As you all know, I am a huge proponent of our First Amendment right to free speech. To me, it is the most important component of the Constitution and it should be protected at all costs.
The reason I bring this up today is because of what transpired at Harvard yesterday with Harvard president Claudine Gay stepping down amid strong calls for her resignation.
There are so many things to unpack with this woman it might take a few columns but I think the most important thing is her responses to Rep Elise Stefanik’s grilling regarding her response to the Oct 7th terrorist attack in Israel.
Two things occurred to me during this testimony. One, was that this was Rep Stefanik’s shining moment for her party, for her state and for herself. She actually has done zero in her short career to warrant anything other than a passing mention and here she is, ripping the lungs out of this leader of America’s most prestigious university. Good for her!
This is the way that every witness that appears before any Congressional hearing should be questioned. “Ma’am it is a yes or no question”. That is it. The answers that were given made Prof Gay look like she was hiding the fact that her administration has done little to protect the interests of Jewish students on campus.
The second thing that I thought about was what if. What if Prof Gay answered “Yes” admitting that the university has not done enough. “Yes” to any other questions that she was asked. Then what? The left would have exploded and called it a witch hunt reminiscent of the McCarthy era. More importantly, where would Rep Stefanik gone then?
I know people on the right will do this as well but what just gets my goat sometimes is how the left can never answer an unpopular question with a yes or no. If a question requires explanation, fine, so be it but a lot of questions given to the left never seem to get the simple answer. It’s like they dance around it and never really answer the question.
Last year I did an informal poll; Do you think President Biden is doing a good job? Overwhelming, my readers said no (not surprising) and the few that said “Yes” always had some caveat, some remark to protect their answer. The most common one was, “Well he is better thanTrump”. That was not what I asked. A simple “Yes” with no supporting evidence is what I wanted. The left and the progressives can not answer a question truthfully without some unwieldy explanation.
That is what you get from these liberal leaders of major institutions. A 15 sentence answer to a question that only requires a Yes or a No.
This may go against the grain of a lot of my readers but I do believe that people have a right to lawfully protest anything they want. That is a guarantee in the Constitution. You want to be Pro-Palestinian. Go for it. You want to be Pro Israel. God speed. Where I think the line has to be firmly drawn though is calling for the death of any one group, the destruction of a people to me is not acceptable and when that happens, universities must step in.
I know this is a double edged sword here because Israeli supporters want to wipe the Hamas terrorists off the map and while I agree with them, I have to ask myself, is this the same as calling for the destruction of Israel? I will admit, this is a very slippery slope here and one that I am not fully qualified (is anyone?) to make a judgement.
What would make it more black and white is if both sides protested in support of their people instead of pushing the rhetoric to another level. I know that won’t happen because of the depth of the hate that exists in that part of the World. It is a depth that, we Americans have no clue about. Sure there is a some racism in this country but that pales in comparison to what has been a part of the culture of the Middle East for over two thousand years.
Again, I don’t have the answers, I don’t think anyone does but I do know that dancing around a simple question by believing that hatred is “Contextual” doesn’t work. It answers nothing and creates more questions.
One last thing about Harvard and their attempts at DEI. Prof Gay was not the right choice to lead the institution. The board knew it at the time and in attempt to appease some faction of the faculty they appointed her to lead the school. There were already questions about plagarism and it wasn’t isolated. She also lacked the CV that every president of Harvard has had for 200+ years. Very few scholarly papers, one book and a modest standing among her peers. Was it because she was a black female and filled two glaring holes in the administration? She mentioned something about the race card and how that played a role in the pressure she received after her testimony. How about the fact that you basically looked like a cheap lawyer under indictment?
I have heard some of the talking heads on conservative radio say that this may set Harvard back permanently in the eyes of America. The reputation is ruined. I don’t think so. They may have seen a slight drop in applications for the coming year but Harvard is Harvard. They run the economy, the run the government, they are all powerful. I am being facetious but the egos that graduate from that school will never let it become a second rate institution.
Interesting perspective here. So much of political interrogation comes down to "are you still beating your wife" type questions. However, the three individuals that were under examination could have shown more composure. I was pretty disappointed that they got as flustered as they did, and thought that they should have taken a hard stance against antisemitism. Not doing so condones the awful behavior that we have seen on campuses throughout the years. Stefanik used the moment to galvanize herself as a tough, no-nonsense leader, but alas, many (including me) see her as an opportunistic, volatile blow-hard.