Genocide and Jews at Harvard

The double standards and triple speak that have overrun elite academia showed their truest colors yesterday; and the firestorm that has followed may actually matter

You all know I believe in free speech.

Free speech is a bedrock American right. It includes the right to be wrong, to say offensive or even horrific things in public and in private. In July, I wrote here that freedom of speech is really freedom of thought:

People who can’t say openly what they think for too long are forced into a shadow world. Either they give up the right to have their own view of the world and accept into what society or the government tells them. Or they keep their own views but no longer admit them aloud - and spend more and more time and energy gaslighting themselves.

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(Don’t let them gaslight you. For 20 cents a day, stand for the truth - and free speech.)

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But for decades, our elite institutions and media have treated free speech as increasingly dangerous. They have used their power to put topics off-limits, especially those that expose racial differences.

To take only the most obvious example: Young black men commit violent crime at rates far higher than other Americans. This fact is clear from any crime database, and it lies at the heart of many American social problems (especially in black communities, since most crime is intra-racial).

But merely acknowledging this basic reality at an institution like the New York Times or Harvard University - much less researching or discussing its effects or how it might be prevented - is a one-way ticket to social ostracism and censure, with near-fatal career consequences.

Like most evils, censorship metastasizes. Universities now police even the smallest offenses against minority or self-declared marginalized groups.

Last year, Harvard declared “misgendering” - that is, referring to transgender people by the pronouns of their actual birth gender - as a form of abuse. The year before, Columbia had declared it a fireable offense.

In 2015, Erika Christakis, a Yale faculty member, told students she thought they should choose whatever Halloween costumes they liked best, even at the risk of offending other students. She emailed:

I wonder what is the statute of limitations on dreaming of dressing as Tiana the Frog Princess [NOTE: the lead character from a 2009 Disney movie, I hadn’t heard of her either] if you aren’t a black girl from New Orleans? Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable…

If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.

Not at Yale. Christakis’s email led students to claim they felt unsafe. Yes, unsafe. Within months, she had quit.

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(The Princess and The Frog, an early entry in the Disney go-woke-go-broke sweepstakes)

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This attitude - this “context,” to use a word heard frequently on Tuesday - is what makes Tuesday’s Congressional testimony by three presidents of elite American universities so shameful, fraught, and hypocritical.

As you probably have heard by now, at a hearing in Washington on Tuesday, Elise Stefanik (R-NY) repeatedly asked the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology if calling for the genocide of Jews violated their free speech codes.

They refused to say it did.

A little background here.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is commonly heard at pro-Palestinian protests. The phrase implies that Israel should not exist, that the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea should be under Arab control. (In fact, Arabic speakers often say “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab - ” the word “free” is substituted in English both for the rhyme and to avoid being too clear about what’s meant.)

Still, I actually don’t think that phrase calls for genocide. Israel could cease to exist without a Jewish genocide. Not all Israelis are Jews, not all Jews are Israelis. The phrase is nasty; calling it genocidal is a stretch.

But.

But Stefanik didn’t ask about “from the river to the sea.”

She asked if calling for “genocide” - that is, the killing of all Jews, everywhere, the extinction of Judaism - would violate the codes of behavior at Harvard, Penn, and MIT.

And their presidents wouldn’t answer. They dodged and weaved. They talked about “context” and “incitement.” None would say simply that calling for the elimination of an entire religion is abhorrent and has no place in public discourse, much less at a university.

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The First Amendment gives speakers the right to call for the genocide of Jews, or anyone else, without facing government sanction.

But the First Amendment doesn’t apply to these private universities. No one has an absolute right to go to Harvard.

And the universities themselves have made ever-clearer that they don’t care about protecting free speech. They FEAR free speech. They care about protecting minority rights and creating safe spaces.

That’s why misgendering pronouns is “abuse.” That’s why they fell all over themselves to proclaim their solidarity with the George Floyd protests and protestors.

Except when the minority is the Jews.

Then their attackers deserve the fullest possible speech protections.

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The hypocrisy is inescapable. And infuriating. And it appears to have gone too far. As a reader emailed today, these elite schools are filled with

Frauds and liars who don't believe in free speech, just preferred speech.

They are all full of grievance studies departments now too, as opposed to giving kids a real education.  They push neo-marxism.  All about the notion of fake power dynamics and that everyone is oppressed by a fake power dynamic…

Further, they really do not believe in free speech.  They would never let the KKK speak on campus.  Further, if you have a conservative viewpoint, forget it as well.  The only free speech the preferred speech they believe in which is the neo Marxist bullshit that they teach.  Everything else is off limits and hate speech. 

Many, many Americans agree (and this is yet another version of the populist rage fueling Donald Trump’s candidacy).

The backlash in the wake of the hearing was so massive that today even Harvard had to walk back its president’s comments - though with a statement that didn’t admit what she had said:

I don’t know what happens next.

But I know what happened yesterday shows just how lost our self-appointed elites have become.