Hot seat.
Haven't we all, when it was too late, thought of something much better that we should have said, but didn't?
Harvard University president, Claudine Gay, told The Crimson, the campus newspaper, that she “should have had the presence of mind” to respond differently in a House hearing on antisemitism. Too late.
The college presidents faced a dilemma. Critics of "wokeness" call out universities for censoring speech and "cancelling" people who say unpopular, politically incorrect things. How dare universities empower snowflakes to say they are "offended" by micro-aggressions? Shame on universities!
But the Hamas attack on October 7 triggered a crosscurrent of sensitivity and offense. Supporters of Israel ask how universities can possibly fail to understand that Israel is the victim here, full stop. People defending Palestinians or Hamas are antisemitic or antisemitic-adjacent and that should be condemned! Shame on universities! In the face of questioning by Elise Stefanik, all three college presidents failed to say clearly that speech that implied defeat of Israel or death of Jews was "genocide," and therefore condemnable and forbidden. The college presidents kept trying to defend nuance and context. Stefanik condemned them. Some public figures did as well. Some donors rescinded their gift pledges.
Jim Stodder was a college classmate. He taught international economics and securities regulation at Boston University, with recent research on how carbon taxes and rebates can be income equalizing. His website is: www.jimstodder.com
Guest Post by Jim Stodder
Elite Universities – Caught in a Trap of Their Own Making
It’s hard to gin up much sympathy for the current shaming of the Presidents of three elite universities. The Harvard we love to hate, even more than the other Ivies. Everybody from Trump on down. But hey, he went to Penn – and loves to mention it.
I learned early as a Harvard grad – don’t drop the H-bomb. When someone asks you where you went to school, just say “Boston.”
Unless you live under a rock, you know that on Tuesday, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) – herself from Harvard – got the Presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to hem, haw, and sputter. Stefanik has written in the Wall Street Journal that the video of this has a billion views, and is now the most watched US Congressional testimony in history.
She got the three Prez – all women, BTW – to concede that they might, just might have to take action against a student or prof who advocated genocide of Jews, but that it would “depend on context” and ”if it led to action”. To which one might ask – oh, you mean, only in the case of actual genocide?
We don’t have to feel too sorry for the three Prez – Harvard, and all that. But we can thank them for exposing a clear double standard. Prospective students can find their Harvard admission cancelled because of racist or sexist jokes posted on Facebook – but it’s OK for actual Harvard students to call for killing Jews?
The three are fall-gals for institutions caught in their own hypocrisy. They were just reciting the party line.
Although lots of people are calling for the three to be fired, I have a different take. Yes, it is past time for their double standard to be scrapped. But scrap the insistence that no one can say anything that might give offense (or lead to an ‘unsafe’ feeling) for any oppressed group.
The three Prez were caught in this trap because Palestinians are a protected group – not White. (Although their leadership is male and cis-hetero-normative!) We can discipline anyone disparaging Arabs or Muslims, but Jews and Asians are too successful – too ‘White adjacent’ – to be protected.
I don’t think the problem is that Jews aren’t similarly protected. I think the problem is our Social Justice Upside-Down Cake – that groups once on the bottom must now always be on top. To admit some groups are oppressed should not mean they are exempt from criticism or always right when they attack members of a more privileged group.
The problem isn’t solved by more restrictions on antisemitic speech. Hateful speech should be called out, not prohibited. Racists should be shunned, not censored.
Consider banning the advocacy of ‘genocide.’ What constitutes genocide? Israel’s bombing of Gaza? Immigrant children not being taught in their parents’ language? Trans-women (Male-to Female) banned from battered women’s shelters? I have heard all these denounced as genocide, yet there are good arguments for each of them – arguments to be engaged, not suppressed.
Universities should be where all ideas, even the most outrageous, get picked apart. If this seems silly or self-indulgent – well then, join the debate. At a real university, a culture that prizes robust debate, there are lots of public forums. You won’t need a degree, or even a letter of admission, to speak your mind.
Thanks for for this & while it was disappointing to hear the presidents' responsive to Elise's baited questions & histrionics, they deserve to have the right to speak, albeit not in their own best interests. Too much academia & less heart. Stefanik brings memories of McCarthy & is beyond repulsive in her own sanctimonious right.
Who prepared the college presidents to testify before Congress? There must have been some coordination because the presidents all recited the same talking points.
I sympathize with speakers who are uncomfortable speaking in public but these leaders are used to speaking before large crowds. What were they thinking? If they can’t see why their answers were inadequate, then they do deserve to be replaced.