Don't Excuse the Hypocrisy of University Presidents When It Comes to Free Speech
Here are the receipts.
Leaders of elite educational institutions are now desperately trying to contain the fallout from the explosive hearing earlier this week at which the presidents of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania failed to reassure Congress that they were sufficiently concerned about antisemitism on campus.
UPenn President Elizabeth Magill released a video yesterday in which she clarified that calling for genocide against Jewish people is "evil, plain and simple" and would in fact violate the university's anti-harassment policies.
A Video Message from President Liz Magill pic.twitter.com/GlPE3QZU4P
— Penn (@Penn) December 6, 2023
This speech did very little to appease Republicans who have demanded that universities take firmer steps to discourage antisemitic rhetoric.
In fact, her immediate flip-flop on the permissiveness of hateful speech proves that critics of the university presidents are correct; campus administrators who said they would never censor anti-Jewish speech—even if it's deeply hateful—are hypocrites. They routinely, eagerly censor speech when the speech is flagged as hateful.
While discussing this hypocrisy on Rising, the news show I host for The Hill, I was asked to cite examples of the hypocrisy. Thankfully, a cursory examination of Emma Camp's recent work provides plenty of material. Here is a quick snapshot.
A white female student at the University of Virginia was accused by a black student activist of telling Black Lives Matter protesters that they would "make good speed bumps." The accused, Morgan Bettinger, faced disciplinary charges for threatening other students' "health and safety." She was ultimately expelled in abeyance—even though two separate investigations, one by students and one by the campus civil rights office, concluded there was no evidence she had actually made the offensive comment.
At Macalester College in Minnesota, administrators took down an art display by an American-Iranian artist that depicted Muslim women wearing niqabs pulling up their robes to reveal lingerie. A series of sculptures by the artist that portrayed women entirely veiled except for their breasts was also removed. Why? Because Muslim students said this form of expression was harmful.
Elsewhere in Minnesota, at Hamline University, the administration did not renew the contract of a professor who had dared to show an image of Muhammad in his class.
Georgetown University subjected a legal scholar, Ilya Shapiro, to a humiliating investigation after he sent out an ill-advised tweet that appeared to suggest he thought Ketanji Brown Jackson was not the most qualified choice for the open Supreme Court seat.
At Princeton, administrators forced the cancellation of an art exhibition of 19th-century Jewish-American artists because two of the featured artists had been Confederate soldiers.
A University of North Texas professor wrote on a chalkboard that a list of popular microaggressions—i.e., racial slights—was "garbage." He was fired.
George Washington University decided to investigate students for putting up flyers that were critical of the Chinese government—after the university's Chinese cultural society said the flyers would foster ethnic hatred.
This is by no means a list of all campus censorship episodes that resulted from supposedly hateful speech at college campuses. It's actually just a list of such episodes from this year alone, which were reported on by either Camp, Volokh Conspiracy blogger Eugene Volokh, or myself.
Here's one more example from 2021. MIT invited a geophysicist, Dorian Abbott, to deliver a guest lecture on climate change. Students revolted—not because his views on climate change were offensive but because he had dared to write an op-ed criticizing affirmative action. In response, the university canceled that lecture, the explicit reason being that black students might find that opinion to be hateful.
Despite that, MIT President Sally Kornbluth informed Congress on Tuesday that the campus' policies prevent administrators from policing offensive speech.
As for Harvard and UPenn, it's worth noting that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression ranks colleges and universities based on their fidelity to free speech principles. Some 248 institutions appear in the rankings: UPenn is second last, and Harvard is dead last.
When elite university presidents claim that even hateful speech should enjoy ironclad protection on college campuses, they are absolutely correct. But if they are asserting that speech characterized as hateful currently enjoys ironclad protection on their campuses, they are blind.
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End government funding of education including (later to be forgiven) college loans.
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Jews have slaughtered 16000 Palestinians including 12000 women and children. ACTUALLY not merely rhetorically.
They NEED to be stopped. What will it take to do so?
They have specifically targeted vulnerable noncombatants in refugee camps, hospitals, schools and homes.
