Today, Explained - The fight over campus antisemitism

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Three elite university presidents walk into Congress for a hearing on antisemitism. Only two still have their jobs. New York magazine reporter Nia Prater tells us what happened, and a Harvard professor of Jewish history explains why he thinks resignations won’t make campuses safer. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah and Isabel Angell, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

College president might be the least desirable job in the United States since October 7th. If you're at MIT, you might have pro-Palestinian protesters taking over buildings. If you're at UPenn, you're dealing with threatening behavior. The person reportedly toppled over furniture and was shouting what the leaders described as anti-Semitic obscenities. If you're at Harvard, your students might be getting doxxed. The names and faces of Harvard students, which we have blurred, are displayed under the title Harvard's Leading Anti-Semites. The students are allegedly those who signed onto a statement by the student group Palestine Solidarity Committee. And if you're the president of any of these three schools in particular, you're getting called to Congress to get roasted by a Trumpy Trump acolyte.

Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? The fight over anti-Semitism on American college campuses is coming up on Today Explained. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props, or combine your bets in a same-game parlay for a shot at an even bigger payout. Plus, with super-simple live betting, lightning-fast bet settlement, and instant withdrawals, FanDuel makes betting on the NFL easier than ever before. So make the most of this football season and download FanDuel today. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario.

Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Nia Prater, who's been writing about this kerfuffle over college presidents for New York Magazine's Intelligencer. So last Tuesday, the House Education and the Workforce Committee, they held a hearing looking into how colleges and universities are handling anti-Semitism on their campuses. The hearing featured testimonies from three university leaders. Liz McGill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania. Let me begin by saying that I and the University of Pennsylvania are horrified by and condemn Hamas's abhorrent and brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7th. Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University. In the two months since the atrocities of October 7th and the subsequent armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we have seen a dramatic and deeply concerning rise in anti-Semitism.

And Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT. As an American, as a Jew, and as a human being, I abhor anti-Semitism, and my administration is combating it actively. So during this hearing, school leaders were really, you know, grilled on how their institutions have been addressing anti-Semitism, in particular by New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who has been somewhat of a rising star on the Republican side of things in Congress. She's a member of Republican House leadership. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no? And these leaders, they received fierce backlash,

in particular when none of the three specifically said that calling for the genocide of Jewish people would be a violation of their school's codes of conduct. I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus. But you've heard chants for intifada. I've heard chants, which can be anti-Semitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people. Basically, during their testimony, the president seemed to take more of a legal approach to the questioning.

Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct. And we do take action. Seeming to they're trying to balance like this idea of, you know, what free speech on campus would look like while explaining how they would address actual conduct, you know, like threats, physical incidences, like if those things occurred. It depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable. And by not responding strongly to this question and just saying,

yes, this violates our student conduct policies, what have you. It is a context dependent decision, Congresswoman. The president of UPenn made a extremely compelling clip for those who might want to say, call for her ouster. This is the easiest question to answer, yes, Ms. McGill. Out of curiosity, is this a widespread thing on American college campuses right now? Are a lot of people calling for the genocide of Jews on American college campuses? There hasn't been a lot of reporting that supports like, you know, explicit calls for

genocide. I think it seems like that a lot of it is coming down to interpretations of some popular slogans that are used by pro-Palestinian protesters. For example, the phrase from the river to the sea or like to globalize the intifada. Depending on the side that you're on in the conflict, these terms can mean different things. And, you know, there's also been instances of protests happening on campus and then some student populations feeling intimidated or frightened by the amount of protesting on campus. And this congressional hearing just gave any critic of these college presidents, any critic of campus policies, ammunition. What is the immediate fallout from these hearings?

