The Daily - Antisemitism and Free Speech Collide on Campuses

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Warning: this episode contains strong language.Universities across the country strained under pressure to take a public position on the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.Nicholas Confessore, a political and investigative reporter for The Times, explains the story behind a congressional hearing that ended the career of one university president, jeopardized the jobs of two others, and kicked off an emotional debate about antisemitism and free speech on college campuses.Guest: Nicholas Confessore, a political and investigative reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: Harvard’s governing body said it stood firmly behind Claudine Gay as the university’s president, a stance both praised and condemned by students, faculty and alumni.As fury erupts over campus antisemitism, conservatives have seized the moment.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the story behind a congressional hearing that ended the career of one university president, jeopardized the jobs of two others, and kicked off an emotional debate about anti-Semitism and free speech on college campuses. I speak with my colleague, Nick Confessori. It's Wednesday, December 13th. Nick, thank you for coming in here. It's good to be here, Michael. I want you to give us the backstory that brings us to this now infamous congressional hearing last week,

featuring several of the country's top college presidents, and to the uproar that this hearing ultimately ends up triggering. Where does that story start? It begins in the aftermath of the October 7th attacks. When around the country, campuses begin to be roiled by protests about the attacks, the aftermath of the attacks, the Israeli response. You had students chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Which, for some of the protesters, were meant as more generic statements of Palestinian freedom. But for many Jews, sound like calls for ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. Because between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Israel in its current borders.

Correct. You had chants intifada, intifada, long live the intifada, which is a word that means uprising, but which many people, especially people of a certain age, sounds like an endorsement of the violent tactics of the second intifada, suicide attacks. A glorious October 7th. Yes! And at least some of these events. I remember feeling so empowered that victory was near and so tangible. You could hear speakers who were praising the attacks of October 7th.

It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating. It was energizing. Endorsing them, celebrating them. And there was one vivid example at UCLA where students battered a piñata of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, while a woman chanted, Beat that Jew. A lot of those moments were seen by millions of people who wouldn't otherwise tune in to what's happening on these campuses. And for Jews on these campuses, these videos and images often made them feel

unsafe, even if they weren't intended that way by the students. On top of that, donors and alumni are seeing them. They're getting really, really upset. And they start making calls, and they start to write emails. Right. And those calls and those emails basically say what? Almost from the beginning, you were hearing from donors and alumni who felt that the response of these college presidents was not forceful enough. They wanted a real intervention. They wanted powerful statements that the behavior they were seeing on these videos was not okay, was not accepted at these institutions.

And so against that backdrop, Republicans in the House of Representatives decide that they're going to do something about it. They're going to hold a hearing on campus anti-Semitism. And they invite the presidents of three universities. Elizabeth McGill from the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gay from Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth from MIT. Harvard, and Sally Kornbluth from MIT. And why did the Republicans invite these three university presidents of all the university presidents in the country? It's not entirely clear why they picked these three schools. In fact, there have been incidents like this

at lower-profile schools all around the country. But what they all have in common is that they are high-profile institutions. They are considered the elite of academia. And making it about them makes it a really big story. Right. And heading into this hearing, what exactly were these congressional Republicans up to? What are their aims for getting these three prestigious college presidents before them? Well, if you pull back a little bit, think how over the last couple of years,

Republicans and conservatives have tried to make the case that there is something seriously wrong in academia and that they need to do something about it. And for many months this year, this was at the center of the Republican primary for president. Right. Attacks on quote-unquote wokeism, attacks on critical race theory, And for many months this year, this was at the center of the Republican primary for president. Right. Attacks on, quote, unquote, wokeism. Attacks on critical race theory. An overemphasis on race and oppression.

And in their minds and in their argument, those ideas are at the heart of what we saw on those campuses. And they saw an opportunity to make that case and make that point to the American public after a few months in which it seemed that a lot of voters in particular had stopped tuning into those arguments. So they're going to try to make a direct link between this liberal culture on college campuses, which they've been denouncing, and this anti-Israeli rhetoric they're seeing on campuses. They're going to suggest that those two things are inextricably bound up together. Yes.

