Harvard President Claudine Gay, left, speaks as University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, on Dec. 5.Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press
A prize-winning satirist seeking to underscore the hypocrisy of life on the modern university campus could not have come up with a better script than the real-life testimony of three Ivy League presidents last week before a U.S. congressional committee hearing on antisemitism.
The appearance of the heads of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the House of Representatives’ education committee on Dec. 5 encapsulated the closing of the elite academic mind by an ideology that purports to seek to snuff out discrimination, yet remains blind to its own biases.
The three women – Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Elizabeth Magill, and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth – all came across as careerist administrators who got to where they are by deftly navigating campus politics and becoming fluent in the language of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Dr. Gay and Ms. Magill reportedly got help preparing for their testimonies from a prestigious (read: expensive) New York law firm. A lot of good it did them. Their testimonies smacked of both legalese and moral relativism, not to mention blatant hypocrisy. A U.S. congressional hearing is the wrong forum to try to show off your expansive vocabulary. The venue is designed to portray politicians – not witnesses – in their best light. A truly smart witness knows how to roll with the punches.
There was nothing smart about the testimony given by Dr. Gay, Ms. Magill and Dr. Kornbluth. The fatal question put to them by Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Donald Trump acolyte who spread misinformation about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election, was a loaded one. But that does not mean it should have been so difficult to answer.
Ms. Stefanik asked a variation of the same question to each woman: Does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying or harassment, and/or violate their university’s code of conduct? Ms. Stefanik asked for a “yes” or “no” answer. None of the women gave one.
“It’s a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman,” Ms. Magill defiantly insisted. A flabbergasted Ms. Stefanik offered her a chance at a do-over, but the Penn president only dug herself in deeper. Ms. Stefanik then moved on to Dr. Gay. Same question. Near identical answer. “It can be depending on the context,” the Harvard president repeated.
By last weekend, Ms. Magill was out as Penn president, though her resignation was the result of pressure exerted on the university’s governing body by Jewish donors, rather than because of an admission of the double standard that Ms. Magill’s congressional testimony appeared to endorse.
Elite universities pride themselves on creating “safe spaces” for marginalized groups they deem worthy of protection from microaggressions. They selectively apply free-speech principles. Critics of DEI initiatives are systematically ostracized, shunned and silenced. But harassing Jewish students on campus? That depends on the context.
Since 2018, Harvard has required all students to complete a mandatory diversity training session that describes “cisheterosexism” and “fatphobia” as forms of “violence.” Using the wrong pronouns, student are told, constitutes “abuse.” Violations of the school’s anti-discrimination policies can result in “termination, dismissal, expulsion” or “revocation of tenure.” In a video introducing the training session, a university dean says: “Completing this course is a critical step in establishing a shared understanding of the values here at Harvard.”
So far, Dr. Gay and Dr. Kornbluth have kept their jobs, despite widespread calls for their resignations. More than 700 Harvard faculty members signed a letter urging the school’s governing body to stand by Dr. Gay, the university’s first Black president. It did, declaring that “President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.”
The governing body’s endorsement of Dr. Gay came amid revelations that she had been the subject of a university investigation into accusations of plagiarism. Based on a review of her work, Harvard concluded Dr. Gay had committed “a few instances of inadequate citation” but found “no violation of Harvard’s standards for research and misconduct.”
Not everyone on campus agreed with that assessment. As the respected Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol told The New York Times: “It’s troubling to see the standards that we apply to undergrads seem to differ from the standards we apply to the faculty.”
The awkward truth is that Dr. Gay’s race may be the main reason she still has a job and Ms. Magill, who is white, does not. Firing her would create a much bigger problem for Harvard.
“The recent attacks on [Dr. Gay’s] leadership are nothing more than political theatrics advancing a white supremacist agenda,” Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, the leading Black rights organization in the U.S., said this week.
That comment, like the testimony of Dr. Gay and her Penn and MIT peers, seemed right on script.