They kill women and children and have the hypocrisy to call them human shields.
Jews are implementing their premeditated plan to kill and forcibly displace the entire Palestinian population in Gaza.
This is irrefutable proof that Jews are committing crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism.
The time is long past due to stop these terrible Jews. Everyone all over the world recognizes their atrocities in Gaza and our governments refusal to address it.
The world and these students will never forget. The term antisemitism has expired.
There’s no retard like a Nazi retard.
He really should follow his leader.
I think a self inflicted.32 lobotomy would do him good.
He should move to Argentina?
“They NEED to be stopped. What will it take to do so?”
After Hamas is utterly destroyed, with all their members dead or in prison charged with war crimes, then Israel will stop their military response.
Obviously Jews only intend to stop their crimes against humanity, and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza when they’ve all been killed or forcibly displaced.
We already share some of the guilt for supporting these terrorist Jews for the last 75 years.
Now they need to be stopped and punished for their crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism.
That’s why students, and others all over the world are protesting.
Jews are committing a holocaust in Gaza.
Do you deny it?
Should Jews suffer exactly the same punishment they dealt to Nazis accused of the same crime?
Talk about hypocrisy!
Fuck off, you antisemite.
I am recognizing what jews are.
And yet they weren’t killing anyone in Gaza on October 6th.
I wonder what changed?
Sure they were.
Miko Peled is an Israeli, an author, a public speaker and the son of a famous Israeli general.
He is also opposed apartheid, genocide and crimes against humanity being committed by Jews in Palestine.
Between 40:40 and 43:45 in the video he describes a poignant example of previous Israeli terrorism. As terrible as It is, it pales in comparison to what Jews are doing now.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TOaxAckFCuQ
Both sides are terrible why do you care what happens to them?
Bullshit!
Lying waste of skin Jews have been fucking everyone for millennia. Why do you think they’ve always been hated everywhere they go?
Their religion advocates lying that enables all corruption and they use it.
The world is simply recognizing it now in the internet age. Their slaughter of more that 17000 civilians is a crime against humanity, a holocaust. It will be recorded for all time.
The term antisemitism has expired.
I thought that you just honestly believed, for whatever odd reason, that the Holocaust hadn’t happened, but were not actually antisemitic. I see now that I was wrong, and you are. “Jews have been fucking everyone for millennia”??? No. Just no. I won’t even mention the disgusting modifier you used before the word “Jews” in that sentence.
That doesn’t justify what Israel has done in Gaza over the last two months, of course. Nor the system of Apartheid laws in place in the West Bank. But there clearly can be no justification for what Hamas did on October 7, two months ago yesterday, committing mass murder, mass rape, and mass kidnapping.
But it is important to distinguish between Jews in general, and Israelis, and even between Jews in general, and Zionists. Today, people seem to think that “Zionism” is an intrinsic part of Judaism, but it was not always so. Prior to the rise of the Nazis, most Jews opposed Zionism. And even after WW II, the great Jewish scientist Albert Einstein had very serious reservations about the creation of an explicitly Jewish state, as described at http://www.thehypertexts.com/Nakba%20Holocaust%20Palestinians%20Einstein%20on%20Israel.htm. And even more serious objections to the party led by Menachem Begin, known then as Herut, and later as Likud, which is the party that now rules Israel.
I don’t distinguish between Zionists, the wastes of skin who stole Palestine, and other Jews who simply benefit from and advocate the theft.
When Jews start protesting to give Palestine back and beg forgiveness for 75 years of apartheid and crimes against humanity, I’ll make a distinction.
The term antisemitism means recognizing Jews for what they are.
I think that 75 years of apartheid, genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism justifies just about anything.
Wow dude! Where did you get your education on Palestine? Perhaps if the Palestinian civilians assisted Israel in rooting out Hamas we would be able to create a two state solution (you now, like Israel previously proposed which was rejected without discussion by Hamas). I would love to see protesters carrying signs that say “I support Palestine and oppose Hamas — help Israel and Palestine root out the Hamas scum so we can have peace”.
