With tongue planted firmly in cheek, we suggest that – in one sense – the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT deserve some sympathy for refusing to tell a congressional committee last week in unequivocal terms that students who called for the genocide of Jews should be punished. Their uniform response to Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s question along those lines in sum and substance was that it was a matter of “context.” That is, if the student’s calls were “directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment and only then would trigger federal rules requiring private institutions of higher learning receiving federal funds to prohibit the “bullying or harassment” of students. But could the good professors have done otherwise?
Predictably, this evasiveness caused the uproar we are hearing about. Rep. Stefanik herself exploded after the Penn president’s testimony incredulously asking, “That’s your testimony today? Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent upon the context?” And as of this writing, the Penn president has resigned and her two colleagues are reportedly about to leave office as well.
Yet, how could they have been forceful and threatening against antisemitism. In today’s cancel culture and pervasive campus antisemitism, couldn’t they reasonably have believed they would be hounded out of office by aroused and cynical students always on the lookout for a rallying cause?
Of course, that is what leadership is all about – not being fearful of those whom you are charged with guiding and educating. Indeed, the university prexies’ respective student bodies just got a lamentable reinforcement of their prejudices. So, their dilemma is no occasion for any sympathy. But there is also something else in play.
Unfortunately, too many of todays’ educational leaders and teachers on the college and university levels see themselves as the gatekeepers for the rise of people of color and efforts to eradicate vestiges of White European colonialism – things like values, traditions and national myths. While educators typically used to urge students to examine their premises, too many professors have taken to offering their own conclusions and instilling their own sense of rootlessness and nihilism in a willing student body anxious to rebel against and give the back of the hand to most things their parents believed in. The world of academia has become a place to ridicule tradition and mock history.
So, we got to the point where today, once again, we Jews are targets for haters and know nothings – of the same ilk as have regularly victimized us in the past. And it is de rigeur to choose Palestinian barbarians bent on the slaughter and torture of Jews over their prey. This time, though, given Oct. 7 and its shocking campus embraces there has been a donor backlash against what is being taught and nurtured in the schools which has resulted in a pulling back of their largesse and, more and more, administrators are apparently taking notice.
Perhaps this will bring about change. One can only hope. After Oct. 7 it’s hard to understand how anyone could be indifferent to antisemitism. But here we are.