So following the hearing, you know, backlash was swift. A congressional committee plans to open an investigation into anti-Semitism on the campuses of three elite universities. Students rallied on campus today outside McGill's office. I'm a Jewish student here, and I think that she needs to step down. Business leaders like Pfizer's CEO called it one of the most despicable moments in the history of U.S. academia. To not have a climate where kids can thrive and go to school and feel protected, they are failing in the worst way. The alumni, donors, and politicians alike were calling for all three of these presidents to either be replaced or for them to resign from their positions. The case of Liz McGill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, was particularly striking. Her remarks were directly condemned by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. And even a donor for

UPenn actually threatened to revoke a $100 million donation to the school in light of her testimony. So it wasn't really a surprise when on Saturday, McGill announced her resignation from her role as president, along with Scott Bach, the chairman of Penn's board of trustees. In that moment, I was focused on our university's longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. Now, McGill will still officially be a faculty member at Penn's law school,

but she's no longer president, and it's a role that she's only held since last year. The clips would have you believe that these three university presidents epically failed on this national, even international stage, but are there people out there saying they carried themselves well? Yeah, it seems like each situation is a little bit different from school to school. So with MIT, the school's executive committee actually issued a statement of very strong support for Sally Kornbluth following her testimony. The governing board of MIT says it stands behind its president, Sally Kornbluth, saying she has our full and unreserved support. And so far, it seems like she's avoided like the brunt of the backlash that her colleagues have received.

There are some people, you know, particularly free speech advocates that thought, you know, they handled the questioning well. And in the example of like Liz McGill resigning and then calling for these presidents to step down, like that this could pose a really dangerous threat to free speech on campuses. My colleague, Jonathan Chait, actually wrote a column a few days ago where he pretty much argued that when Elise Stefanik was asking the university presidents about calling for genocide of the Jews, she was referring directly to previous questions about slogans about the Intifada. The university presidents were very clear that calling for genocide of the Jews is bad, but they were appropriately cagey about committing themselves to restrict any kind of speech that could be interpreted by someone as

potentially inciting violence, because that's actually very tricky. It feels like this war isn't nearly over yet. It feels like there's going to be a lot of killing to come. Do you think this kind of tension between politicians and university presidents and student bodies is here to stay for months to come? I would say so. I mean, in the wake of McGill's resignation, Elise Stefanik, the congresswoman I alluded to earlier, she tweeted, you know, one down, two more to go. Yikes.

So she's clearly seeing this as like, you know, only the beginning of a continuing process of looking into colleges and universities and how they're handling certain issues. I believe the the House has already launched an investigation into these three schools for their handling of of anti-Semitism. So this is definitely not going away anytime soon. And if anything, it's bound to become a bigger issue in the weeks and months to come. Nia Prater writes for New York Magazine. Find her work at nymag.com. We spoke with her Monday, and first thing Tuesday we got the news that Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, will be keeping her job, at least for now. In a statement, members of the Harvard Corporation said, So many people have suffered tremendous damage and pain because of Hamas's brutal terrorist attack, and the university's initial statement should have been

an immediate, direct, and unequivocal condemnation. Calls for a genocide are despicable and contrary to fundamental human values. President Gay has apologized for how she handled her congressional testimony and has committed to redoubling the university's fight against anti-Semitism. When we're back, a Harvard professor who has some thoughts on President Gay's leadership helps us understand what it's like on campus these days. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions

and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. Support for this show comes from the ACLU. The ACLU knows exactly what threats a second Donald Trump term presents. And they are ready with a battle-tested playbook. The ACLU took legal action against the first Trump administration 434 times. And they will do it again to protect immigrants' rights,

defend reproductive freedom, fight discrimination, and fight for all of our fundamental rights and freedoms. This Giving Tuesday, you can support the ACLU. With your help, they can stop the extreme Project 2025 agenda. Join the ACLU at aclu.org today. You're listening to Today Explained. Derek Penslar, professor of history at Harvard University. You are listening to Today Explained. Derek Penslar, professor of history at Harvard University and director of the Center for Jewish Studies. What have the past few months been like on campus for you as a professor, for the director of Harvard Center for Jewish Studies, I presume for you as a Jewish person. It's been hard. It's been very difficult, as you said, in number of respects. First off,

as a person, I am Jewish myself. I have a lot of connections with Israel. I spent a lot of time there. I have a lot of close colleagues and friends there who have lost family, people who have been killed, injured, taken into captivity, and people who now on a daily basis are running to their bomb shelters. So it's been hard on that level. It's been hard for me because I know of the horrific damage and loss of life in Gaza. I don't believe it is militarily efficacious. And I worry very much about the massive loss of civilian life, so of Palestinian life. That worries me. And then here at home, obviously, I have Jewish students who are themselves worried. They're in grief.