What part of 75 years of apartheid, genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism makes you think any Palestinian would want to help Jews?
Is it because that’s what you would do?
Jews are implementing their premeditated plan to kill and forcibly displace the entire Palestinian population in Gaza.
Was part of their ‘premeditated plan’ to wait until after the umpteenth time Hamas violated a ceasefire? If so, then Gaza had only to, gee, NOT DO THAT.
Jews are committing a holocaust in Gaza.
They’ve been oppressing Palestinians with apartheid, genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism since they stole Palestine 75 years ago.
Jews haven’t been “waiting” for anything.
Rev. Anime Kirkland hit hardest.
Seems the ?free?/stolen education industry breeds crazies. Almost as-if it robs one of the very ability to earn a feeling of self-importance/significance and makes them feel so useless that crazy and power-mad is the only path to significance.
Go figure… More blessings from Commie-Indoctrination/?education?.
No. When tuition is seemingly free, and when even the most entry level jobs require a four year diploma, more and more students are only marginal, incapable of surviving a good four years actually studying and learning.
So colleges have to provide marginal fields for these marginal students. That in turn requires marginal professors who have to make up marginal research with marginal results.
It’s simple economics. You get more of what you subsidize, but it’s of lower quality.
So colleges have to provide marginal fields for these marginal students. That in turn requires marginal professors who have to make up marginal research with marginal results.
^^^
And unfortunately, it’s exactly the most marginal students in the most marginal fields who don’t understand that the piece of paper they are handed is not, in fact, the thing that confers on them expertise.
> not, in fact, the thing that confers on them expertise.
That’s why they get a career in Human Resources.
“Women don’t have penises” will get you expelled, but “Murder all the Jews” needs “context”.
I’m even actually ok with them being hardcore free speech advocates, and allowing “Murder all the Jews” as long as they’re actually serious about it and allow everything else as well.
This is the real thing. The arguments they’re making now are perfectly legitimate. It’s the backdrop of people having recently been chased off of campus for “microaggressions” and the “literal violence” of questioning whether Affirmative Action is an unmitigated boon that makes these particular people come across as clowns unqualified to be in their positions.
1000%. When their principles and principals are attacked we need to stop because free speech is in our ethos but when it’s not them under attack then speech suppression and violence are the rule as that is their only ethos.
Even a free speech advocate might draw the line at making death threats.
Death threats are a lot like hate crimes. There’s a lot of room for discretion on the part of the government. There is an element of mind reading necessary to get the mental state of the accused.
I’ve had a lot of death threats thrown my way. Even had a guy who wanted me to “take a ride with him and his freinds” which he later admitted to a roommate that he wanted to beat the shit out of me and leave me in a ditch. I guess I’m an acquired taste. I don’t take them too seriously since obviously I am still alive. Angry people say stupid shit. I don’t think their words are enough to prosecute. Certainly keep an eye on them and if they are caught with a trunk full of vengeance gear then maybe step up their threat level.
Or if you notice that trunk now has a bear in it.
Spelling error—he meant “bear”, not “gear”.
Yes. Bringing a bear to my house would be awfully threatening.
I agree, but on that same note, there’s a difference between “I think all federal judges should be run through wood chippers” and “I, Nazi-Chipping Warlock, hereby declare that I fully intend to go out, kidnap, and run [Insert Specific Judge’s Name Here] through a wood chipper feet first.”
That’s the distinction I draw between fucktards generally chanting “All the Jews should be killed!” and the far more specific “We should go murder that Jew right there.” As appalling as the former is, it’s still more of a declaration of general feelings on a subject than a specific incitement to violence or direct threat of death.
It would be rather hypocritical of me to object, in fact, given that I do think a large number of people should be pulped and used as fertilizer.
*shrug*
Current 1st Amendment case law agrees with you. “Death threats” must be specific and immediate to be criminal.
Why would anyone donate even a penny to any university in this country?
You get to put your name on things.
Because you used pennies for shrapnel in the frag IED you sent them? Can’t think of another reason to send them anything.
