Congressional Hearings
By ANDREW BOOVA ‘26
On Dec. 5, three presidents of elite schools were called to testify in front of the United States Congress about antisemitism on their respective campuses. Liz Magill of UPenn, Claudine Gay of Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT faced questioning about their inaction in dealing with heightened levels of antisemitism on their campuses. They frequently cited their speech codes as their guide in dealing with potential cases of intimidation or harassment of Jewish students, including marching near campus Hillels, chanting slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada” and “From the River to the Sea” which have, in some instances, been used as rallying calls to murder Jews. Campus speech codes are generally based on the First Amendment, with additional restrictions to maintain a comfortable academic environment for all students. However, each code’s broadness and lack of specificity combined with the schools’ unequal application, has directly led to situations where members of their academic communities have been held to differing standards.
Harvard’s President, Gay, claimed that her university relies on their speech code, which allows for all kinds of speech. One Google search exposes her untruthfulness. According to FIRE, a leading free speech advocacy group, Harvard was ranked last for free speech in 2023, receiving a minimum score of 0/100. In each of the past four years, Harvard has finished in the bottom 25 percent of all schools graded for free speech. Why, all of a sudden, does Harvard seem to care so much about free speech? Harvard’s actual speech code receives a “green” rating from FIRE, meaning it shouldn’t threaten students’ free speech if it’s applied as written. How then does Harvard score 0/100? Egregiously unequal application. In 2020, Gay was featured in a Crimson article titled “Ahead of Speaker Event, FAS Dean Gay Says Charles Murray’s Work Lacks Academic Merit.” It appears that she played a key role in preventing this controversial, though reputable academic, from speaking on Harvard’s campus. In 2021, data science professor David Kane was forced to leave Harvard for writing blog posts against affirmative action. In 2020, a student’s acceptance offer was rescinded for an old social media post that he had since apologized for, and in 2022, a feminist philosopher was disinvited for his views on transgenderism. These institutional failures, often supported by President Gay, are just a few examples of Harvard’s unequal and unfair treatment of students and faculty based on viewpoint. In 2021, MIT disinvited Dorian Abbot, a geophysics professor at UChicago who advocated for a meritocracy, from speaking on campus. In 2014, Pulitzer Prize-winning conservative commentator George Will was disinvited from UPenn. It seems that only speech that these administrations like is permitted.
Free speech on college campuses is vital. If colleges don’t maintain a wide Overton window, encompassing a broad range of acceptable ideas, good ideas will go unheard, and bad ideas will not be challenged and rejected. The Harvard speech codes under the header “Discriminatory Harassment” specify the considerations to be examined in determining whether the speech is permissible:
Frequency of the conduct
Severity and pervasiveness of the conduct
Whether it is physically threatening
Degree to which the conduct interfered with an employee’s work, performance or a student’s academic performance or ability to participate in or benefit from academic/campus programs and activities
The relationship between the alleged harasser and the subject(s) of the harassment
Rep. Elise Stefanik asked UPenn President Magill, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?” Magill’s concluding statement was, “It is a context dependent decision…” This was hard to hear for Jewish people and all those familiar with the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust. What context could justify calling for the genocide of Jews? However, the need for justification lies not in making such calls, but in limiting them. As long as students comply with the broad speech codes at these universities, Magill was correct in a technical sense. However, the outrage of many people was certainly warranted for one glaring reason: Universities are not applying these standards uniformly.
Sadly, there has been a clear pattern of anti-Jewish bias. If you disagree with affirmative action, you will be disinvited. If you call for genocide, it depends on the context. Colleges are also not acting on harassment and assault claims caught on video. A video of a Jewish student being surrounded on Harvard’s campus by a pro-Palestinian mob has recently gone viral. Another instance at UPenn showed a Jewish student wrapping tefillin with a rabbi and praying. While doing so, a large pro-Palestine protest marched within feet of him chanting antisemitic phrases directly at him. This very likely meets the standards of harassment, yet the university did nothing, as far as we know.
Another video from Harvard’s campus showed a mass of hundreds of protesters screaming “Globalize the intifada.” This, according to the five criteria, is not actually harassment, even though the slogan is pervasive and has historically been used against Jews in a genocidal fashion. Context does matter.
There are two solutions going forward: We can either expand speech to people who these universities have historically censored and only restrict harassment and incitement to violence, or further constrain speech by limiting the most recent protests. Given the utmost importance of free speech, the clear choice is more speech for all, not just people whom these universities like. If we are to have both free speech on campus, and also promise safety for all students, it seems reasonable to question whether President Kornbluth should remain in her position, or follow Presidents Magill and Gay who made the right decision to resign.
