Top university presidents plead ‘free speech’ over campus antisemitism

WASHINGTON – The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offered little more than excuses Tuesday for violent antisemitic demonstrations on their campuses in the wake of Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 people across southern Israel Oct. 7 — even claiming such displays were part of a freewheeling culture of free speech.

“Institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions’ cultures,” House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (D-NC) said in her opening statement.

“After the events of the past two months, it is clear that rabid antisemitism and the university are two ideas that cannot be cleaved from one another.”

While many lawmakers have decried the elite universities for allowing pro-Palestinian protesters to attack and intimidate Jewish students, Tuesday was the first time the schools’ top leaders were called to respond.

“Today, each of you will have a chance to answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism … that have denied students the safe learning environment they are due,” Foxx said. “Do you have the courage to truly confront and condemn the ideology driving antisemitism? Or will you offer weak, blame-shifting excuses and yet another responsibility-dodging taskforce?”

The answer, for the most part, was the latter.

House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a Harvard alumna, led the Republican attack, asking her alma mater’s president, Claudine Gay, whether a student “calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected speech” at the Ivy League school.

In response to the question, meant to draw a comparison to young protesters calling for “global intifada,” Gay launched into an apparently scripted statement about Harvard’s “commitment to free speech.”

“It’s a yes or no question,” said an infuriated Stefanik, raising her voice. “Let me ask you this … you understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the State of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?”

In response, Gay said “that type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me” and acknowledged hearing “thoughtless, reckless and hateful language on our campus,” but claimed Harvard could not denounce the words.

“We embrace a commitment to free expression – even views that are objectionable, offensive [and] hateful,” she said. “It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying and harassment. That speech did not cross that barrier.”

Following up, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) – who drew backlash this week for demanding “balanced” criticism when asked about Hamas rapes in an interview – gave Gay an opportunity to expand upon her answers, but the Harvard leader declined.

“Thank you for the opportunity, but I’m satisfied that I’ve conveyed our deep commitment to free expression,” she said.

Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) again tried to elicit specifics from Gay later, asking whether “the students who are intimidating Jewish students just because they’re Jewish be expelled?”

“You’re describing conduct that sounds like it would violate our policies against bullying and intimidation and harassment, and if that is the case, we would answer that through our policies,” Gay responded.

But when confronted with reports that pro-Hamas demonstrators who occupied Harvard’s University Hall for 24 hours went unpunished despite intimidating Jewish students, Gay would only say the school has “disciplinary processes underway.”

MIT president Sally Kornbluth also spoke about freedom of speech, admitting that while students “have been pained by chants and recent demonstrations,” MIT has a responsibility to “ensure that we protect speech and viewpoint diversity for everyone.”

“Meeting those goals is challenging and the results can be terribly uncomfortable, but it is essential to how we operate in the United States,” she said. “Those who want us to shut down protest language are in effect, arguing for a speech code, but in practice, speech codes do not work.”

“Our campus actions to date have protected students safety, minimize disruptions to campus activities, and protected the right to free expression,” she added, but said MIT was “intensifying our central efforts to combat antisemitism, the vital subject of this hearing.”

But earlier on Capitol Hill, MIT student Tahlia Khan gave a very different account during a press conference by House Republicans, saying a post-doctoral fellow at the school told her that “Jewish Israelis want to enslave the world in a global apartheid system [and] falsely claimed that Israel harvests Palestinian organs.”

“The DEI officer in his department replied by telling us that nothing he said was hate speech,” Khan said of what happened after her group complained, “and that the organ harvesting conspiracy theory was ‘confirmed.’”

Recounting a story of a friend’s son at Penn who is “physically afraid to go to the library at night,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) asked the school’s president Liz Magill why that kind of learning environment would be allowed to continue.

“I’m devastated to hear that, and the safety and security of our campus and our students in particular is my top concern,” Magill responded.

Though she did not answer the question, she requested to speak with the student, noting she was “very troubled.”