UPDATE (Dec. 12, 2023, 10:00 a.m. ET): On Tuesday morning, the Harvard Corporation issued a statement of support for university president Claudine Gay, noting that she had apologized for how she handled her testimony at last week’s House antisemitism hearing. The endorsement follows a petition of support signed by more than 500 faculty members and indicates Gay faces little internal pressure to resign.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews,” asked Rep. Elise Stefanik at a hearing last week held by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, “violate [the University of Pennsylvania’s] rules or code of conduct. Yes or no?”
By now, we all know that the school’s president, Liz Magill, struggled mightily to answer this question. So much so that she is no longer the president of the University of Pennsylvania. On Saturday she resigned, as result of the backlash to her remarks (Magill will remain at the school as a tenured faculty member).
How did Stefanik — a person who has trafficked in white nationalist ideologies — somehow seize the moral high ground in defense of Jews?
Taking her victory lap, Stefanik, R-N.Y., tweeted, “One down. Two to go.” The two in question are Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, both of whom responded to Stefanik’s interrogation in similarly perplexing ways. Soon after the hearing, Gay issued her own apology.
After watching the entire five-hour hearing I am left with countless questions. Questions like: How did Stefanik — an election denier and Jan. 6 apologist and, most relevantly, a person who has trafficked in white nationalist ideologies — somehow seize the moral high ground in defense of Jews? How did she trip up the talented and polished leaders of America’s premier universities?
Part of her attack consisted of framing concepts in ways that the presidents — with the possible exception of Kornbluth — did not seem to notice. Throughout the hearing, Stefanik equated “intifada” with the “genocide [of Jews].” A video shown at the beginning of the hearing established that student protesters chanted this Arabic word. Most literally, the word means “uprising,” but it has a long history and a wide range of context-dependent connotations. To most Jews, however, its meaning is unambiguous: sustained violent activities against Israeli civilians and soldiers.
In response to Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., Magill agreed that calling for “intifada” was “very disturbing.” She concurred that a chant of “intifada” would elicit fear in some students. Magill was not certain, however, whether use of the word itself contravened her university’s policies.
Near the end of the hearing, Stefanik drew these strands together. Her 3½-minute interrogation will likely roil American higher education for decades. The proudly “ultra-MAGA” representative demanded a “yes or no” answer from the presidents: “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct?”
“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes,” Magill said. “If it is directed and severe and pervasive, it is harassment.” Pressed by Stefanik, Magill reiterated that “if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.”
“So the answer is yes?” Stefanik asked.
“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill replied, sealing her fate.
Most elite colleges and universities abide by speech codes far more restrictive than what would be allowed outside the campus gates.
Magill’s responses, like those of Kornbluth and Gay, were confusing. The presidents kept toggling between speech prohibitions as established by the nation’s courts and those that obtain on their own campuses.
Free speech laws generally do not prohibit generalized harassment of a group (like the Jews). They do prohibit targeted harassment of an individual member of that group. So calling for genocide, though repugnant, might be protected speech under the law. This is what the presidents were trying to establish and why they hedged on the lawfulness of calling for an intifada. That view comes fairly close to “free speech absolutism,” or an approach that rejects nearly any constraints on expression.
But most elite colleges and universities abide by speech codes far more restrictive than what would be allowed outside the campus gates. Controversial speakers are routinely disinvited from giving lectures. Homophobic or racist comments by students or faculty members are punished. Harvard, MIT and Penn, as Republican congresspersons kept pointing out, observe those protocols.
In explaining their campus policies, the presidents invoked “context.” But on most campuses, a student calling for genocide against LGBTQ people or Asian Americans would be disciplined (and rightly so). No context would spare a student that fate. So why speak of “context” only when Jews are threatened?
I still do not fully understand why the presidents made the absolutist-friendly arguments they did, given that free speech absolutism is not a popular opinion on their campuses, including the Gen Z students. But perhaps a clue lies in the fact that all were coached (or perhaps overcoached) by the same law firm. It sounded like they were counseled to use similar legal terms, parries and rebuttals.
Compounding the problem was that they set this legalese within a language I call “university president speak.” It is filled with words like “robust,” “community” and “investments.” It permits modern presidents to advance the most anodyne (and anti-intellectual) reading of the humanly complex situations facing universities today. When professors ask questions about the increase of poorly paid contingent faculty labor or why certain donors are playing such a large role in our curriculum, we are forced to quaff University President Speak.
Those leaders and their handlers wrongly assumed Congress — not to mention the viewing public — would quaff it, as well. They spoke the language of lawyered-up, untouchable university leaders, while Stefanik and others spoke the language of moral absolutes.
The presidents appeared fenced in by the contradictions, inadequacies and red lines of that discourse and their inclinations to legalese. I wish they had unequivocally affirmed that they will not permit one group on campus to celebrate, glorify or endorse violence against another. They honorably apologized for not doing so — but the Israel-Hamas war has a way of engulfing everything in its path.