Note: don’t send them anything, especially anything dangerous or impressionable, the above is a joke.
“Up against the wall Poindexter!”
“Can you give me some context?”
*BANG!*
p.s. I suppose this would also be a pretty definitive response to Relativism.
Leftists will always be autocrats or Nazis. There’s no way to hold a gun to an individual kulaks head, in order to redistribute the kulaks property, without the murder of kulaks.
If a student group celebrates terrorism or violence, whether the terrorism is targeted towards western civilization or targeted on race, gender, ethnicity or social class, the university should not recognize the student group or provide funding or resources as a legitimate group.
It should, but don’t forget that the universities are packed with marxists. For marxists, the issue is never the issue–the issue is advancing the revolution.
That’s why Big Al Caraballo, a Harvard instructor and troon moron who thinks he’s a woman but never will be, can simp for Palestinians while screeching that Elon Musk is anti-semitic.
The lesson here is to never take the left’s declarations at face value, because consistency isn’t the goal. Trying to bring about the communist utopia is the goal, however that has to come about. It’s why these freaks worship relativism like they do.
Yeah Robby has to sit next to that lunatic every day. Noam Chomsky has created his own commie army in academia and Hollywood.
Very similar to Islam in that way.
I would even propose that if students want to form clubs, that’s their business and they should use their own funds.
But then they want to use university property and facilities for their activities, so there has to be rules for that.
Harvard’s coverage of the hearings was laughable. It whitewashed the arrogance and anti-semitism of all 3 women. Funny to watch the apology tour and Magill claiming she was not focused.
What I would like to know is what UPenn alum/donor forced this issue? This Tweet was released only because of financial pressure. Magill’s measured monologue is fake. Her arrogance on display at the hearing is what she really is.
It’s not just one donor, it’s lots of them.
Elon Musk went to Penn….
Bill Ackman has been pressuring Harvard to fire their disgraceful president.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/07/business/penn-emergency-meeting-liz-magill/index.html
It was Ross Stevens of Stone Ridge, threatening to withdraw a $100 million dollar endowment.
It appears that these ‘places of higher education ‘ are OK with free speech, as long as it is not conservative, Christian,or pro Jewish. If it falls into the ‘excluded groups ‘ then it is hateful and subversive.
Colleges and universities were founded to foster positive discourse between differing viewpoints. Obviously they no longer meet that ideal.
Imagine all the anti-theists that post on here about the threat of Christian theocracy having to live in a country truly dominated by Islam? I’m betting they would willingly go back to a Christian dominated culture (if for no other reason than that Christians are so disunited that we couldn’t agree even on what we want to implement let alone on which flavor of Christianity we want implemented, somehow Shi’a dominated societies are not that doctorally different from Sunni despite how we are told (often) how different they are).
Can you really envision Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopals, Lutherans, Coptics and Mormons all agreeing long enough to actually take control of the country and implement a unified set of religious rules? Fuck we can’t even agree on baptism, how many books of the Bible there are, the nature of God and the Trinity (Mormons don’t even believe in the Trinity) if faith or work are the keys to salvation, who can be ordained (and how long it takes to receive the education necessary to be ordained) or what happens during communion. For that matter can you imagine the ECLA, LCMS and LCWS (all Lutheran churches that don’t allow cross ordination) agreeing to work jointly together?
Theocracies are great places, for those who share the theology. For everyone else they suck.
Tell me you missed the point without saying you missed the point.
Or
Tell me you’re a simplistic binary thinker without telling me you’re a simplistic, binary thinker.
If I had to spend time in a country under sharia law it would suck I am sure. I lived under biblical law in a small town in the 80s. It sucked. Secular law is best. Governance by superstition is just a bad idea.
No you didn’t.
He’s just another hicklib who hates daddy
So you’re psychic now? Reading my mind and such? Well, don’t go getting a job with the psychic network, because you suck at it.
