Two Down. One to Go?

MIT president, Sally Kornbluth (JTA)

It isn’t really about antisemitism. It’s about how the left tolerates it in the name of free speech. I highly doubt that either Penn ex-president Liz McGill or Harvard ex-president Claudine Gay are in any way antisemitic. But when Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik asked whether ‘calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct’ they all responded that it depends on the context. That crosses a line. Particularly now when antisemitic hate speech has virtually exploded on campuses all over the country. As Stefanik finally said in an outraged tone:

It does not depend on the context the answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.  

Apologies by the 2 ex  university presidents followed wide spread criticism of their testimony. McGill apologized pretty quickly explaining that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people is abhorrent to her. Gay apologized soon after saying similar things.  

The question is, what about the 3^rd‘culprit’ in all of this, MIT president Sally Kornbluth? She is backed by her school board and still has her job. Her response was identical to the other two university presidents.  

Well, one difference is that Kornbluth is Jewish. And as noted by JTA, she has an excellent track record of combating antisemitism on campus. And has even expressed pride in her Judaism: 

she comes with high marks from the Jewish community at the last university where she worked; and her school was already participating in a Hillel program to fight antisemitism when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7… 

(When Kornbluth was still at Duke she) regularly participated in Jewish holiday celebrations on campus, and she and her husband donated to the local Jewish federation. At Hillel services, Lieber recalled, “the students could never quite get over the fact that the provost could just show up in a sweatshirt and jeans and just hang out with them.”

It’s foolhardy to say that she isn’t concerned about antisemitism and hasn’t done anything about it. It seems that quite the opposite is true. 

I don’t think it’s about antisemitism or even tolerating it on campus. It is about changing the culture of the left that has come to dominate campus life. A culture that at the very least tolerates antisemitic rhetoric in the name of free speech. Unfortunately Kornbluth seems to be as guilty of that as her colleagues. As their near identical testimony in congress showed.

That is why it is the right  that clamored so vehemently for their resignation while the left passionately defended them.

The question is, however, should she resign because of her left wing world view? Obviously the answer to that is no. But the culture of the left that dominates the world of academia needs to change. 

If there was a healthy balance between right and left ideologies of faculty members - where some are right leaning and others are left leaning, I would have no problem with that as long as they keep hiring faculty with diverse views and remain evenly balanced  But it seems like the vast majority of top schools have taken a sharp left turn. and skew their faculty hiring to the left.

In truth higher education ought to be about knowledge. Not politics. Not from the left or from the right. Where the right once dominated academia, the left now does. I do not want to see a return to the bad old days of discrimination through a quota system limiting Jewish enrollment. Nor do I want to see the kind  discrimination that allows antisemitic students to call for our genocide..

This is why academia should  keep politics out of their schools. It starts at the top. Penn and Harvard are two of the most prestigious universities in the country. They need to seek leaders that are not bound by left or right political ideologues and an agenda. Someone that can make policy based on educational concerns without any political considerations. Someone that will never say at a congressional hearing that promoting genocide is unacceptable subject to the context in which it is promoted.

What about Kornbuth? Should she stay or should she go? Was her response a firm belief or was it a formulaic response designed to be aligned with her colleagues?  (Their near identical phraseology at that hearing would indicate the latter.) 

Don’t know the answer to that.  And I’m not even sure it matters. Sally Kornbluth seems like a nice person with good values who is proud of her Judaism. I don’t believe that she deserves to go. Nevertheless, it’s time to clean house and restore the primacy of education in academia over politics. It needs to start at the top. And there is no better ‘top’  than Penn, Harvard, and MIT. And no better time than now.