The moral degeneracy of the presidents of three prestigious universities who recently refused to condemn calls for genocide clearly is symptomatic of a larger problem. The long-term solution must be to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies and policies, root and branch, from higher education.
College boards of directors should fire presidents who won’t act to rein in proliferating antisemitic outrages on campus, and boards should insist that DEI regimes be dismantled. Boards have, however, generally acted not to control DEI but to enable it. Congress should yank their leash by making federal financing contingent on the proper application of First Amendment free-speech principles.
TO IVY LEAGUE PRESIDENTS, CALLS FOR GENOCIDE OF JEWS DEMAND ‘CONTEXT’
It’s clear that most university leaders lack an appropriate ethical framework to guarantee real academic freedom. This appalling deficiency was on full display at a Dec. 5 hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee when Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania despicably equivocated over a simple question of whether they would discipline students who called for the genocide of Jews.
All three used the same words, “depend[ing] on the context,�? refusing to give a yes or no answer. They whiffed even when given second and third chances by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to affirm that “calling for the genocide of Jews … constitute[s] bullying or harassment.�?
National outrage even from prominent left-wingers has been fierce. Laurence Tribe, Harvard law professor emeritus, who for decades was the leading spokesman for the progressive legal community, said, “Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.�?
These school presidents pretending to value free speech oversee campuses where the use of a disfavored pronoun can get students or faculty investigated. This year, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression named Harvard the worst college in the nation for its weak speech protection, reporting that it earned the organization’s first-ever “zero�? grade. A Harvard evolutionary biologist can be forced off campus for stating the plain truth that there are only two biological sexes. Yet calls for genocide do not necessarily count as harassment.
One reason the presidents are so confused or duplicitous about the boundaries between protected speech and unprotected, baleful conduct is that DEI regimes insist that what matters is not the actual words or actions at issue but the group “identity�? of the speaker or actor. Rather than applying neutral principles to everyone, which is what the Constitution, laws, Supreme Court decisions, and common decency demand, DEI categorizes people as either oppressors or the oppressed. Then, they penalize harmless speech by the former while excusing seriously injurious conduct by the latter.
As Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald wrote on Dec. 6: “The real issue on campuses�? is “the anti-Western ethos that has colonized large swaths of the curriculum.�? Anyone who is of an anti-Western group or an open ally thereof can threaten intifada or join mobs forcing Jews to hide in library attics. But a professor, after warning students that she would be reciting offensive language in a culturally contextual fashion, can be fired merely for saying the N-word aloud while reading Mark Twain.
These morally and legally inexcusable double standards are the direct and intended result of DEI. That’s why thinkers across the political spectrum — including the avowedly atheist cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, once listed by Time magazine as one of the world’s “100 Most Influential People�? — say colleges must adopt “clear and coherent free speech polic[ies]�? and “disempower DEI bureaucrats, responsible to no one, who have turned campuses into laughing stocks.�?
Until DEI regimes are extirpated and replaced by clear, neutral policies that protect speech and punish true threats, university presidents will defend the indefensible. If college boards of directors won’t fix this, Congress should use its power of the purse to force the disassembly of DEI.