleged calls for the genocide of Jews should be banned appears to be what did in Magill. (Penn’s chairman of the board also resigned on Sunday, a shake-up as momentous for the future of university governance as Magill’s departure.) Sensing her imminent peril, Magill released a video a day after the hearing reversing her position on punishable speech. A “call for genocide of Jewish people [is] harassment or intimidation,” she stated—and thus, subject to prior restraint or retroactive sanction.
The problem, Magill explained, was the Constitution: “For decades, under multiple Penn presidents and consistent with most universities, Penn’s policies have been guided by the Constitution and the law. In today’s world, . . . these policies need to be clarified and evaluated.” Penn would be initiating a “serious and careful look” at those constitutionally inspired limits, in order to provide what Magill called a “safe, secure, and supportive environment [where] all members of our community can thrive.”
In other words, though Penn had heretofore chosen to abide by constitutional norms (though as a private institution, it was not mandated to do so), it would now put those norms aside to ensure that students feel “safe.”
The presidents’ refusal to declare hypothetical calls for the genocide of Jews punishable conduct has been portrayed as the greatest scandal of the hearing. It was not.
The real scandal was the presidents’ duplicity in citing a “commitment to free expression” as the reason why they needed to give “wide berth to . . . views that are objectionable,” as Gay put it.
GOP congressmen demolished the presidents’ protestations of free speech loyalty, providing example after example of faculty members and outside speakers who had been muzzled, punished, or banned because of views contrary to campus orthodoxy. Those views included the assertion that sex is biological and binary, that racial preferences harm their beneficiaries, that the diversity bureaucracy inhibits academic freedom, and that an open-borders immigration policy damages the country.
It was those fantastically counterfactual assertions of loyalty to academic freedom that should have doomed Magill and the other two presidents. On any common understanding of truthfulness, their claims to protect “objectionable” views were flagrantly contrary to the facts. Having been exposed as hypocrites, dissemblers, and enforcers of politically correct thinking, they should all be fired as unfit to lead institutions ostensibly dedicated to the pursuit of truth and the transmission of knowledge.
|
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 12, 2023 2:21:49 GMT
Gay apologized last week for testimony before a House committee on December 5, in which she, Magill and MIT President Sally Kornbluth failed to explicitly say calls for genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct.
Harvard has encountered difficulty combating a rise in antisemitic incidents on campus, although recent claims of antisemitism at Penn were considered far worse. Still, a growing number of members of Congress, donors and other prominent leaders are still calling for Gay to step down.
|
|