And they're nervous about displays of pro-Palestinian feeling here at Harvard. Some of my students are Israeli, and they are particularly nervous, some of them. And then there are students here who are from the Middle East, or who are sympathetic with the Palestinian cause just because they favor the cause and who have been doxed, that is their personal details have been spilled out on the net. They have suffered from various forms of career retaliation,

that is certain employers, you know, say they won't employ them if they have endorsed pro-Palestinian statements. So there's a lot of problems going on at Harvard University right now. It's not limited to any one group. And I'm dealing with all of this. And then with expressions of concern from alumni who have read things that make the situation at Harvard sound considerably worse than it is. I want to ask you more about that specifically, because obviously this hearing that we talked about earlier in the show was very much focused on this problem of being pro-genocide or anti-genocide, and it feels like that isn't the conversation people are having in their daily lives. How much has what's going on on your campus and perhaps campuses across the country been

blown out of proportion by politicians, by social media, by the media, what have you? Well, there's a difference between saying that there is a problem, but it's been exaggerated, and saying that there's no problem. There is a problem at Harvard and at lots of other universities. In the wake of October 7th, there were Jewish students who were intimidated and terrorized by vicious and violent social media posts. I mean, truly viciously anti-Semitic social media posts. There have been cases of verbal snipes, nasty comments at Jewish students, and a particularly insidious form of ostracizing or of, you know, social shunning, where students are

losing friendships over this issue. So, it's not like students are getting beaten up, but there have been a lot of uncomfortable, very uncomfortable situations. And then there's the issue of pro-Palestinian students with loud demonstrations, shouting certain slogans with certain banners that make Jewish students feel uncomfortable. And this is really a tough question because the pro-Palestinian students, of course, have a right to demonstrate and they have a right to express their support for Palestinian rights. And then trying to figure out where those limits lie, where do they cross the line into intimidation, harassment, and so forth. And the slogans you're talking about there, we also addressed those early in the show. We're talking about, I believe, from the river to the sea, chance for an intifada. Is that what you're addressing?

Yeah. And the fact is that these are slogans and they can mean a lot of things. So when you say from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, are you talking about throwing all the Jews out of the state of Israel or killing them? Or are you talking about freedom for the Palestinians living side by side with Jews? Are you simply not thinking about the Jews at that moment because you're really thinking about Palestinian freedom and that's what's on your mind? So, that statement can mean a lot of different things. Evidently, there are people I've heard anecdotally who believed that the river was the Charles River.

In other words, they didn't really know what the phrase from the river to the sea meant. Some distance away from Palestine. Some something. Look, there are people who use the phrase who really do mean the destruction of Israel. There are other people who use it who mean something else. And also with intifada, you know, I lived in Israel through two intifadas, and they were uprisings by Palestinians seeking to shake off Israeli rule. That's what the word intifada means. It means shaking off. Does intifada mean destroying the state of Israel? Well, there are people who favor intifada who wanted that, particularly in Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of the state

of Israel. There's lots of other people for whom the intifada was a means to obtain Palestinian statehood that might very well be a Palestinian state alongside of Israel. So again, the word intifada in and of itself can mean lots of different things. You know, campus controversies usually, at least in my experience going to college some years ago, seem to be like specific to a campus or they remain on campus. But of course, this particular campus controversy for you guys went national, if not international last week with this hearing on Capitol Hill. How do you think Harvard president Claudine Gay fared? Well, first of all, you're right. This is not limited to Harvard and it's not limited to MIT and Penn. It's happening everywhere. It's really the most important, I'd say, source of political unrest on campuses since the Vietnam

