ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Fire Harvard's Claudine Gay from my old university now — and then dismantle, level, and destroy the Orwellian DEI groupthink that got her there
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has resigned for articulating and enforcing a double standard of free speech to the detriment of Jewish students.
Harvard President Claudine Gay should be next.
Then we look at you, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sally Kornbluth.
“See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”
How can we better describe these university presidents?
America watched in disbelief as these three sat before a Congressional committee this week and refused to call for the discipline of protesters on their campuses who are chanting for the mass murder of Jews.
“I'll ask you again,” an exasperated Rep. Elise Stefanki told Harvard University President Claudine Gay at the hearing. “Does the call for genocide of the Jews violate Harvard's rules on bullying and harassment? Yes or no?' she asked.
“Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it turns into behavior amounts to bullying, intimidation, which is actionable behavior, and we are taking action,” Gay responded in language that suggested authority but had no real meaning.
“So the answer is yes?” Stefanik pressed. 'That call for genocide of Jews is contrary to Harvard's code of conduct. Correct?
“Again, it depends on the context,” Gay replied.
'It doesn't depend on the context. The answer is yes,” the congressman exploded, “and this is why you should resign.”
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill (above, right) has resigned for articulating and enforcing a double standard of free speech to the detriment of Jewish students. Harvard President Claudine Gay (top left) should be next.
Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine gather on the steps of Widner Library, Harvard University, on October 14, 2023.
I completely agree.
These university leaders failed a fundamental test of moral clarity when they could not bring themselves to uphold the same standard for Jewish students as for any other group on campus.
Am I, someone who first started teaching at Harvard sixty years ago, ashamed of this institution?
Yes.
Am I surprised by this outrage?
No, not at all.
As a former president of a major university once told me, “The one quality that is not a criterion for becoming a university president is courage.”
Magill, Gay and Kornbluth are not leaders in education. They are politicians. Even when they talk the talk, they rarely walk the walk.
A college president's job is to serve their constituents, raise money, and keep their campuses quiet. So they coddle the loudest voices within the student population, the faculty and of course the donors.
When financier Ross Stevens threatened to withdraw his $100 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania if Magill was not fired, she resigned. And now President Gay, bowing to similar pressure, has issued a full apology after attempting to defend her testimony in a statement on Wednesday.
“I'm sorry,” Gay told The Harvard Crimson on Friday. 'Words are important.'
Well, too little, too late. These are not principled people.
“So the answer is yes?” Stefanik pressed. 'That call for genocide of Jews is contrary to Harvard's code of conduct. Correct? “Again, it depends on the context,” Gay replied. 'It doesn't depend on the context. The answer is yes,” the congressman exploded, “and this is why you should resign.”
When financier Ross Stevens threatened to withdraw his $100 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania if Magill (above) was not fired, she resigned.
Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth (above) are not leaders in education. They are politicians. Even when they talk the talk, they rarely walk the walk.
Even before Tuesday's hearing, the U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into Harvard for allegedly failing to adequately respond to anti-Semitic harassment on campus. I would like to provide the agency with my testimony regarding the institute's sordid record of discrimination. But the truth is that no firing or federal investigation, while necessary, will be enough to restore fairness to Harvard.
What Gay, Magill, Kornbluth and their dozens of lawyers and advisors fail to recognize is that anti-Semitism on campus is the result of policies they still support.
In Rabbi David Wolpe's resignation from the university's Antisemitism Advisory Group on Thursday, he wrote: “The system at Harvard, along with the ideology that has gripped far too many students and faculty, the ideology that only follows along axes of oppression works and places Jews as oppressors. and therefore intrinsically bad, it is itself bad.”
Rabbi Wolpe is right.
And this “evil” ideology goes by the acronym DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
In the wake of the horrific murder of George Floyd, Harvard and so many American institutions rushed to reckon with their history. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent hiring far-left, woke, progressive bureaucrats steeped in the culture of identity politics. Some universities ordered professors to take oaths of loyalty to DEI, attend mandatory sensitivity sessions, and actively censor opposing views.
In Rabbi David Wolpe's resignation from the university's Antisemitism Advisory Group on Thursday, he wrote: “The system at Harvard, along with the ideology that has gripped far too many students and faculty, the ideology that only follows along axes of oppression works and places Jews as oppressors. and therefore intrinsically bad, it is itself bad.”
We now see that the result was downright Orwellian.
When it comes to “diversity,” there is little tolerance for statements critical of DEI, a clear sign of its intellectual weakness.
“Equality,” it turns out, is the opposite of sameness, despite being a similar-sounding word. For while equality requires that individuals be judged on their merits, “equality” favors only those who belong to a select identity group.
And perhaps most hypocritical and dangerous of all, this ideology of “inclusion,” as Rabbi Wolpe notes, excludes Jews.
Never forget that while Harvard failed to explicitly condemn Hamas or quickly denounce a letter from a student group that held Israel “fully responsible” for the October 7 terrorist massacre.
This is the DEI worldview. Nowadays the Jews are looked down upon. Who will be next?
Yes, Harvard's Gay and MIT's Kornbluth should follow Magill and resign. But their professional scalps will not solve the real problems facing our universities.
What is needed now is the courage to stand up against an evil ideology that infects our institutions.
The DEI bureaucracy must be dismantled, discredited and utterly destroyed.