Presidents of three colleges faced a backlash Wednesday over their answers to questions on campus antisemitism at a hearing in Congress the previous day. The New York Times reports that the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania said they strongly opposed antisemitism and supported Israel's right to exist, but when asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik about what the Republican described as calls for genocide, they "tried to give lawyerly responses to a tricky question involving free speech." In one exchange, Stefanik asked Elizabeth Magill, Penn's president, about protests in which students had chanted in support of "intifada."
The word means "uprising" in Arabic, and many Jews consider it a call to violence against them, per the Times, though Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid says it is "ridiculous" to equate it with a call for genocide. "Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct, yes or no?" Stefanik asked Magill, who said, "If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment." Stefanik also asked Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth whether "calling for ... genocide" violated university bullying and harassment policies. Gay said it "depends on the context," while Kornbluth said she had not heard "calling for the genocide of Jews on our campus."
Asked by Stefanik about calls for intifada, Kornbluth replied, "I've heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people," per the Times. On Wednesday, the three university leaders were strongly criticized for their answers to Stefanik, with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro calling Magill's remarks "unacceptable." "Leaders have a responsibility to speak and act with moral clarity, and Liz Magill failed to meet that simple test," he said. The White House also weighed in, with spokesperson Andrew Bates saying, "It's unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country."
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Magill said Wednesday that she'd focused during her testimony on university policies that "say that speech alone is not punishable," when she should have focused on the fact that "a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate." Gay issued a statement Wednesday to address the backlash, the Hill reports. "There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students," she said. "Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group, are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account." (More antisemitism stories.)
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