So how does the hearing actually start? Good morning. The Committee on Education and Workforce will come to order. So the way it begins, and the part you didn't see on the newscasts that night, was each of the college presidents... We at Harvard reject anti-Semitism and denounce any trace of it on our campus or within our community.

Forcefully denouncing anti-Semitism. Let me reiterate my and Penn's unyielding commitment to combating it. Saying that this kind of rhetoric is hurtful. We have increased security measures, expanded reporting channels, and augmented counseling, mental health, and support services. Here are the steps we are taking to combat anti-Semitism on our campuses. I must, at the same time, ensure that we protect speech and viewpoint diversity for everyone. But we also have to protect free speech on campus and allow people to say things, even

when we find them objectionable. We need both safety and free expression for universities and ultimately democracy to thrive. And they were trying to set up this idea that people are going to say things you don't agree with, even terrible things you don't agree with. And the values of our university can be thought of as separate from the speech that we allow as an academic institution. And they seem to want to distinguish between free speech and harassment. I watched the hearing. They're trying to say some free speech is just free speech. Sometimes it's harassment, but that's a really important distinction.

That speech that incites violence is unacceptable. Yes, what they're trying to say is, when do we take action against a student as an institution for something they say? Well, it has to cross a certain threshold. It has to be pervasive. It has to be harassment. They were saying what is actually true under the law.

They were expressing how things should work on these campuses. And the problem for these presidents is that that is not how it actually works on these campuses. And that is where the Republicans went next. Okay, explain that. I now recognize Mr. Banks. So if you focus on Penn for a second, we saw in the questioning people like Congressman Jim Banks. And for the past year, your administration has sought to punish Amy Wax. Begin to float examples of conservative speakers

who had been heckled or shut down or disfavored in some way on some of these college campuses. He talked about how the university is currently trying to sanction Amy Wax, a law professor. Her stance on DEI and identity issues. For comments she made about the performance

of black students in her classes. And then you canceled an event with former ICE director Tom Holman due to disruptive... And he said a few years ago, a Trump administration immigration official tried to come speak at Penn and students there basically shut down the speech because they felt that he was bringing anti-immigration and nativist rhetoric to campus. On the other hand, there are examples where Penn seemed to act less decisively. Penn hosted a Palestine Rights Literature Festival. For example, this fall, before the October 7th attacks, Penn played host to a Palestinian Literary Festival,

where speakers included Roger Waters, who's the former Pink Floyd frontman. The same Roger Waters, by the way, who's publicly used anti-Jewish slurs and has dressed up as a Nazi and floated a pig balloon with the Star of David at many of his concerts. And in fact, Penn did issue a statement saying, we find some of the rhetoric objectionable. It's not consistent with our values, but they're allowed to have this event. So I think in the eyes of Republicans, one event is allowed to go ahead and the other is essentially canceled. And so they see that these standards are not really being applied evenly. And the way that they're not being

applied evenly, according to this Republican congressman, is that when Republican speakers, conservative-minded guests, are coming to campus, there's a willingness to shut things down, to quiet it. When it's more liberal-minded speakers, like this pro-Palestinian speaker, greater allowances are made. That's right. That's what the Republicans are claiming. And here's why this moment is so powerful, Michael. There just aren't that many conservatives on these campuses anymore. The student bodies tend to be pretty liberal, and the professors tend to be very liberal in terms of their distribution of political affiliation. It's mostly Democrats and liberals, not Republicans and conservatives. So when speech happens that annoys conservatives on these campuses, there aren't protests, there aren't real efforts to shut them down.

Right. But there are a lot of Jewish people on these campuses. And one of the things that made this moment so powerful and important and useful politically on the Republican side was that they could really put the shoe on the other foot in a way that would appeal to an audience much broader than liberals who care on principle about free speech. They could expand the audience of people who might say there is something wrong at these places. Because they had examples here that weren't about a conservative from an unpopular administration who wasn't allowed to talk about policy there. They have harmful rhetoric towards Jews on elite college campuses. Mr. Grossman, you're recognized for five minutes.

Thank you. And there was one very interesting moment when a congressman named Glenn Groffman jumped in, and he talked about this issue of ideological diversity on these campuses. Or lack of it. Or lack of it. In 2016, they found about 2%.