The 80s and 90s were when the Religious Right was on a roll forcing their superstitions on folks in small towns and low population counties. You’ve never seen the stickers they got school districts to put inside biology books saying evolution is only one theory of how life came about on earth. What about the 1 ton monuments to the 10 commandments in front of court houses through the south.
All that sounds ok if they share your superstions but it’s intimidating to those who don’t share the delusions.
Yes I did. It wasn’t fun. Clearly you don’t like what the religion of the left wants to do in this country, why not? It’s just their theocracy they are trying to implement. Why not sit back and enjoy it?
I’m pretty sure the unitarians could sort it out.
For the love of God, don’t put the Methodists in charge of the food.
“I was asked to cite examples of the hypocrisy. Thankfully, a cursory examination of Emma Camp’s recent work provides plenty of material.”
Damn, Emma – shots fired!
(I know Robby didn’t mean it the way it reads)
An excellent piece, except for this one:
“Georgetown University subjected a legal scholar, Ilya Shapiro, to a humiliating investigation after he sent out an ill-advised tweet that appeared to suggest he thought Ketanji Brown Jackson was not the most qualified choice for the open Supreme Court seat.”
If all Shapiro had said was that he didn’t think Jackson was the “most qualified choice”, I don’t see why his statement would have been “ill-advised”, which tends to be a CYA line. Shapiro wasn’t acting on anyone’s “advice”, and what he said was that if Biden wanted to appoint a “minority” liberal, he should have chosen Sri Srinivasan, an Indian (and a dude, in case, like me, you aren’t up on the gender significance of Indian names). Instead, said Professor Shapiro, Biden went with a “lesser black woman” (Shapiro’s exact words). Shapiro shouldn’t have not have been investigated for, basically being a dick, but it is notable that he’d also been a dick about the appointment of Justice Sotomayor, explicitly saying that she was only getting the job because she was Hispanic.
And Jackson only got the job because she was black, and female. By Biden’s own words on the subject. He was very clear about his selection criteria.
All he had to do was not say it out loud and she isn’t instantaneously tarred as the token diversity hire. But Biden isn’t smart enough for that.
Well in fairness to Shapiro, Sotomayor has been a terrible justice.
And he’s entitled to his opinion of whether Srinivasan or Jackson would have been the stronger choice.
“George Washington University decided to investigate students for putting up flyers that were critical of the Chinese government—after the university’s Chinese cultural society said the flyers would foster ethnic hatred.”
After Chairman Mao declared a ” policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend … to promote the arts and the progress of science.” the Communist Party launched an Anti-Rightist campaign against those who had taken Mao at his word and criticized its ideology. Hundreds of thousand were rounded up, slapped around in “self criticism sessions ” worthy of MIT’s HR czars, and shipped off to concentration camps for re-education through labor.
Many who flunked their exams perished, as with Uyghur and Tibetan “re-education camps” today.
“It’s a trap!”
But we have to keep on funding these schools, because not doing that is tantamount to….. censorship and viewpoint discrimination?
First amendment does not guarantee a forum funded by others. Harvard could go officially Hamas and directly call for the deaths of Jews. The government can’t put them in jail for that. But they don’t have to give them a cent of our money.
Reason’s concern is that if we go down that road, the government could defund schools for being “MAGA”. They could certainly try. But if a society is reasonable enough to discern that “From river to the sea” is a targeted speech towards a certain group, while “Make America Great Again” is just campaign rhetoric, there will be options to thwart such efforts. The point is to have an acceptable speech code and enforce it fairly. The fact that some gray area exists shouldn’t stop this from happening.
Most of the victims here Robby lists as examples could not have actually violated school speech code. One of them was cleared by both the school and law enforcement and was punished STILL. The hypocrisy here concerns selective application of the law, which is another way of saying “discrimination”. These schools aren’t just morally repugnant, they’re breaking laws and violating civil rights.
I think we can make a good guess about what “advocacy of genocide” will mean at certain universities.
“Abolish affirmative action.”
“Save women’s sports.”
“You shouldn’t have to bake a gay cake.”
“Make me a sandwich.”
The Duke men’s lacrosse team that didn’t rape that woman didn’t rape that woman.
