Antisemitism and Free Speech
What should we make of President Gay's congressional testimony?
On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce questioned Harvard President Claudine Gay about rising antisemitism at the university. Lawmakers accused Gay—and the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania—of failing to properly respond to the harassment of Jewish students and recent rise in antisemitic behavior on their campuses.
In response, Gay reaffirmed Harvard’s commitment to combating antisemitism. She told Rep. Kevin Kiley ‘07 (R-CA) that the administration is “taking every step to ensure their [Jewish students’] physical and their psychological safety.” She cited initiatives like an advisory committee on antisemitism and what her opening statement called “a robust program of education and training… on antisemitism and Islamophobia.”
As expected, lawmakers were unimpressed by these efforts. Throughout the hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik ‘06 (R-NY), formerly a member of the Institute of Politics’ Senior Advisory Committee, pressed Gay to clearly define when calls for murder begin violating the student code of conduct. Gay recognized the existence of the “reckless and hateful language on our [Harvard’s] campus,” but she dodged the question by repeatedly citing the importance of free expression. Gay concluded that the answer to Rep. Stefanik’s question “depends on the context.”
Gay attempted to clarify her testimony on Wednesday, stating that “calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile.” Her testimony has nonetheless faced criticism from Jewish leaders on campus since the hearing. A social media post from Harvard Hillel, a center of Jewish life on campus, reads: “President Gay’s refusal to draw a line around threatening antisemitic speech as a violation of Harvard’s policies is profoundly shocking given explicit provisions within the conduct code prohibiting this kind of bullying and harassment” (emphasis added).
Separately, Rabbi David Wolpe announced his resignation from the president’s Antisemitism Advisory Council yesterday, writing that despite his respect for Gay, “Both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped… The system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil.”
Thank you for reading the Harvard Salient. To support our work, donate here.
These leaders are right to be deeply concerned. Pro-Palestine protests at Harvard, which still occur multiple times a week, often include crowds of students chanting “from the river to the sea” and calling for supporters to “globalize the intifada.” The first phrase is linked to the eradication of the Jewish state; the second directly calls for the murder of Jewish people. In the fall, Harvard drew broad criticism after a viral video showed protestors attacking a Jewish student on the campus of the business school. On numerous occasions, Harvard administration has needed to lock down Harvard Yard to non-student traffic, and police officers are regularly posted outside of Hillel.
It is no surprise that Jewish students are afraid. If we are to take our classmates’ chants seriously, then supporting terrorism is more than a trendy fad. These are malicious calls to eliminate the Jewish people. Unlike Israel, which is fully capable of leveling Gaza but has refrained from doing so, we know that Hamas would not hesitate to engage in ethnic cleansing. It seems that some of our classmates would not hesitate either.
As President Gay argued, “antisemitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure for ignorance is knowledge.” Insofar as students receive instruction rooted in a single political viewpoint—insofar as this campus remains an echo chamber with an Overton window shifted so far to the left that extremism is promoted by some and quietly tolerated by most—ignorance will persist. It is hard to believe, but the pro-Hamas protesters may not realize that the country thinks they have lost their minds. A lack of critical discourse has produced the senseless screaming disguised as free speech on this campus.
We must stop using free speech to defend calls for violence and terror. The original purpose for protecting free speech in academia was to generate constructive dialogue—it is a process by which we weigh ideas and reject what is false. While we ought to maintain an unwavering commitment to open discourse in the pursuit of truth, true free speech requires thinking critically, engaging with opposing viewpoints, and forming constructive opinions on what is good and true. It does not require drawing an equivalency between those who weigh ideas with intellectual rigor and those who shout senselessly for violence against their classmates.
President Gay, Harvard should protect free inquiry. But it cannot allow these protesters to paralyze the university and advocate for the murder of our classmates.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Even though you made me look up the meaning of "Overton window," I think this is the best writing I have seen from the Salient so far.
It was a complete embarrassment to watch President Gay choke and sputter over any words that might actually commit Harvard to condemning antisemitism. She needs to resign.
This is lovely and sincere, but somehow I feel like it falls short. It’s as though there has been an outbreak of bubonic plague on campus, and all we can manage to say is that we need to wash our hands more. This type of antisemitism is a medieval scourge. Harvard has given birth to a fully grown monstrosity. We need to ask and answer some very difficult questions: how could this happen here, at Harvard of all places? And are these young students morally lost forever? We already know that their professors are.