Antisemitism and Free Speech on Campus

Emma H. Haidar and Cam E. Kettles
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Interim University President Alan M. Garber ’76 pledged to tackle “pernicious” antisemitism on Harvard’s campus, saying he is most concerned about self-censorship in the face of anti-Israel attacks in an interview Wednesday — his first since assuming office on Jan. 2.

Garber did not answer repeated questions about whether his administration would consider instituting a speech code for Harvard classrooms. But in a follow-up statement, Garber wrote that he did not support speech codes.

Jessica Blake
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: American University administrators have banned all indoor protests in a move they say is intended to promote inclusivity and signal a clear intolerance of antisemitism on campus.  

Sylvia Burwell, the university’s president, said in a Jan. 25 letter to the campus that the decision was made in response to “recent events and incidents on campus [that] have made Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” The protest ban comes on the heels of a complaint filed by multiple Jewish advocacy groups to the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, asserting that the Washington, D.C., institution is a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students.

Martin Di Caro
Washington Times

Excerpt: The uproar over free expression and antisemitism on college campuses is evoking a controversy from the late 1970s that left a lasting mark on First Amendment case law and provided an enduring lesson on the importance of free speech in a democratic society.

In this episode, Nico Perrino of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reflects on why Skokie matters at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Mr. Perrino co-directed the documentary Mighty Ira about Ira Glasser, who led the ACLU for 23 years after the intense backlash over its role in the Skokie case.

Jeannie Suk Gersen
New Yorker

Excerpt: On January 2nd, after months of turmoil around Harvard’s response to Hamas’s attack on Israel, and weeks of turmoil around accusations of plagiarism, Claudine Gay resigned as the university’s president. Any hope that this might relieve the outsized attention on Harvard proved to be illusory. The week after Gay stepped down, two congressional committees demanded documents and explanations from Harvard, on topics ranging from antisemitism, free speech, discrimination, and discipline, to admissions, donations, budgets, and legal settlements.

Some at Harvard might say this is a crisis sparked by external forces: the government, donors, and the public. But it developed long before Gay became president and won’t end with her fall. Over time, Harvard, like many other universities, has allowed the core academic mission of research, intellectual inquiry, and teaching to be subordinated to other values that, though important, should never have been allowed to work against it.

John O. McGinnis
Law & Liberty

Excerpt: The resignation of Claudine Gay provides a window into many pathologies of elite universities—antisemitism on campus, the prioritization of DEI over merit, and plagiarism among academics. But it also reflects their poor governance.

Governance at elite universities is insular, unaccountable, and marred by conflicts of interest that prevent it from being focused on the historic mission of the university, encapsulated on Harvard’s coat of arms: seeking truth. Many nonprofits face similar structural difficulties that create a gap between the performance of their leadership and the fulfillment of their mission, but elite universities face added difficulties.

Anemona Hartocollis
New York Times

Excerpt: A Harvard task force on antisemitism has gotten off to a rocky start, with complaints that the professor chosen to help lead the panel had signed a letter that was critical of Israel, describing it as “under a regime of apartheid.”

The choice for co-chair of the task force, Derek J. Penslar, a professor of Jewish history at Harvard, was met with opposition from Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, and Bill Ackman, a hedge fund manager whose relentless criticism of Dr. Gay helped bring about her downfall.