The underlying issue is that these universities have been inconsistent with their policies.
I think you’re being very generous in interpreting their responses, given the institutions they represent. Based on your prior posts, I suspect you would not have been so charitable if these were the presidents of Michigan, Florida and UNC
They should have known better, that these congressional hearings are all about showmanship and public optics. And they should accordingly have given sensible answers instead of the legally correct ones.
They dug their own grave, and so I don’t feel bad for them.
Yep. I obviously agree. Just pointing out what the “crosses into conduct” line actually implies.
But they tolerated conduct from the right kind of people before, while censoring speech of the wrong kind of people.
So nothing, really nothing short of a full mea culpa, would have saved them at those hearings. But Stefanik really got them at the end from the PR standpoint, even though she wasn’t rhetorically accurate.
“Pushback against antisemitic mobs at U.S. universities is often countered with cries of “It’s free speech!” But the sudden converts to the cause of free speech, like the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT, who testified before Congress last week about not being able to define calls for genocide of Jews as actionable due to First Amendment concerns, are not engaging in good-faith debate.
…
[T]he selective enforcement of policies and laws along partisan lines has transformed our universities from incubators of knowledge to factories for ideologues. Major universities do little to disguise this purpose to their students: Instead, they make a point of rewarding “correct” political beliefs and viewpoints while punishing wrong ones, often through highly selective enforcement of institutional rules. For left, progressive causes, such as the opposition to Israeli “apartheid” or support for Black Lives Matter, the limits of permitted conduct have been aggressively extended and a blind eye has been turned toward hate crime, physical violence, and the destruction of property. Protests are seen as virtuous; dissenters are cast as bigots.
For moderate or conservative causes, or even for those who are just questioning campus orthodoxy, as scholars used to delight in doing, the gavel of enforcement is brought down swiftly and aggressively, often in violation of institutional traditions and constitutional rights. As a result, more faculty are feeling compelled to self-censor than during McCarthyism.
…
Antisemitism on campuses has woken up many to the fact that we have tolerated the erosion of free speech for far too long. The silent majority on campuses is beginning to wake up.”
That is not what I said at all. The discussion was that the college presidents have to keep donors happy as fundraising is a major consideration of their jobs. I was just pointing out that if they make one group extra happy by doing everything they ask, they may be making another group unhappy and that second group could pull their funding.
I think it is bad that colleges (and sometimes it is their students demanding) often cancel speakers or events that are controversial when (IMO) colleges should be controversial, discuss the hard topics, let everyone present his point of view. It is a balancing act for the administration because they have to provide a physically safe place for their students (I’m not as concerned with making students FEEL uncomfortable because they have to face some point of view they don’t agree with or don’t like) so may have to limit some events.
I know it is easy for me to want the ideal college experience because I’m not in the middle of it and I don’t have to walk through protestors. I do remember being on a campus during the Viet Nam war and seeing the demonstrations (I was in a grade school on a campus so was never in danger). In college a guy in one of my classes was Iranian and was protesting the Shah; it was interesting to me but his group was very small and again, no danger to me. I’m not sure he liked the Ayatollah better than the Shah, but he was happy when the Shah was ousted.
Perhaps, we can put two things in different buckets: 1) spontaneous student protests that don’t rely on university exacted fees and funds and 2) invited speakers whose very livelihoods depend on making misogynistic remarks (cough, Andrew Dice Clay?)
followed by various information about Arab funding, and Arab funding only.
If the concern were competing interests, and it truly was an “overarching” concern, then one would endeavor to look at all the different races, religions, ethnicities,… without bias - and how the amounts donated compare, and then muse how those might be seeking/succeeding in “corrupting” (my word) universities and their students?
What if we found that average annual “Arab” donations in the past 10 years to individual institutions paled compared to those by other races, religions, ethnicities,… ? If other ethnicities consistently outspend “the Arabs”, how would that “inform” or worry us?
My take is: If I singled out any other ethnicity for a finance inquiry, I would be shunned as anti-ethnite. But “Arabs” are fair game.
There was a video recently posted on X at Syracuse University, where a group of anti-Israel students (it wasn’t clear whether the group was an official group or just a random group) were asked by a university official to remove offensive material that they had posted in what looked like a student union on campus. The video shows how calculated these students are in trying to trigger the situation into an escalating event that they can post to their social media and hope to go viral. They all grab their phones and start recording as they challenge the official as to the university’s policy. The official remains calm and repeatedly refers them to the printout of the school’s policy that he’s brought with him, which they ignore, and continues to insist that the offensive material be removed. Kudos to at least one university (with what I believe is a fairly robust Jewish population) for not being afraid to protect its Jewish students.
So a non-student (and US Senator) wandered around Harvard until he found some students wearing kaffiyehs . . .
When I walked upstairs to the famous Widener Reading Room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Nearly every student in the packed room was wearing a kaffiyeh."
. . . interrupted their quiet study by striking up a political conversation, didn’t like what they had to say, and somehow blames the confrontation on the President of Harvard?
Here’s a photo from the same article that supposedly justified the bombastic headline and ridiculous article . . .
To lighten the mood a little bit and to take up the second part of the OP’s question, MIT EA decisions are just out, and I can now say that no, we won’t let these events prevent DS24 from following in his older brother’s footsteps and attending his top choice.
To do anything less would mean letting the terrorists win.
What am I missing – what is wrong with a bunch of students wearing kaffiyehs, and how is that “disruptive”? They all seem to be going about their studying in the picture. Are we now saying that quietly wearing this is also hate speech or antisemitic?
peacefully studying in a library while wearing a kaffiyeh- I think we have to say that is acceptable under the banner of free speech.
I worry sometimes we can sound a little overly sensitive, and that can make it less meaningful when we protest the big stuff that really matters. like the boy who cried wolf.
it’s the yelling and banging windows and other disruptive behavior that might cross a line. intimidation tactics, bullying…
How do we think a student hanging an “I Stand With Israel” banner in that common area would have been treated and would the banner have been left untouched?
If being honest we know the answer. One groups free speech isn’t supposed to come at the expense of another groups.
This is a college library common area during finals week. Not appropriate for any group to politicize it in my opinion. At a minimum the “Stop The Genocide In Gaza” banner should be prohibited by Harvard so that all students feel welcomed.
Good try, but not quite. “I Stand With Israel” is not a false accusation of a blood libel, which accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza most definitely is.
The real point is that Harvard did nothing to stop this.
I’m being honest and I don’t know the answer, at least not without knowing more about the context. Is it commonplace for banners to be displayed in the common area? If so, are there rules about their content? Did either the real banner and/or the hypothetical banner violate that policy, if it exists? Did students go through proper channels to request it be removed? If so, what was the school’s response? What have their responses been to similar complaints, if any, in the past?
We don’t even know how long this banner was up, whether it was removed, or how it was handled by the university or even whether there was a single student complaint about the banner.
Can we at least agree that whatever happened or didn’t happen the first line of addressing the issue ought not be some bombastic, attention grabbing op-ed by some Senator desperate for the limelight?
