Leaders of the three top universities in the United States have faced calls to resign following their testimony before a congressional hearing into anti-Semitism on campus sparked a firestorm of criticism.
On Tuesday, Harvard University announced it would retain political scientist Claudine Gay as president after her University of Pennsylvania colleague Elizabeth Magill resigned over the weekend.
Gay, Magill and Sally Kornbluth, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have all faced backlash since their joint appearance before Congress on December 6, where they were asked how they would tackle anti-Semitism at their universities. tackle.
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik criticized academic leaders for giving evasive answers about whether calls for the “genocide of Jews” violated their schools’ codes of conduct.
“Calls for genocide of Jews depend on context?” Stefanik said incredulously in response to their answers. “Isn’t that bullying or intimidation? This is the easiest question to answer yes.”
Fears of anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred have increased since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza on October 7, which sparked widespread campus protests in the US.
As pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters clashed, university leaders faced scrutiny over what speech is protected on school grounds — and what, if at all, should be restricted.
Let’s take a look at the congressional hearing and why the presidents’ testimonies drew bipartisan reactions, including from the White House:
Why did the hearing take place?
The Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League and several other similar groups have warned that anti-Semitism is on the rise on American campuses, especially since the start of the Gaza war. However, the staunchly pro-Israel group has been accused of confusing criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.
And the Ministry of Education has opened investigations into more than a dozen universities since the start of the war, citing possible “discrimination involving shared ancestry” – an umbrella term that includes both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Politicians, especially on the right, have pointed to these reports as evidence that the liberal atmosphere on college campuses has gone too far.
Pro-Israel groups view students’ chanting of the slogan “from the river to the sea” as pro-Hamas, but analysts say the term has more complex roots. They say the phrase is an expression of the Palestinian desire for freedom from oppression in the historic land of Palestine.
On December 6, the House Committee on Education and Labor held a hearing to address concerns about anti-Semitism on campus, calling on Gay, Magill and Kornbluth to speak.
“Today, each of you has the opportunity to answer for and atone for the many specific instances of virulent, hateful anti-Semitism on your respective campuses,” Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx told university presidents.
She added that the tense atmosphere is denying students “the safe learning environment they deserve.”
What happened during the hearing?
The three university presidents testified during the five-hour hearing and discussed how they balanced freedom of speech with concerns about campus safety.
But it was their interaction with Stefanik near the end of the hearing that fueled the viral outrage.
Stefanik pressed the three leaders on whether calling for genocide against the Jews would be considered intimidation, and urged immediate answers. In one such conversation, she asked Magill a hypothetical question: “Does the call for genocide of the Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?”
Magill said it would depend on the context. “If the speech turns into behavior, there could be harassment, yes.”
“I specifically ask if I am calling for the genocide of the Jews: is that bullying or intimidation?” said Stefanik.
“If it’s targeted and severe and pervasive, it’s harassment,” Magill responded.
“So the answer is yes,” Stefanik said irritably.
All three presidents declined to make blanket statements that calling for genocide would be a conduct violation. At one point, Gay said terms like “intifada” — the Arabic word for “uprising” — were “personally repugnant,” but she underscored her support for “free expression, even of views that are objectionable.”
Why did the testimonies spark controversy?
Much of the outrage stemmed from the fact that university presidents did not unequivocally condemn calls for genocide and therefore appeared tolerant of hate speech.
Tom Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said the presidents came across as “lawyer,” “defensive” and perhaps “out of touch.”
However, he said: “In essence it is not clear that anything any of them said was wrong or inaccurate.” The presidents were simply reflecting the broad protection of free speech afforded by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“We live in a country where you can call for the genocide of groups and if you don’t immediately harm them, it’s legal,” he explained.
“Just go to Twitter. It happens all the time. So [the presidents] tried to talk about their policies, obviously in a way that preserved their ability to say they were applying the First Amendment.”
What kind of speech is restricted on American campuses?
Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney with the advocacy group the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), explained that the university presidents needed to make good legal distinctions in their testimony.
The U.S. Constitution includes sweeping protections for “political speech,” which in extreme cases can include discussions or even advocating violence. But it does not protect against speech that turns into threats and intimidation.
The distinction is that unprotected speech represents a “serious intent to commit unlawful violence and becomes a pattern of serious, pervasive, offensive conduct that deters a student from pursuing an education,” Greenberg explained.
But private universities, such as Harvard and MIT, have the power to go further in restricting speech, he added. They have the right “to set their own policies and determine what standard of free speech they are going to give to their students.”
Still, free speech is the norm on most American campuses, which have traditionally been hotbeds for political activism, Greenberg said.
“The vast majority of private schools, especially liberal arts colleges and Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale or MIT, promise students robust rights to free speech, consistent with the First Amendment.”
“The University of Pennsylvania, for example, and its policies, essentially say, ‘We are guided by the United States Constitution. This is a standard that we will use when determining what rights students have on campus.’ So students at these universities are led to believe that the limits of their rights would be those of the First Amendment.”
What was the audience’s reaction?
All three presidents have faced intense criticism, with some students, alumni and activists calling for their resignations.
Dozens of US politicians, including high-level Democrats, have also condemned the presidents’ words.
“It is unbelievable that this has to be said: the call for genocide is monstrous and contradictory to everything we represent as a country. Any statements that advocate the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and abhorrent – and we must all strongly oppose them,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement last week.
Donors have also threatened to cut off funding to the universities. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman blasted Gay in particular, saying in an open letter that she has done more damage to Harvard’s reputation than anyone in the university’s history. He also suggested she was hired to meet diversity criteria.
Still, some observers have jumped to Gay’s defense. More than 700 Harvard faculty members signed a petition urging the school board to resist calls for her removal, a call that was ultimately successful.
What have the school presidents said since the hearing?
Gay has apologized for her comments during the hearings.
She told the Harvard Crimson newspaper on Thursday: “What I should have had the presence of mind to do at that moment was to return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community – threats to our Jewish students – are not make some sense. place at Harvard and will never go unchallenged.”
Magill, meanwhile, followed up her testimony with a video statement on the University of Pennsylvania website.
“I want to be clear: a call for genocide against Jewish people is threatening – deeply threatening,” she said. “In my opinion it would be harassment or intimidation.”
Did the presidents keep their jobs?
The Harvard administration announced on Tuesday that Gay would remain in her role despite the backlash. The MIT board also said last week that it stood behind Kornbluth. Magill has since resigned from her position under pressure.
What does the situation mean for the future of freedom of expression at American universities?
Before her resignation as head of the University of Pennsylvania, Magill called on school administrators to “take a serious and careful look at our policies.”
Ginsburg, a law professor at the University of Chicago, called her words “perhaps the scariest” part of the whole confusion. For him, this represented a possible setback in the school’s commitment to freedom of expression.
“We need to get rid of ideological constraints on universities, whether they come from within the university, from politicized departments or from outside the university – from politicians who want to make profits and extract votes from them,” he said.
Ginsburg added that revising campus rules on freedom of speech could result in silencing “the actual discussion of Israel and Palestine policy.”
“It’s an important public policy issue. We can’t take that off the table just because of some pressure from donors and the like,” he said.
Greenberg, the First Amendment attorney, echoed those concerns, though he hoped the public discussion would push schools to strengthen their free speech protections.
“We fear this will cause a backlash against freedom of expression and open the door to more censorship,” he explained.
“If universities start to weaken their free speech policies and punish students for saying, ‘From the river to the sea,’ for protesting against Israel, for talking about this conflict, that would be a step backwards.”