"It’s clear to me that [university authorities] haven’t transgressed here. You can debate who you ought to be sympathetic with..."

"... but in my own mind, I am confident that the students have no First Amendment claim to stay in that space."

Said Columbia lawprof Vincent A. Blasi, "who has spent decades studying civil liberties issues, said the university had articulated a 'reasonable' policy to govern protests and had every right to punish students who violate it," quoted in "Faculty Group at Columbia Says It Has ‘Lost Confidence’ in the President/The campus chapter of a faculty organization said it would 'fight to reclaim our university.' Students were undeterred by the crackdown on their protest" (NYT).

Of course, the university doesn't have to do everything within its power.

"Biden has nothing to say about the future. The future is beyond his imagining...."

"If the Republicans are offering right-wing populism, the Democrats can’t just continue to offer grievance agendas, especially since most of those grievances have been dramatically meliorated. The dirty little secret of Diversity, Equity and Identity (DEI) programs is that they’re indicative of past-thinking, not the future. Indeed, when someone like former Harvard President Claudine Gay—a product of the DEI-industrial complex—blames her firing on racism, not lunkheaded Congressional testimony and plagiarism, the traditional Democrat identity-rhetoric begins to seem laughable.... At this point, the Dems need to offer an anti-identity agenda, an American unity agenda...."

Writes Joe Klein, in "It's Not Just Biden/The Democrats are Senescent, too" (Substack).

But Klein is 77 (the same age as Trump) so he says it's not for him to say what belongs in the Democrats' future-looking agenda. He wants "some fresh young genius" to tell us what to do, someone who understands... what? Video games and A.I.! 

It is still possible to astonish.

I understand how an op-ed columnist can try that rhetorical subterfuge, but an editor should have insisted on acknowledgment.

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) January 5, 2024

"[P]ublic support for DEI has cratered.... [T]he political right has learned how to fight more effectively.... I watched the political dynamics develop from the inside."

Writes Christopher Rufo, in "How We Squeezed Harvard" (Wall Street Journal).

The key, I learned, is that any activist campaign has three points of leverage: reputational, financial and political. For some institutions, one point of leverage is enough, but, for a powerful one such as Harvard, the "squeeze" must work across multiple angles.

Journalists "applied reputational pressure" with charges of plagiarism. Donors applied financial pressure, "withholding a billion dollars in contributions." And the political pressure came through Congress, "exposing Ms. Gay's equivocations on antisemitism and threatening consequences for inaction."

This wasn't a secret. Rufo proudly credits himself with "narrating the strategy in real time."

Unraveling the pillars.

I'm trying to read "Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me," written — it says here in the NYT — by Claudine Gay.

It would be beneath me to make the obvious joke — questioning whether the woman caught plagiarizing wrote the column that appears under her name — but I'm reading this prose and wondering who writes like this:

Did the case of Claudine Gay give new energy to the conservative campaign against left-wing academia?

I'm reading "How a Proxy Fight Over Campus Politics Brought Down Harvard’s President/Amid plagiarism allegations and a backlash to campus antisemitism, Claudine Gay became an avatar for broader criticisms of academia" by Nicholas Confessore, in The New York Times.

Dr. Gay’s defenders... warn[ed] that her resignation would encourage conservative interference in universities and imperil academic freedom. (Though some experts have rated Harvard itself poorly on campus free speech during Dr. Gay’s tenure in leadership.)...

What a delicious parenthetical!

That link on "poorly" goes to the FIRE website, where you have to do a search to see where Harvard ranks. I did the search (and you can too). We're told the "speech climate" is "abysmal."

But of course, this article, outside of its parentheses, portrays conservative critics of academia as the threat to freedom.

Claudine Gay resigns.

The NYT reports.

The latest accusations were circulated through an unsigned complaint published Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal that has led a campaign against Dr. Gay over the past few weeks. The new complaint added additional accusations of plagiarism to about 40 that had already been circulated in the same way, apparently by the same accuser....

"The extreme left may be morally no better than the extreme right. But in America the extreme left has almost no political power..."

"... while the extreme right controls one house of Congress and a number of states.... So, yes, let’s hold college presidents’ feet to the fire when they bungle on a major issue. And let’s denounce calls for violence wherever they come from. But let’s also focus on the biggest threat to our system of higher education, which is coming not from left-wing student activists but instead from right-wing politicians."

Writes Paul Krugman, in "The Biggest Threat to America’s Universities" (NYT).

Key word: "extreme."

The extremes on either side are perceived from the point where the observer is situated. Thus, to Krugman, "the extreme left has almost no political power."

"Unfortunately, the universe isn’t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds."

"I think, for example, of my fellow Post columnist Lawrence H. Summers, who was forced out as president of Harvard several years ago after he speculated, at a small private seminar, that one possible reason for the underrepresentation of women in elite science and engineering programs might be that their ability was less variable than men’s. So while both sexes perform about as well on average, the women might tend to cluster near the middle, while the men are overrepresented at the bottom and the top — the latter being where elite programs draw from."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "The world could use more jerks" (WaPo).

