Engaging with students can come with its own risks, especially now that everyone has a camera in their pocket. I’ve been on CC long enough to remember when this incident ruffled feathers, for example:
I remember during the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The US, policeman of the world and with a strong interest in keeping Kuwait’s oil resources out of Saddam’s hands, invaded Iraq. Saddam launched missiles at Israel, (there was a fear that they would carry chemical warheads) to try to turn the war into a larger conflagration, and to try to win over the other Arab states, since he was attacking the Jewish state. It was tremendously terrifying for the residents of Israel. Anyway, my friend’s granddaughter went to Purim parties in Israel right after that, dressed as a scud missile, with a placard saying, “I come to kill you in your beds!” She was making fun of what had been a truly horrifying situation. Point is, going to Halloween dressed as a suicide bomber could have been seen as making fun of a frightening thing, to mock it, to take away its terrifying power.
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Penn stood out generations ago as the Ivy League school that did not impose quotas and barriers to discriminate against Jewish applicants. In recent times, however, the percentage of students on campus who identify as Jewish has declined. Although there may be demographic shifts in the composition of Penn’s applicant pool to explain this, there is a growing sense of concern and loss. This backdrop was mentioned in Mr. Lauder’s letter to President Magill.
Then you have the Palestine Writes festival, which was scheduled by outside groups, but had the involvement of some Penn faculty and students and was held at Irvine Auditorium. (There were classes that wrote the festival into the syllabus as a mandatory event, though the faculty for those classes were forced to drop that requirement.) That event included speakers who have made anti-Semitic statements. The Palestine Writes X/Twitter account continues to unabashedly call Israel a racist, genocidal, colonial project.
In the lead-up to Palestine Writes, a very disturbed person gained entry to Hillel and trashed the lobby while ranting anti-Semitic slogans. Around this time, Swastika graffiti was found elsewhere on campus. These events were not condoned by the festival organizers, but some have connected them to the festival for encouraging a kind of “permission structure” for anti-Semites.
Should Penn have banned the event from campus as some donors, parents and students demanded? Well, go back to 1988, when Louis Farrakhan spoke at Irvine. President Sheldon Hackney did not ban Farrakhan, despite the Nation of Islam leader’s record of vile anti-Semitic statements and praise for, um…Adolph Hitler.
Hackney understood he could not police ideology and speech, short of any direct incitement to take violent action, and that the role of the university was to let students assess the quality of ideas for themselves.
Now you have the bloody and chilling terror attack by Hamas and the follow-on protests and vigils. Penn’s first statements were weak sauce. And I will never understand the tone deaf social media approach of President Magill, who clung to her usual Instagram script, posting pictures of herself walking with her dog in the rain when other leaders were using their platforms to express grief and solidarity.
Even before this all went down, I felt Magill was out of her depth in her new role. It seems like she was a fine dean or provost but I don’t see any sign that she understands how to lead a massive, complex, high-profile, multi-billion-dollar operation, and she lacks a leader’s sense of urgency when urgency matters.
She is not, however, responsible for the protest marchers on Locust Walk, and no academic leader can or should make content-based prohibitions against rally speakers. The issue of policing speech on campus is very much a problem, on the right and the left, whether it’s restricting what can be taught about the role of race in American history, or anxiety about getting shamed for not remembering people’s pronouns.
I guess what I am trying to say is there is a broader context to what is happening at Penn. There is a confluence of concerns that appears to be roiling the Jewish and Muslim (and broader) communities at the school.
I think Magill is vulnerable for a lot of different reasons, but canning her for not curbing speech on campus seems like a bad precedent. The hypocrisy, of course, is that the chairman of Penn’s board is policing dissent by pressuring board members critical of Magill’s missteps to leave.
And then there’s the Amy Wax controversy, where discipline is being considered over racist teaching. Penn is rudderless on these speech questions, which is a sign of “feckless” leadership, indeed.
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Magill is out at Penn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/us/university-of-pennsylvania-president-resigns.html
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WSJ on “How Rich Alumni Outsted Penn’s President Liz Magill” (gift link): How Rich Alumni Ousted Penn’s President Liz Magill - WSJ
As someone noted on another thread, a primary part (some would say the primary part) of a college president’s job is to raise money. Liz Magill wouldn’t have been able to do that going forward. Even with the large endowments these tippy tops have, money still has to always be coming in.
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What I do not understand about the University President’s response was why equivocate about speech that calls for the destruction/murder of people? I did not think the First Amendment covered speech meant to cause physical harm?
Because that’s not aligned with their politics.
