American universities face a reckoning over antisemitism
SOMETIMES YOU get the technicalities right but still flunk the test. So it was at the congressional hearing on campus antisemitism on December 5th. When asked if calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished at their schools, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania prevaricated. That would depend on context, they said—such as whether the speech crossed into threats directed at individuals. Amid an uproar the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, resigned four days later. On December 12th Harvard’s board said that their school’s president, Claudine Gay, would keep her job. More than 700 faculty had signed a letter calling for her to stay.
The disastrous hearing has forced a reckoning over how the universities handle antisemitism, while raising questions about the boundary between acceptable protest and impermissible speech. It came amid a spate of antisemitic incidents on campuses in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas that began on October 7th. Hillel International, a Jewish non-profit organisation, has tallied 38 antisemitic physical assaults at colleges, and 227 cases of vandalism, since the war broke out.
During the five-hour hearing the presidents denounced that worrying uptick and explained how harassment is disciplined. Yet their responses to a grilling about antisemitic speech by Elise Stefanik, a Republican congresswoman, were evasive, legalistic and wholly unsatisfying. Somehow they forgot that congressional hearings are political theatre, not legal depositions. “Over-prepared and over-lawyered”, said Scott Bok, chair of the University of Pennsylvania board, who also resigned.
2023-12-12 03:23:25
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