Editorial: University presidents proved spectacularly inept on Capitol Hill. Resignations should follow.

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/editorials/ct-editorial-stefanik-
gay-penn-presidents-congress-universities-antisemitism-20231206-
mdrylzxmlvhchifq4jdzvn3wli-story.html

On Tuesday, Elise Stefanik, the U.S. representative for New York’s 21st
Congressional District, posed the same question to the presidents of
Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the
University of Pennsylvania, proxies all for America’s liberal intellectual
elite.

The repeated question for Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn and
Sally Kornbluth of MIT from the Republican congresswoman, herself a
Harvard graduate?

“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate (insert name of campus)
rules on bullying and harassment?

One after another, the presidents refused to answer Stefanik’s yes-or-no
question, with Gay in particular dodging it like it was a scalding hot
potato flying through Harvard Yard. Caveats abounded: It depends on
intensity, to what degree it is directed at individuals, what the
circumstances present, yada, yada. At one truly surreal moment, Magill
even replied that it would depend if the call morphed into “conduct,”
leading Stefanik to ask, incredulously, “Actual genocide?”

The spectacle was a disaster for all three campuses, especially Harvard
and Penn, and suggested that the leaders of Harvard and Penn are woefully
unfit for the job. At the time of writing, those presidents retain their
positions, but if that were to change, we’d hardly be surprised. Or
chagrined.

Stefanik set a very effective trap, aggressively going after leaders who
enjoy copious amounts of deference and obsequiousness on their own
campuses and apparently have spent too long in that bubble. The academics
seemed to have been coached by their lawyers to say nothing that might
obligate them to have to take action against those rallying for the
elimination of the Israel. Therefore it made these leaders appear at least
tacitly supportive of that position themselves.

There was, of course, a legal argument for their weaving and dodging: The
First Amendment does not contain an exception for calls for genocide, and
even antisemites have the right to free speech.

But Stefanik was asking about campus rules of conduct, and the exchange
came in the context of these very same presidents previously penalizing
those who, say, failed to use a student’s preferred pronouns or didn’t
provide “trigger warnings” or posted something the university deemed
racist on social media.

Harvard, for one, rescinded admissions offers in several such
circumstances and had come out with institutional guns blazing against a
whole variety of so-called microaggressions in their classrooms. And yet
these universities now were failing to protect their Jewish students
because their expansive and expensive setups to ensure diversity, equity
and inclusion had, effectively, deemed those students part of the so-
called white oppressor class and thus out of their purview.

And to bring that point home, the Republicans lined up several Jewish
students to state that they felt “unsafe.” One especially articulate Penn
undergraduate marshaled a lot of supporting evidence.

Even those sympathetic to the presidents Tuesday knew in their heart of
hearts that these elite campuses had not protected free speech in recent
years so much as safeguarded progressive speech that they liked for their
own ideological reasons, often using “safety” as a cover. That’s why
Robert Zimmer’s disavowal of “safe” rhetorical spaces and his refusal to
cancel conservative speakers at the University of Chicago had been so
radical — and courageous.

On Tuesday, the late UChicago president’s decision never looked smarter.

Simply put, the Harvard and Penn presidents suddenly discovering the
virtues of no-holds-barred free speech only when it came to protecting
those calling for an intifada and harassing their own Jewish students felt
disingenuous. Stunningly so.

Of course the schools had weapons of protection in their existing
arsenals. As Ilya Shapiro noted in The Free Press: “Beating someone up, as
has happened at Columbia and Tulane, is assault. Crowding around someone
in a threatening manner, like a group of Harvard students — including an
editor of the Harvard Law Review — did to an Israeli student who filmed
their protest, is commonly known as the crime of ‘menacing.’ A pattern of
actions designed to frighten and harass someone, like forcing Jewish
students into the Cooper Union library while pounding on the doors and
windows, is stalking. Defacing someone’s property by spray-painting
swastikas and slogans, as happened at American University, is vandalism.”

The issue Tuesday was not so much that the presidents made reference to
conduct, but that it was so hard to believe they would actually enforce
their own rules to protect Jewish students. That is what these leaders
failed to see.

There were other mistakes too. Magill delivered some of her testimony with
a smirk that few Jewish students on her campus missed. And on Wednesday
Gay, attempting to “clarify” matters, asserted her support of Jewish
students at Harvard, but did so in a high-minded way when the moment
actually called for some humility: “There are some who have confused a
right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for
violence against Jewish students,” she wrote.

No, President Gay, you were the one who was confused. You’ll be lucky to
keep your job.

We’ve had our issues with Stefanik, who has made plenty of mistakes
herself. But she had the best day of her young political career Tuesday
because she understood the power of the moment.

When she asked, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate the Penn
rules on bullying and harassment?,” she knew that all reasonable, decent,
compassionate Americans would be screaming, “say yes,” at their phones or
computers, even as one of the most educated women in America saw none of
the dangers ahead.

And, that simple word, which the presidents failed to say, also happened
to be the correct answer.

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We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.

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