War. And that's been 50 years. And Harvard has gotten singled out largely because Harvard has a reputation as being sort of number one or peerless, although we're just one of many good universities. And I think Claudine Gay made the same mistake in her testimony in Congress that the other two presidents did, in that her lawyers told her how to speak, and they told her to speak in a very careful way that would not lead to a lawsuit. And legally, what she said might very well have been correct. But what the presidents, it's not just President Gay, didn't really think through as they were talking to the American people. And they needed to speak in a way that took cognizance of the American people's sensibilities and fears and sensitivities at this time. And that was a mistake. There's no

question that President Gay made a mistake, and she admitted as much. We spoke to Professor Penslar before the Harvard Corporation decided to let President Gay keep her job, but we did ask him if he thought she should resign. Here's what he said. I don't think she should resign. And I also think that if there's going to be a decision that she should resign, whenever that might happen, if ever, this is something that should be the result of conversation between the Harvard faculty. I mean, we're the ones who devote our careers and our lives to Harvard. And then the alumni and other, what I would call the lay leadership of Harvard, so the corporation

and the board of overseers. So these are alumni and important people who are connected to Harvard, but they don't teach here. And I think that removing a president is a very serious business. And it's not something you would do lightly, and it's certainly not something you would do in response to political pressure from some congressional figures, you know, some representatives in Washington. And so a letter got thrown together, a very short letter, that simply stated that Harvard needs to be immune from political pressures. It's just a bulwark of democracy to have the university maintain its autonomy. It was a very short letter.

And it went out to the faculty, and a day, it had gotten 700 signatures, which, I mean, exactly to do the math, it's somewhere between a third and a half of the Harvard faculty. So it's a very large number. And it's just a statement, not necessarily an endorsement of President Gay's leadership, because there's division on that, but a sense that this is our issue. This is an issue for the Harvard faculty to try to figure out and not to let Congress or, you know, outside people try to tell us what to do. I would like to see changes. I would like to see changes in how she handles issues involving free speech, hate speech, the general atmosphere on campus. Yes, we need to make some very big changes,

but no, I don't think she should resign. Tell me what you'd like to see the president do, President Gay. Well, one thing, no more public statements. These public statements that the president has made and that other presidents of universities have made are pretty useless in that no student at Harvard is going to change their opinion by saying,

oh, President Gay said X, therefore I should stop, you know, whatever it is I'm doing. It's just, it's meaningless. I think what the president needs to do is be a model of leadership for us, for the senior administration and for all of us, the faculty, in initiating ways to talk about tough issues, including Israel-Palestine, in an informed, substantive, and civil way. And what's happened in the last few weeks, there's been a vacuum from the president's office, but there have been a number of faculty in government, the government department, in the Kennedy School, in Jewish studies,

in Middle East studies, many units, who have started to organize events in which we can talk about these things in a serious way. There was an event just a few days ago that was extremely well-received where I was talking with a Palestinian scholar and an Israeli scholar, and we all talked through how we got here and where we're going.

And there was such a positive reception to this event because people were hungering for serious conversation. There wasn't people screaming at each other. And it's not like we all agreed, but we disagreed civilly because if we just replicate the conflict, if all we're going to do is replicate the Israel-Palestine conflict at Harvard, we may as well close up shop. And it's not easy to do, by the way. It hurts sometimes to hear those points of views that you don't share. But I think we do need to do more of it.

And in that sense, this could be a real teachable moment for Harvard and for universities everywhere. You know, I have to be an optimist because there's no choice. If I'm helping organize events where we talk about Israel-Palestine in a more calm and civil way, if I teach my courses on this subject or on other courses

on contentious topics in a way that fosters conversation and disagreement, I know I'm just one person and I'm just reaching a few students. But I'd like to think, you know, that if everybody takes on that kind of commitment, we can get somewhere. The obstacles are huge. But I really do see a sign, not only at Harvard, but at other universities, where this could be an important step forward. And at least I'm going to act on that assumption. Professor Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard, where President Gaye still has her job. Halima Shah and Isabel Angel made today's show with edits from Amina Alsadi, fact checks by Laura Bullard, and mixing by Patrick Boyd. It's Today Explained. you