And he said, look, in 2016, there's one survey that said that only about 2% of the faculty at Harvard had a positive view of President Trump. And he asked, does it concern you at all that you apparently have a lack of ideological diversity? How can you really have true diversity of ideas and thought on a campus where almost everybody hates President Trump? Right. The man who, based on the math, was elected president in 2016. Basically, he's saying your campuses are deeply out of sync with the rest of the country. If half the country voted for this guy, give or take, but only 2% of your faculty has a favorable impression of him, what does that say about how Harvard reflects the perspectives of America as a whole? And could it be that that lack of ideological diversity

is part of the problem we see here today with these protests on campus? So Republicans were trying to make the case that these liberal-minded universities have in their minds an anti-Semitism problem. They're doing it in a few ways. One of them is saying that these schools do know how to clamp down on speech that their students and their faculty don't like right-wing speech because they've done it,

which in a sense, these Republicans say, make these universities kind of hypocritical when it comes to speech that is upsetting to Jews. Another point these Republicans are making is that anti-Semitism might be the logical outcome, they claim, of having a liberal monoculture that permeates these schools without any kind of check or balance from Republicans and conservatives. Correct. And then we come to this pivotal moment.

Madam Chair, I'd like to yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from New York. Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York and a Harvard alumni herself, by the way, asks a question that is designed to highlight what the Republicans on the panel see as the hypocrisy

of these policies on campus. She asks, Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's... Is it okay for a student to call for the genocide of Jews at your institutions? Is a call for the genocide of Jews protected speech on your campus? And that produced the moment that I would say this hearing was designed to produce. A moment where... Calling for the genocide of Jews is anti-Semitic.

So yes. And that is anti-Semitic speech. And as I have said, when speech crosses into conduct, we take action. So is that a yes? Is that a yes? The witness hasn't answered. Madam Chair, is that a yes? Is that a yes? The witness hasn't answered. Madam Chair, is that a yes? You cannot answer the question.

These three credentialed elite academics, the heads of some of these great institutions of American academic life, were wishy-washy and couldn't get out the words, calling for genocide is bad. And there was this really incredible exchange. Ms. McGill at Penn between Stefanik and the president of the University of Pennsylvania. ...rules or code of conduct, yes or no? If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes. I am asking... Where Stefanik kept saying,

does calling for the genocide of Jews, killing them all because of their Jews, in other words, does that constitute bullying or harassment? Right. If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment. So the answer is yes. It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman. And McGill kept replying with this kind of bureaucratic language. It's context-dependent. This is the easiest question to answer. Yes, Ms. McGill kept replying with this kind of bureaucratic language. It's context dependent. This is the easiest question to answer.

Yes, Ms. McGill. If you're talking about this in the context of how do you govern and regulate speech on campus, that might be an appropriate answer. But at this moment, what the hearing was about was, is it okay to call for the genocide of Jews at Harvard? Right. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes? If it is, if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment. Yes. She doesn't seem to appreciate, and in fact all three didn't seem to appreciate in that moment that they were being asked a moral question. Instead, they are interpreting it entirely

as a legal question. And the gap between the two becomes very clear in the answer. Or that they were being asked a legal question that could be cast as a moral answer. And that was what made this moment so damaging for them. And what do people take from these answers once the hearing is over and they start spreading across the internet?

The calls for these leaders to resign after these answers grew very, very intense. And more and more people online, more and more donors and alumni were saying, if you can't give a straightforward answer to this question, you should not be the president of Harvard or MIT or the University of Pennsylvania. You don't deserve that job. You're the wrong person. We'll be right back. So, Nick, what happens to these three college presidents from Penn, MIT, and Harvard after this hearing amid all these calls to step down? The fallout comes very swiftly. Within a few days, 70 members of Congress are calling for all three presidents to resign.

And in some ways, the most pressure is on Liz McGill, president of UPenn, where the donors and the school's board members are the most outspoken and active at this moment. And because her response was the most viral of the videos that came out of the hearing. And she responds in part with a recorded video of her own. There was a moment during yesterday's congressional hearing on anti-Semitism. An apology video. When I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus would violate our policies.

