College Presidents Under Fire After Dodging Questions About Antisemitism

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/us/harvard-mit-penn-presidents-
antisemitism.html

Support for the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and
M.I.T. eroded quickly on Wednesday, after they seemed to evade what seemed
like a rather simple question during a contentious congressional hearing:
Would they discipline students calling for the genocide of Jews?

Their lawyerly replies to that question and others during a four-hour
hearing drew incredulous responses.

“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are
monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said
a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates.

Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said he found the
responses by Elizabeth Magill, Penn’s president, “unacceptable.”

Even the liberal academic Laurence Tribe found himself agreeing with
Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, who sharply
questioned Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay.

“I’m no fan of @RepStefanik but I’m with her here,” the Harvard law
professor wrote on the social media site X. “Claudine Gay’s hesitant,
formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and
many of my colleagues, students, and friends.”

In their opening remarks, and throughout the hearing, Dr. Gay, Ms. Magill
and Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. all said they were appalled by antisemitism
and taking action against it on campus. When asked whether they supported
the right of Israel to exist, they answered yes, without equivocation.

But on the question of disciplining students for statements about
genocide, they tried to give lawyerly responses to a tricky question
involving free speech, which supporters of academic freedom said were
legally correct.

But to many Jewish students, alumni and donors, who had watched campus
pro-Palestinian protests with trepidation and fear, the statements by the
university presidents failed to meet the political moment by not speaking
clearly and forcefully against antisemitism.

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“It should not be hard to condemn genocide, genocide against Jews,
genocide against anyone else,” Governor Shapiro said on Wednesday in a
meeting with reporters. “I’ve said many times, leaders have a
responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity, and Liz Magill failed
to meet that simple test.”

“There should be no nuance to that — she needed to give a one-word
answer,” he added.

By Wednesday afternoon, a petition calling for Ms. Magill’s resignation
had grown to more than 3,000 signatures. Marc Rowan, the chief of Apollo
Global Management and the board chair at the Wharton School of Business at
Penn, asked the board of trustees to rescind their support for Ms. Magill.

“How much damage to our reputation are we willing to accept?” he wrote in
a letter to the trustees.

Governor Shapiro, who is a nonvoting member of Penn’s board, urged the
trustees to meet soon. University sources, speaking on background, said
that efforts were underway to hold a board meeting by phone this week. The
university did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Much of the criticism landed heavily on Ms. Magill because of an extended
back-and-forth with Representative Stefanik.

Ms. Stefanik said that in campus protests, students had chanted support
for intifada, an Arabic word that means uprising and that many Jews hear
as a call for violence against them.

Ms. Stefanik asked Ms. Magill, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews
violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?”

Ms. Magill replied, “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be
harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik pressed the issue: “I am asking, specifically: Calling for
the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?”

Ms. Magill, a lawyer who joined Penn last year with a pledge to promote
campus free speech, replied, “If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it
is harassment.”

Ms. Stefanik responded: “So the answer is yes.”

Ms. Magill said, “It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.”

Ms. Stefanik exclaimed: “That’s your testimony today? Calling for the
genocide of Jews is depending upon the context?”

In response on Wednesday, Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, did
not mince words. “President Magill’s comments yesterday were offensive,
but equally offensive was what she didn’t say,” he said in a statement.
“The right to free speech is fundamental, but calling for the genocide of
Jews is antisemitic and harassment, full stop.”

Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, described the testimony
as “a significant fail.”

“There is no ‘both sides-ism’ and it isn’t ‘free speech,’ it’s simply hate
speech,” he said in a statement. “It was embarrassing for a venerable
Pennsylvania university, and it should be reflexive for leaders to condemn
antisemitism and stand up for the Jewish community or any community facing
this kind of invective.”

On Wednesday evening, Ms. Magill apologized for her testimony.

“In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies
aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not
punishable,” she said in a video. “I was not focused on, but I should have
been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a
call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate.
It’s evil — plain and simple.”

She added, “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.”

She also said that Penn would “initiate a serious and careful look at our
policies.”

Both Dr. Gay and Dr. Kornbluth were asked the same series of questions
about genocide.

Dr. Gay echoed the idea that it “depends on the context” whether calling
for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s conduct rules.

Dr. Kornbluth at first replied, “I have not heard calling for the genocide
of Jews on our campus.”

Representative Stefanik interjected: “But you’ve heard chants for
intifada.”

Dr. Kornbluth said: “I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic depending
on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.”

Will Creeley, legal director at FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights
and Expression, said that the three presidents were “legally correct.”

“It does depend on context,” Mr. Creeley said. But he added that it was
frustrating “to see them discover free speech scruples while under fire at
a congressional hearing,” rather than in a more principled way.

It was the invocation of context that angered many Jewish groups.

“We are appalled by the need to state the obvious: Calls for genocide
against Jews do not depend on the context,” Penn Hillel said in a
statement.

Jacob Miller, the student president of Harvard Hillel, said that “the
testimony yesterday was a slap in the face, because there was a very easy
clear right answer and she opted not to say that.”

Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard alumnus,
called on all three presidents to resign, citing the exchanges over
genocide.

“It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into conduct,’
that is, actually killing Jews,” he wrote on X. “This could be the most
extraordinary testimony ever elicited in the Congress.”

“They must all resign in disgrace,” he continued. “If a CEO of one of our
companies gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the
hour.”

M.I.T. did not respond to requests for a comment. But on Wednesday, Dr.
Gay tried again in a new statement.

“There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea
that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students,” Dr.
Gay said. “Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the
Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no
place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held
to account.”

Her statement did not say what would constitute a threat, or whether
chants of “There is only one solution: intifada, revolution” would meet
the definition, as Ms. Stefanik argued during the hearing.


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