Our most prestigious institutions of higher education have devolved into know-nothing hate factories operating in an unaccountable cocoon of ideological conformity and reinforcement.
That’s what was revealed Tuesday at a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were brought before Congress and seemed unwilling to denounce calls for genocide on their campuses.
It was a shameful display, and it just might finally pop the systemically flawed bubble that academia has been festering in for too long.
Even many of academia’s most reliable allies in the Democratic Party openly denounced the disgraceful testimony they heard this week.
“Frankly, I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, in response to UPenn President Liz Magill’s answers at the hearing.
Not only did Magill waffle about the increasing antisemitism on her campus, but she also tried to pin the issue on America and society, rather than on the schools where it has been most prevalent.
That was a revealing insight into how they think. How dare you criticize their enlightened abodes? Surely, all the hate in the world is coming from the outside, “ignorant” rabble.
“Antisemitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure is knowledge,” Harvard President Claudine Gay said at the hearing. Is that so? Then why is most of the antisemitism coming from her school and others like it? Is she admitting that their students and faculty are ignorant?
Perhaps the problem isn’t knowledge, but their moral foundation.
As reported by the New York Post, “Paulie,” a construction worker from Queens, showed a whole lot more moral courage in confronting antisemitism than any Ivy League president. Placing the blame for this problem on American society is both malicious and untrue. And it’s an obvious evasion of responsibility.
Magill tried to do some public relations cleanup after the hearing, but she is rightly earning calls for her resignation.
[Magill, who had led Penn since July 2022, stepped down Saturday amid building criticism, but will remain a tenured law professor there, The Associated Press reported. Scott Bok, chairman of Penn’s board of trustees and a Magill supporter, resigned hours later, AP reported.]
Gay apologized for her equivocating testimony, but didn’t really make things better.
“I got caught up in what had become, at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures … I failed to convey what is my truth,” Gay said in response to criticism for not doing enough to denounce campus antisemitism.
Ah, the old “my truth” canard.
It would have been better if she had just stuck to the truth. It’s this kind of garbage, postmodern language that allows any kind of false absurdity to pass muster on a college campus. If you can portray yourself as one of the aggrieved, you just shout “my truth,” and voila, everything you say has to be treated as fact.
You can see why rational discourse is disintegrating in our society. Even leaders of Ivy League schools try to pull this off.
Apparently, testifying before Congress was just too much for the president of one of the most prestigious educational institutions on the planet.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., had a response to this nonsense on X.
In the aftermath of the antisemitism hearing, UPenn lost a $100 million donation. That’s just part of a larger financial loss UPenn and other schools are sustaining right now, and it needs to keep happening if they are ever going to be held accountable.
We can’t just rely on donors pulling out, we really need to question why these schools get a blank check of public funding.
The hearing was the college prexies’ chance to show that they understand and will do something to address the public outrage. They failed epically, and it may turn out that their pathetic testimony will be what sinks the whole broken system.
It was clear that changes within won’t happen if there isn’t intense pressure from without. The institutional rot is deep, and most university administrations are either the cause—or at least the abettors—of that corrosion.
After all, it was their promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that has magnified this issue, that heightened the identitarian ethos that’s now excused barbarity, as my colleague Mike Gonzalez pointed out.
This all raises the question: Why are we the people funding hateful, anti-American, and antisemitic indoctrination centers that trample on speech unless it’s conducted on behalf of left-wing viewpoints or terrorists?
The same institutions that wage war on “microaggressions” and stifle speech in the name of “inclusion” suddenly rediscovered their limitless devotion to free speech when it came to hating Jews and Israel.
Always remember that these institutions that have been so eager and willing to condemn American society and our past for alleged sins turned a blind eye to savagery and evil when it was most clear. Remember that they are more willing to hear “both sides” when one side supports terrorist groups who seek the destruction of Israel and the West than when the other side votes Republican.
Nobody’s buying that this is about devotion to speech and diversity of opinion. The idea that modern elite universities are devoted to speech and viewpoint diversity is a joke. These are institutions by, for, and of the far Left. They’ve failed their students, they’ve failed their school’s founders, and they’ve failed the American people.
If we don’t drain their power over our society, they will surely lead us into a new dark age.
This commentary was updated Dec. 11 to reflect Magill’s resignation.
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