“It was one of the most despicable moments in the history of U.S. academia.” Those words from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla perfectly describe the disgraceful congressional testimony of presidents of prominent universities on campus antisemitism.
After the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the disturbing rise of antisemitism on American college campuses in recent months demanded an explanation. Many complex issues were raised at the hearing, but the simple questions asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik required simple answers. America instead received dismaying responses from a group of individuals responsible for overseeing some of our nation’s most prized institutions.
Stefanik’s question to Harvard University President Claudine Gay was point blank: “At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment — yes or no?” Gay responded, “It can be, depending on the context.” Dissatisfied with this response, Stefanik gave a second chance, saying, “So the answer is yes, calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?” Gay’s response: “Again, it depends on the context.”
Posing the same question to the other administrators yielded the same response. Now-former University of Pennsylvania President Mary Elizabeth Magill said, “It is a context-dependent decision.” Similarly, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said, “I have heard chants, that can be considered antisemitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.”
In response to the controversy caused by their testimonies, the university presidents claimed that they failed to answer yes to the question due to their commitment to “freedom of speech,” but such explanations are disingenuous.
First, the First Amendment does not apply to private institutions like Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT, and even if it did, it is a long-established principle of constitutional law that defamatory statements, threats, fighting words, and incitements to imminent lawless actions are not constitutionally protected.
John Stuart Mill, one of the West’s greatest defenders of freedom of speech, put it best: “Even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act. An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.”
There are strong debates about whether Palestinian protest chants lsuch as “from the river to the sea” and “Globalize the Intifada” are calls for violence, but even if Stefanik’s question was strictly hypothetical, there is no excuse for the administrators’ inability to give a firm and unequivocal answer.
What is most frustrating about the explanation is that it completely contradicts what many Americans have witnessed as the decline of free expression on campuses across the country. Universities have largely seemed uninterested in ensuring diversity of viewpoints and equality in expressing opposing views, but now under pressure due to inadequately addressing concerns for the safety of students, prominent universities run to the First Amendment as a shield.
All of the institutions that cited the First Amendment as a justification for their timid responses have checkered records on standing up for free expression. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonpartisan public interest legal advocacy organization which has defended the free speech rights of clients on both the right and the left, has given Harvard the worst score on its College Free Speech Rankings. The University of Pennsylvania ranked second-to-last. In 2021, MIT famously canceled a lecture by geophysicist Dorian Abbot in the wake of controversy over his views opposing affirmative action, which was not even the subject of his originally invited lecture. Given this pattern, a sudden concern for free speech is awfully convenient.
In the wake of Harvard’s damage control, hundreds of faculty signed a letter urging Gay to “defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.” This letter is confirmation of William Buckley’s great dictum that it would be better “to be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the entire faculty of Harvard University.” If Harvard is so concerned about its “institutional independence,” it ought to make itself financially independent. Government leaders who allocate taxpayer-funding to the tax-exempt institution certainly have the right to inquire into potential civil rights violations against its students.
The universities’ poor performance at the hearing earned criticism from across the political spectrum and cost millions in lost donations, including from a University of Pennsylvania alumnus who said he was withdrawing a $100 million donation. Many other prominent alumni have followed suit and they are right to do so.