So according to Robby of yesterday we’re not allowed to punish or call out these schools but Robby of today thinks we cannot excuse their hypocrisy? How exactly do you make that happen, a strongly worded letter with no further consequence?
A couple additional examples, courtesy of Fox News:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/college-presidents-showed-america-their-moral-cowardice
As Rep. Stefanik noted, Harvard removed the Dean of Winthrop House, who is also a professor in the law school, after he agreed to serve as an attorney for disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Harvard also revoked admission for several students for statements they had made on social media.
Penn’s record of protecting free speech is hardly better, earning it the second worst free-speech ranking from the same group that placed Harvard dead last. The university is in the midst of trying to fire a professor, Amy Wax, who has been an outspoken critic of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campus. Had she called for genocide (but only against Jews), she might be safe from university action.
“But if they are asserting that speech characterized as hateful currently enjoys ironclad protection on their campuses, they are blind.”
C’mon, man. You can say it. They are flat out, bald-faced lying.
Yes, THIS is the real deal.
They know full well they are full of shit. If you have no self awareness you’re “blind”, they know they’re pushing an agenda, so they’re liars. Period.
I think what’s starting to happen is that the far-left that’s taken over the Democrat party and plenty of institutions (especially higher education) is now starting to be pushed back against in earnest and they’re starting to be a little afraid that their phoney baloney jobs and reputations have a chance to be flushed along with their garbage ideology that places greater importance on what a person is rather than who a person is.
That type of bigotry has a long and storied history in the United States, but despite that it remains inherently unamerican to hold those beliefs. This inherently idealist view of America may never be reached, rather like a perfect understanding of god, but this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be striven for.
I’m not sure where it will end up, or if it will go any further, but it’s an uphill battle against at least 50 years of entrenched illogic with a lot of people’s entire sense of self riding on it. It will not be an easy, or short, fight.
Basically, you can deny reality as much as you want but eventually reality will come calling and there is nothing within the powers of man that can alter that fact.
Legislation surrounding things like affirmative action and even climate change will survive a while, but eventually the mark realizes you’re fleecing them and gets mad. I’m not saying this is the start of that, but if it is it’s not a bad one. Even a marginal step back from the precipice of madness is a move in the right direction.
What I find amusing is that these idiots unleashed all of this when they organized and supported the BLM/Antifa riots and now it’s biting them in the ass. Remember when we were told we were murderers if we left the house without a mask and a vaccine card but it was totally cool for mobs to burn down businesses and take over cities? Like on the same fucking day? We’ve got a generation growing up that actually believes the regime will cover for them no matter what they do when most of them couldn’t find Israel on a map. Let alone the river and the sea. But the wrong oxes are getting gored and these smirking cunts are shocked to discover that a lot of their wealthy benefactors are a little touchy about people demanding the murder of their people. Meanwhile Biden is desperately trying to appease American Jews and leftists and Muslims all at the same time. It’s a total shitshow and I’m really enjoying it.
When discussing foreign policy, the CIA refers to this as blowback.
At a certain point, it’s not a double standard, it’s hierarchy. That is to say, they aren’t committed to free speech (which it’s clear they’re not). They just are okay with the speech in this particular instance. What libertarians and free speech advocates do going forward about such cases really isn’t clear. You can say, respect their right to free speech, and I’m inclined to agree. But, know full well that isn’t going to be extended to views they disapprove of. And protecting them is only going to leave them in power to silence your speech.
And they make no pretense that the same rules should apply to everyone. As BYODB said above, it’s WHAT you are that determines for them what you may say or do, not WHO you are are what you say.
It’s about time this article was written. Sadly it won’t change anything. University admin are so feelings based on the free speech issue they will summarily dismiss people pointing out their hypocrisy on it. They will simply say “well, that was different”. None of them have a backbone.
But if the contributions decline, they’ll be forced to take notice. At least at the schools that aren’t the biggest.
Walter Cronkite would have had no difficulty stating that what is happening is genocide.
Do you even know what the word “genocide” even means?