It is hard to pity the presidents of elite private universities. They earn upwards of a million dollars a year and can extend the bounty well beyond their term in office through service on corporate boards. They can implement major projects and reforms at their home institutions and leave a significant mark on American higher education in general. Meanwhile, these institutions practically have a fiduciary duty to treat their presidents as cult objects: continually to praise their brilliance, their vision, their charisma, their caring, and their diligence. Whatever it takes to impress donors and keep the gifts rolling in. When I was at Johns Hopkins, the university’s propagandists (sorry, the media office) dwelled lovingly on the fact that President William Brody had learned fluent Chinese and qualified as a jet pilot while in office. It didn’t seem to have occurred to them that these time-intensive activities might conceivably have detracted from his job performance.
You are a historian who writes about the Enlightenment and you think that the words-actions distinction, the very heart of the American free speech tradition, is a mere legalism?
I agree that these Presidents deserve little sympathy. They knew that they were going to be grilled and therefore prepared with lawyers. They had to perform a juggling act. On the one hand, they had the general public, congress, and some donors who were outraged by what transpired at their universities. While the early reactions of these universities to the massacre was terribly insensitive, they all issued corrective statements that while not great, could pass as okay. The presidents were certainly unhappy with the radical groups and members of the faculty on their campuses that issued pro Hamas statements in the aftermath of the massacre, but they figured this was just another woke idiocy that happens every so often on our campuses which will fade when the next idiotic posture will pop up. The best way to address woke nonsense is to ignore it. The right media loves to publicize these incidents, and some of them are indeed beyond strange, but they really amount to nothing more than adolescent virtue signaling. People grow out of them. And the 3 presidents were also aware that when Columbia and Brandeis took disciplinary measures against these groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, their presidents were crucified by progressive students and faculty who dominate elite institutions of higher education. And so they tried to avoid saying anything. They talked as if they were in a faculty meeting. And they failed where most academics do (including me), which is when academic posturing and positions run counter to common sense. (Non related example of similar academic absurdities -- you can't propose in today's academy that the basic man woman binary exists; you can't suggest that 2 headed households are better for raising children etc.). They knew what happened to Larry Summers when he dared to address statistical facts in public. They know what happened to Ian Baruma when he allowed a different point of view at the NYRB, and they behaved like supreme court nominees. Unlike you David, I believe their answers reveal where progressive group thinking has done to our institutions -- that instead of producing critical thinkers we create virtue signaling parrots. And that progressive antisemitic antizionism has become a central component of intersectional dogma.
As Jacobson noted in his brilliant December 3 article in the Guardian, the absolute vilification of Israel in academia over the last few decades has been seen by the majority of Jews as unfair and antisemitic bullying. An emotional connection to Israel is an important component of Jewish identity, regardless of where Jews stand politically. It has been so for 2000 years. And the hypocrisy screams antisemitism. Universities obsess over microaggressions and do not allow dissenting voices a stage on campuses in the name of assuring a "safe environment." But antizionist antisemites must have freedom of speech, particularly when it comes from minority groups like African Americans or Arabs. Black Lives Matter chapters and activists frequently issue such statements, but no one in the liberal universities dares to confront them. Malcolm X has become the glorious symbol of black resistance and is celebrated more than MLK. He was a hateful antisemite. So scholars and activists put his antisemitism In "context," just like the 3 presidents explained to Congress about calls for genocide. When students and faculty call "from the river to the sea," which means one thing -- genocide of the Jews -- the NYT publishes a thoughtful balanced article that explains that they really don't mean it -- it's just a catchy slogan. When demonstrators scream intifada intifada they don't really mean it in a violent way. Universities have become such a hostile place for Jews that to be accepted by their teachers and their peers Jewish students need to renounce their identity. They have to prove that even though they were born Jewish, they hate zionism just as much as the next progressive. It's a ritual that happens to most of us -- a trial by metaphorical fire. We need to prove we're good Jews who hate Israel. That's the price of admission. And I have yet to meet a Jew who hasn't bowed in one circumstance or another to this pressure. This semester, for example, I have a student whose father is Jewish and her mother Catholic. Her name is Shannon. She's at a Jesuit school in which there are very few Jewish students. And yet she frequently has to prove to her peers that her parental ancestry doesn't compromise her moral credentials and that she hates Israel just like the rest of them.