She talks about essentially being too legalistic and not speaking clearly enough on this important question of whether genocide is okay. It's evil, plain and simple. Right, she basically says, I screwed up during that hearing. In her video, you get the sense that she understands her job is on the line. Penn must initiate a serious

and careful look at our policies. And Provost Jackson and I will immediately convene a process to do so. Thank you. And it is because behind the scenes, donors and board members at the University of Pennsylvania are rallying and organizing and trying to force her out. And within a few days, they succeed and Liz McGill resigns. And within a few days, they succeed and Liz McGill resigns. And what about the presidents of MIT and Harvard?

Well, they are under similar pressure. There are calls for them to resign too. And here, I think, is where Republicans, including Elise Stefanik, make a mistake. She tweets, one down, two to go. Then you begin to understand that this is, in fact, a bit of political theater, that it has a political purpose. And it forced the people in these institutions who actually have the authority to make this decision, who actually picked the presidents of these schools, to decide whose interests would really be served if they forced out the leaders of their institutions. And what happens in the ensuing days is the board of MIT says, Sally Kornbluth has our confidence.

We're not getting rid of her. We're not getting rid of her. And not long after, the board at Harvard comes to the same kind of decision. And they say that the events of recent days have not shaken their confidence that Claudine Gay is the right person to lead Harvard. So in a way, these House Republicans, typified, it seems, by Congresswoman Stefano Kunick, you've written about a lot for The Times,

they kind of overplayed their hands and revealed that what they're up to here is a lot more complicated, as you've hinted at, than getting to the bottom of whether there's an anti-Semitism problem on college campuses or a free speech problem on college campuses. That's right, Michael. I think there are multiple agendas at work here. First of all, let's remind listeners, Elise Stefanik is not only a Harvard grad, but she sat on the board of their prestigious Institute of Politics until the 2020 election. And after the election, she made so many false statements about the election results in the service of trying to help Donald Trump overturn the election that there was a petition calling for her ouster from the board. I remember this now.

And she was pushed off of the board of an institution she had once loved and been groomed for her political career. So she's pushed out of a position she loved at Harvard basically because she lied about the 2020 election. Exactly. And when she was pushed out, she put out this defiant statement saying that Harvard had decided to, quote,

cave to the woke left and that she would wear being kicked off the board as a, quote, badge of honor. And you begin to sense that there is more at play here than just this rhetoric about openness and dialogue. Right. Her motivations here, especially in going after a place like Harvard that in her mind has done her wrong,

they're messy. That's right. And I think Stefanik is also an example of a broader problem that Republicans have been wrestling with in their coalition, which is anti-Semitic and nativist ideas among some of their supporters. Okay, explain that. In recent years, what was once a fringe ideology of the very far right, something called Great Replacement Theory, has crept into the Republican mainstream. And the most extreme version of this theory is that there is a

conspiracy of global elites to turn white civilizations and countries into brown ones through immigration. And often in the most extreme versions of this, the Jews are pulling the strings. The Jews are part of a conspiracy to undermine Western civilization by replacing white Americans or white Europeans with immigrants from Africa, from Asia, from the Middle East. Right. We've talked about this on the show. It's seen as responsible for some of the anti-Semitic violence on the American right. That's right. And in fact, we've had three mass shootings in recent years

in this country where the shooters wrote about replacement theory, seemed to be inspired by replacement theory. The most popular cable host in the country up until this year, Tucker Carlson, was also one of the great popularizers and mainstreamers of replacement theory. that Democrats in cahoots with big business and some Republicans were trying to replace the native-born population of America with immigrants for political power. And Elise Stefanik herself has delved into these waters. Two years ago, her campaign released Facebook ads that essentially borrowed and echoed elements of replacement theory. She got bashed for this.

Of course, she was defiant. But it shows you how, if you think about all the discussion that replacement theory has caused in the media, on this show and around the country, you can understand that this hearing was a chance to kind of flip the script and reset that conversation for Republicans and say, see, the real problem with anti-Semitism, the real anti-Semites are at elite universities. Got it.

