Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) speaks during a hearing of the House Committee on Education, December 5, 2023.
Do you recall Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) passionate statement of outrage when a gunman massacred worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh? Me neither, because there wasn’t one. Or how about her eloquent speech attacking the “Jews will not replace us” marchers at Charlottesville? Nope.
Stefanik is late to the party. The far right is philosemitic only when it serves their purposes. The extreme right defends Jews as a way of both bashing universities and defending Netanyahu, who conflates criticism of Israel’s actions with antisemitism. It is a cynical alliance of cynics.
Beleaguered university presidents now face a three-front battle. First, they need the right balance of defending free speech while not condoning hate speech, much less incitement. Second, they need to stand up and resist the new McCarthyism. And third, university trustees need to prevent billionaire donors from deciding university policy.
The first challenge is tricky but far from impossible, though the three presidents who were ambushed by Stefanik blew it. But there is a viable path.
Here is a pitch-perfect extract from the November 10 statement of the University of California president and the chancellors of its ten major campuses:
There is no place for hate, bigotry, or intimidation at the University of California. Period.
Antisemitism is antithetical to our values and our campus codes of conduct and is unacceptable under our principles of community. It will not be tolerated.
Similarly, Islamophobia is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. We will work to ensure that those who advocate on behalf of Palestinians can also be confident of their physical safety on our campuses.
We take our obligation to uphold the First Amendment seriously, even when the viewpoints expressed are hateful or repugnant. We cannot censor voices or ban groups we disagree with, so long as those voices and groups comply with state and federal laws and with university policy.
But free speech is not absolute, and violations of policy or law will have consequences.
Granted, it’s harder to get that balance right when you are entrapped at a House inquisition. But if the university presidents had kept those core distinctions in mind, they would have done a lot better. The next time a university president is called to testify, she needs to say something like this:
“Congresswoman, I am not going to play your game of yes or no answers, and I am not going to be harangued by people whose hands are far from clean. Yours is a party that has destroyed civil rights, undermined necessary affirmative action, invaded academic freedom at universities and even libraries, and gotten into bed with haters. We will resist your fishing expeditions by every legal means at our disposal.”
On the third point, the fiasco at the Stefanik hearing has further emboldened donors, some of whom represent the worst in American capitalism. Donor influence cost Penn president Liz Magill her job. Donor Ross Stevens had threatened to withdraw his $100 million that bankrolled the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance at the Wharton School. Stevens runs a hedge fund that specializes in crypto. Wharton never should have taken the money.
Another unsavory hedge fund manipulator, William Ackman, has been a prime player in the pressure to oust all three presidents. Ackman, like Stevens, is Jewish. Has anyone pointed out that it is incautious, and stereotype-reinforcing, for Jewish donors to throw their weight around by trying to define who or what is antisemitic? If more serious antisemitism ever infects the American body politic, people like Ackman will be more to blame than students protesting events in Gaza.
At MIT, two days after the hearing, the trustees issued a statement of “full and unreserved support” for president Sally Kornbluth. Well done. Meanwhile, the 11 members of the Harvard Corporation have been meeting to decide whether to support or oust President Claudine Gay. More than 650 faculty members have signed a letter of support.
Universities have homework to do. In some respects, they have made themselves sitting ducks with exaggerated DEI regimes and attempts to police correct language. When students and faculty are acculturated to be hypersensitive to micro-aggressions and the wind shifts to grotesque macro-aggressions, it’s time for a new script. But MAGA apologists and billionaire donors are the last people to dictate that script.