This has been going on for years. And this is the reason why so many Jewish alumni are so angry. They see what's happening on campuses and they remember what they had to go through. How humiliating this self-negation was and is for all of us. I speculate that these alumni are, like me, ashamed of how we caved to social pressure. We renounced the ancient tradition of our forefathers, who all too often suffered dearly because of who they were, just so that we could be accepted as cool members of the club. We are embarrassed by our past behavior and realize that things have gotten so bad because we were cowards. And the worst of it. Many of us still are.
One point I would add -- that these 3 presidents willingly walked into an ambush. They were invited to testify and accepted, almost certainly for the opportunity to attract publicity to ...themselves. There was no possibility of any benefit to the institutions of them testifying before that committee. Moreover, they reportedly all retained the same lobby/ law firm to prepare their testimony (almost certanly with university funds to pay for what was clearly atrocious advise).
Although the whole thing is obviously a political set-up, I feel that they really do bear a grave responsibility for willingly participating in this farce in the first place.
And once they were asked why did NONE of them think to say the obvious: that just a few years ago, Republicans and conservatives were beating up universities in Congress and the press for having speec codes. They could and should have had a quote from FIRE or the National Academy of Scholars from a few years ago. Magill could and should have referred to the raging controversy of the late 1980s over whether or not a Jewish Israeli student should be punished for using a word that was considered, by inference, to be racist. She could and should have pointed out that the university in that instance gave the student due process and held a judicial inquiry, because it wasnt up to the president to make a snap judgement. Instead, she -- and Gay -- stuck to the written script as if they were afraid to match wits in a debate with the intellectual powerhouse of Elaine Stefanik. That alone is a legitimate reason to demand her resignation.
It's a good piece. I dredged up something of mine from 2010 on the Boston Globe on one aspect of my time in the Harvard president's office under Drew Faust you may be interested in. Perhaps you were one of the people who sent her your book(s)!
You are a historian who writes about the Enlightenment and you think that the words-actions distinction, the very heart of the American free speech tradition, is a mere legalism?
I agree that these Presidents deserve little sympathy. They knew that they were going to be grilled and therefore prepared with lawyers. They had to perform a juggling act. On the one hand, they had the general public, congress, and some donors who were outraged by what transpired at their universities. While the early reactions of these universities to the massacre was terribly insensitive, they all issued corrective statements that while not great, could pass as okay. The presidents were certainly unhappy with the radical groups and members of the faculty on their campuses that issued pro Hamas statements in the aftermath of the massacre, but they figured this was just another woke idiocy that happens every so often on our campuses which will fade when the next idiotic posture will pop up. The best way to address woke nonsense is to ignore it. The right media loves to publicize these incidents, and some of them are indeed beyond strange, but they really amount to nothing more than adolescent virtue signaling. People grow out of them. And the 3 presidents were also aware that when Columbia and Brandeis took disciplinary measures against these groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, their presidents were crucified by progressive students and faculty who dominate elite institutions of higher education. And so they tried to avoid saying anything. They talked as if they were in a faculty meeting. And they failed where most academics do (including me), which is when academic posturing and positions run counter to common sense. (Non related example of similar academic absurdities -- you can't propose in today's academy that the basic man woman binary exists; you can't suggest that 2 headed households are better for raising children etc.). They knew what happened to Larry Summers when he dared to address statistical facts in public. They know what happened to Ian Baruma when he allowed a different point of view at the NYRB, and they behaved like supreme court nominees. Unlike you David, I believe their answers reveal where progressive group thinking has done to our institutions -- that instead of producing critical thinkers we create virtue signaling parrots. And that progressive antisemitic antizionism has become a central component of intersectional dogma.
