Editorial Board Chicago Tribune
Yahoo News, Dec. 7, 2023
“Even those sympathetic to the presidents Tuesday knew in their heart of hearts that these elite campuses had not protected free speech in recent years so much as safeguarded progressive speech that they liked for their own ideological reasons, often using “safety” as a cover.”
On Tuesday, Elise Stefanik, the U.S. representative for New York’s 21st Congressional District, posed the same question to the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, proxies all for America’s liberal intellectual elite.
The repeated question for Claudine Gay of Harvard, Liz Magill of Penn and Sally Kornbluth of MIT from the Republican congresswoman, herself a Harvard graduate?Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate (insert name of campus) rules on bullying and harassment?
One after another, the presidents refused to answer Stefanik’s yes-or-no question, with Gay in particular dodging it like it was a scalding hot potato flying through Harvard Yard. Caveats abounded: It depends on intensity, to what degree it is directed at individuals, what the circumstances present, yada, yada. At one truly surreal moment, Magill even replied that it would depend if the call morphed into “conduct,” leading Stefanik to ask, incredulously, “Actual genocide?”
The spectacle was a disaster for all three campuses, especially Harvard and Penn, and suggested that the leaders of Harvard and Penn are woefully unfit for the job. At the time of writing, those presidents retain their positions, but if that were to change, we’d hardly be surprised. Or chagrined.
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