A House panel on Tuesday heard testimony from the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT.
They were scripted and smug, unable to stay afloat without the security of their talking points. With the klieg lights shining, they made clear they are willing hostages of the poisonous ideological factions on their campuses.
They were there to discuss anti-Semitism on their campuses, but according to this trio, the sources of anti-Semitism on campus are actually external to the institutions they lead—and are otherwise a mystery. “Anti-Semitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure for ignorance is knowledge,” said Harvard’s Claudine Gay. In other words, the cure for anti-Semitism is Harvard.
That’s funny, because while we have seen no reports of genocidal marches through Monroe, La., and Fort Wayne, Ind., there have been several through Harvard, Penn, and MIT.
This trio had spent a lot of time rehearsing banal talking points but no time preparing an honest account of what’s gone wrong—and why. They professed not to know what percentage of their students were Jews, how many students were under investigation for anti-Semitic incidents, or how much money their institutions receive from regimes bent on the destruction of the Jewish state.
Most revealing was the exchange between Gay and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), a Harvard alumna. Asked whether calls to “globalize the intifada” violated Harvard’s code of conduct, Gay said no. (At Harvard, this is what the student newspaper celebrates as evidence that Gay “has forcefully denounced antisemitic rhetoric in recent weeks.”)
The most absurd element of Gay’s testimony was the conceit that we must tolerate the genocidal rantings of student radicals because Harvard values free speech and free expression oh so much. As the freshmen say, LOL.
May this be the first of many hearings cracking open for public inspection the Ivy League’s intellectual rot.
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