As Jacobson noted in his brilliant December 3 article in the Guardian, the absolute vilification of Israel in academia over the last few decades has been seen by the majority of Jews as unfair and antisemitic bullying. An emotional connection to Israel is an important component of Jewish identity, regardless of where Jews stand politically. It has been so for 2000 years. And the hypocrisy screams antisemitism. Universities obsess over microaggressions and do not allow dissenting voices a stage on campuses in the name of assuring a "safe environment." But antizionist antisemites must have freedom of speech, particularly when it comes from minority groups like African Americans or Arabs. Black Lives Matter chapters and activists frequently issue such statements, but no one in the liberal universities dares to confront them. Malcolm X has become the glorious symbol of black resistance and is celebrated more than MLK. He was a hateful antisemite. So scholars and activists put his antisemitism In "context," just like the 3 presidents explained to Congress about calls for genocide. When students and faculty call "from the river to the sea," which means one thing -- genocide of the Jews -- the NYT publishes a thoughtful balanced article that explains that they really don't mean it -- it's just a catchy slogan. When demonstrators scream intifada intifada they don't really mean it in a violent way. Universities have become such a hostile place for Jews that to be accepted by their teachers and their peers Jewish students need to renounce their identity. They have to prove that even though they were born Jewish, they hate zionism just as much as the next progressive. It's a ritual that happens to most of us -- a trial by metaphorical fire. We need to prove we're good Jews who hate Israel. That's the price of admission. And I have yet to meet a Jew who hasn't bowed in one circumstance or another to this pressure. This semester, for example, I have a student whose father is Jewish and her mother Catholic. Her name is Shannon. She's at a Jesuit school in which there are very few Jewish students. And yet she frequently has to prove to her peers that her parental ancestry doesn't compromise her moral credentials and that she hates Israel just like the rest of them.
This has been going on for years. And this is the reason why so many Jewish alumni are so angry. They see what's happening on campuses and they remember what they had to go through. How humiliating this self-negation was and is for all of us. I speculate that these alumni are, like me, ashamed of how we caved to social pressure. We renounced the ancient tradition of our forefathers, who all too often suffered dearly because of who they were, just so that we could be accepted as cool members of the club. We are embarrassed by our past behavior and realize that things have gotten so bad because we were cowards. And the worst of it. Many of us still are.
One point I would add -- that these 3 presidents willingly walked into an ambush. They were invited to testify and accepted, almost certainly for the opportunity to attract publicity to ...themselves. There was no possibility of any benefit to the institutions of them testifying before that committee. Moreover, they reportedly all retained the same lobby/ law firm to prepare their testimony (almost certanly with university funds to pay for what was clearly atrocious advise).
Although the whole thing is obviously a political set-up, I feel that they really do bear a grave responsibility for willingly participating in this farce in the first place.
And once they were asked why did NONE of them think to say the obvious: that just a few years ago, Republicans and conservatives were beating up universities in Congress and the press for having speec codes. They could and should have had a quote from FIRE or the National Academy of Scholars from a few years ago. Magill could and should have referred to the raging controversy of the late 1980s over whether or not a Jewish Israeli student should be punished for using a word that was considered, by inference, to be racist. She could and should have pointed out that the university in that instance gave the student due process and held a judicial inquiry, because it wasnt up to the president to make a snap judgement. Instead, she -- and Gay -- stuck to the written script as if they were afraid to match wits in a debate with the intellectual powerhouse of Elaine Stefanik. That alone is a legitimate reason to demand her resignation.
It's a good piece. I dredged up something of mine from 2010 on the Boston Globe on one aspect of my time in the Harvard president's office under Drew Faust you may be interested in. Perhaps you were one of the people who sent her your book(s)!
https://ericweinberger.substack.com/p/books-of-a-harvard-president