In other words, Republicans are very eager to redirect this conversation about anti-Semitism to being a problem of the left, not just the right. That's exactly right. And I think we should also look at the broader context here. While the subject here is partly about who gets to say what, right? Should we have free speech? All around the country in state legislatures, Republicans are passing bans on teaching critical race theory and defining that theory in pretty broad ways. In Florida, race theory. And defining that theory in pretty broad ways. In Florida, professors are no longer allowed to talk about systemic racism in core classes. It's been banned. It's been banned.

By Republican administration. Yeah. And so, you know, there are obviously a lot of principal defenders of free speech on the right and the left and in the center. But I think some skepticism is warranted in this moment because rather than saying we should have more pluralism in these universities, we should accept all viewpoints. There are many people on the right at the moment who want to replace one ideology with another. Which is another way of saying

that when it comes to academic free speech, there is some hypocrisy on both sides, not just on the left, but also on the right. I think there is an incredible amount of hypocrisy around free speech issues in every institution in American life. Republicans seized on this moment and held this hearing, Nick, if you just embrace for the moment that universities are struggling with the question of free speech, when to embrace it, when to regulate it, I wonder where this now leads. Once a president of a university is ousted over this, once two other university presidents' jobs have been put on the line, even if they are spared, Other university presidents' jobs have been put on the line, even if they are spared. Where do we think this goes?

Does it lead to more free speech? Or does it lead to more regulation of free speech on these campuses? We have been moving in the direction of more regulation of campus speech for a long time now. I think for a long time, liberals led that charge. And I think that conservatives, some conservatives, have given up on the idea of fighting for neutrality on these questions and have resolved that if there has to be a choice, then they're going to enforce conservative speech restrictions and content restrictions on college campuses. Kind of match what's going on in their minds on the left. Yeah. And, you know, the other option for everybody is to make a decision as an institution,

as a society, that we're going to be offended sometimes. People are going to say things we don't like. They're going to lie. They're going to mislead. They're going to say, I shouldn't exist. They're going to be hateful.

And make a decision that maybe we have to let that happen and police it less. Because that, in theory, is the true meaning of free speech, as painful as it clearly is. I think free speech is often painful. And we have worked away from that ideal in a lot of places in public life. But, you know, the idea that I'm going to have to be offended once in a while, even really offended, even feel that somebody

is against who I am on some fundamental level. I think the choice that we all have to make is, is it better in the end to do less to regulate that kind of thing and embrace all the pain and complexity that may result? And do we believe that that makes for a healthier society? Based on what you're saying, it doesn't seem that's the direction we're headed in towards a pure version of free speech on campus.

It doesn't to me. And what I see is an expanding circle of things that you're not supposed to say in these environments. Not a shrinking one, but an expanding one. And it seems like that's the way we're heading. The notion that the administrations of these universities should try to remain neutral on moral and political questions and let everyone speak their perspective seems less and less in favor.

And it feels like we're moving more in the opposite direction to a future in which in any given institution whichever political side has the most power gets to decide what speech is really allowed. Well, Nick, thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, President Biden delivered his most forceful critique to date of Israel's military tactics in Gaza, saying that because of them, Israel's government was losing the support of the international community. The remarks, delivered to donors off-camera in Washington, was a turning point for Biden, who, since the October 7th attacks on Israel, has left criticism of Israel's response to his deputies, even as the number of civilian deaths in Gaza has mounted.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where his pleas for quick approval of more military assistance hit a brick wall of resistance from congressional Republicans. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said that members of his party had seen little evidence that Ukraine has a real plan to defeat Russia. MIKE JOHNSON, U.S. House Speaker, I have asked the White House since the day that I was handed the gavel as Speaker for clarity. We need a clear articulation of the strategy to allow Ukraine to win. And thus far,

their responses have been insufficient. They have not provided... And that without such a plan, it doesn't make sense to keep giving Ukraine more money, as President Biden has requested. And so what the Biden administration seems to be asking for is billions of additional dollars with no appropriate oversight, no clear strategy to win, and none of the answers that I think the American people are owed. Biden has warned that unless Congress approves more funding by the end of the year, which seems increasingly unlikely, Ukraine's ability to defend itself against Russia will be in serious jeopardy. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tenesketter,

Ricky Nowetzki, Aastha Chaturvedi, and Muj Zedi. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, with help from Paige Cowan. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Alishaba Itub, Pat McCusker, and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landverk of Wonderland. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.