Colleges need to return to academics.
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Because she didn’t want to be accused of chilling free speech.
Yet that ship has already sailed. For years, Penn, and Harvard, to name a couple, have placed constraints on speech that offends liberals. It’s considered bullying at Harvard if you don’t use someone’s preferred pronouns.
But when Jews are on the receiving end, suddenly free speech is sacrosanct. Because, Jews, like white men, are seen as oppressors and part of the existing power structure that must be disbanded.
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Magill’s answer was actually correct in terms of what the First Amendment protects. She was clumsily and legalistically trying to say that Penn follows the FIrst Amendment, which protects abstract calls for violence, hence her attempts to say things like “it depends on context” and on how severe. Why (most) calls for genocide are protected speech | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. But in addition to being clumsily worded in front of a hostile audience, her explanation didn’t align with how Penn’s conduct policy had been applied in the past, when mere words have been treated as violations.
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Concurring with a lot of what’s already been said, I will share our experience at UPenn, where my Quaker was shouted down in her pre-orientation program for attempting to defend the simple proposition that Penn is — on balance — beneficial to Philadelphia. She wasn’t allowed to defend her position. Instead, she was loudly denounced and berated as a “colonizer” and a “racist” and a “gentrifier.” The program staff made no effort to moderate this “discussion.” In fact, the staff was happy to pile on, though of course they seemed to be OK with cashing their paychecks from this “oppressor” organization.
My Quaker, who participated in a program in her high school that convened civil conversations on controversial topics in the news, was a visible and active student leader in her pre-Penn days. But she has completely avoided any political involvement at Penn. She learned in her very first days on that campus that, as a mere liberal, she doesn’t have a place in the conversation.
And Penn does this again and again. Whatever you think about a transgender woman on the swim team, for example, there should be a legitimate debate about what women’s sports even mean under that circumstance. But no, the swimmers were told to keep their mouths shut. And there are other examples of content-based restrictions, and they are usually wielded against those deemed as members of groups viewed by the extreme left as privileged or oppressors.
So Penn’s flimsy and tattered First Amendment shield was a poor defense before Congress. My fear is the enforcers of far-right orthodoxy are not interested in making free speech stronger, however, they just want to exercise controls in service to their own priorities in the culture war.
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I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s a shame that some students are subjected to that kind of treatment.
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This has been the experience of my kids. One is pretty liberal and the other a left leaning centrist. However, they do have certain viewpoints that are contrary to current progressive thought as they relate to accountability that they tell me that they had to keep to themselves because they would have been be accused of being in the “oppressor” class. I still remember my D asking me what I thought of charter schools and voucher programs for a class she had. So I went through the pro’s and con’s, but I have my opinion. She told me she would have to tone down any “pro’s” so as to not get criticized and downgraded by the prof. Whether that would have happened, who knows, but obviously the professor was not instructing from a place of neutrality.
It was also interesting that at a recent alumni function, one of the school officials talked about a recent survey of students about any chilling of free speech. It turned out the progressives and conservatives felt they had plenty but it was the centrist students who were afraid of offending either the right or the left. That is sad.
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Interesting, I haven’t heard that before.
For what it’s worth, my daughter is Latina. Most of the radical leftists shouting her down for being an “oppressor” were white non-Latinos.
Why would anyone want to attend a school like this?
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I think if she were to do it over, she might have picked her other ED option over Penn. But it checked a lot of boxes for her and she’s got a good friend group and just tries to avoid the fray.
This has not been my Quakers’ experience. For them, Penn has been a place where they can be their authentic selves.
I think the point being raised is that students can be their “authentic selves” as long as their authentic selves align with the politics of the institution. For others, not so much.
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Not trying to minimize anyone else’s experience, but my Quaker also is really enjoying it there. She did a preO and loved it, felt she has met some of the most welcoming and helpful people in her life, especially upperclassmen. Everyone is collaborative and encouraging, faculty are extremely helpful too. She has joined clubs, and feels as tho she can express her opinions as much as HS (her private HS had a significant strongly progressive cancel -culture too). She hates the protest stuff, isnt “political “ but of course recognizes that people are hurting right now. She has a very good friend at our flagship who is experiencing significant antisemitism there and has to walk past angry hate-speech protests many days. Her other friend at a known college touted on here for free speech? She said over break, outloud, well we all agree which side is right (palestine) so there’s not tons of counter protests and not much need to talk about it. Now of course that could be her own narrow view, but the fact that she said it so dismissively gave me pause. Hate is many many places right now. It just isnt making the news at other places.