"Claudine Gay will stay on as president of Harvard University, the school’s governing board announced on Tuesday, despite an uproar..."

"... over her evasive answers at a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism.... 'As members of the Harvard Corporation, we today reaffirm our support for President Gay’s continued leadership of Harvard University,' said a statement signed by all of the board members other than Dr. Gay. 'Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing.' The statement goes on, however, to acknowledge that Dr. Gay had made mistakes, including in her initial reaction to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.... About 700 members of Harvard’s faculty, and hundreds more alumni, came to her defense in several open letters. One of the letters, from Black faculty members, called the attacks on the president 'specious and politically motivated.' The letter, which was drafted and signed by some of Harvard’s most prominent professors, said that Dr. Gay 'should be given the chance to fulfill her term to demonstrate her vision for Harvard.'"

The NYT reports.

Did the 3 university presidents fall into "Ms. Stefanik's prosecutorial trap"?

I'm reading "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

The NYT writer, Annie Karni, is characterizing an interview with Stefanik:

"[A]ntisemitic and anti-Israel protests on campuses — and the university presidents’ lawyerly responses at last week’s hearing — were akin to... the 'Zoom moment' during the pandemic..."

"... when some parents first listened closely to what their children were learning in school and concluded it was 'subpar in quality and radical in content.' 'One of those things we’ve struggled with, those of us who want to reform higher education, is convincing people that there’s a problem... Historically, they look around and say, "Huh, this seems fine." Everything they’re seeing right now is that things are not fine.'" 

According to Jay P. Greene, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation, quoted and summarized by Nicholas Confessore, in "As Fury Erupts Over Campus Antisemitism, Conservatives Seize the Moment/Republicans have been attacking elite universities for years. After a tense congressional hearing last week, many on the left are joining them" (NYT).

On the subject of anti-Semitism, "I'd like to speak not from the heart, but from the thesaurus...."/"And could you rephrase that in an even more academic way?"

I like the freeze frame. All 3 have the same head tilt and arrogant smirk.

The actual sketch is hardest on Elise Stefanik though, unsurprisingly.

"Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, 'It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is,' has there been such parsing."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "The Ivy League Flunks Out" (NYT), talking about the line "It is a context-dependent decision" spoken by U Penn president Penn’s Elizabeth Magill.

We were just talking about Bill Clinton rhetoric — 2 posts down, here — but that was about "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and the topic was Biden's denials of involvement in his son's influence peddling.

Dowd is writing about the "pathetic display" put on by the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania "when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment."

Testing your commitment to freedom of speech.

This is been the single best week in years for the cause of limiting free expression and free discourse at colleges.

Anyone who claims they believe in free speech - while they cheer the union of hedge fund billionaire and DC politicians to impose speech limits - is a fraud. https://t.co/PVBoMZy9o1

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2023

This is the free speech group -- the only one -- doing what ACLU once did. I's so glad they exist.

What makes them extra impressive is that they grew because conservatives applauded them for defending right-wing students' speech, but now do the same for pro-Palestinian speech: https://t.co/aRJdBZCI3D

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 8, 2023

AND:

"Part of the problem is a simple herd mentality — people screaming slogans whose meaning and implication they know nothing of, or not wishing to be disliked by taking an unpopular position."

Said David Wolpe, a prominent rabbi, who resigned from a Harvard's anti-Semitism committee, which was formed after the October 7 attack

Quoted in "Universities Face Congressional Inquiry and Angry Donors Over Handling of Antisemitism/Congress has opened an investigation into Harvard, M.I.T. and University of Pennsylvania, a $100 million gift was withdrawn, and demands have grown for the universities’ presidents to resign" (NYT).

"Rabbi Wolpe praised [Harvard University president Claudine] Gay as a 'kind and thoughtful person,' in a social media post, and said most students were not prosecuting an ideological agenda. But he said that antisemitism was so entrenched that he did not think he could make the kind of difference he had hoped for."

The implication is that Harvard does not function as a university at all. Students are not learning and understanding and working out ideas with other students — experiencing sophisticated and deep education. They are herded — "the problem is a simple herd mentality" — and they are somehow drained of the capacity to resist social pressure to manifest belief in shallow material — "slogans" — that they don't filter through their own brains but merely adopt as a strategy in the foolish, childish pursuit of being liked.

I'm just quoting and paraphrasing the rabbi, who is, presumably, observing the culture at Harvard first hand. Perhaps he is wrong. But Gay and all the others in authority at Harvard should be working continually to ensure that his description of Harvard is not what Harvard is or should ever become. 

"Ms. Stefanik’s aggressive appeals to the far right typically delight Republican hard-liners. But in the hearing, Ms. Stefanik achieved the unthinkable..."

"... prompting many Democrats and detractors of Mr. Trump to concede that an ideological culture warrior with whom they agree on nothing else was, in this case, right. Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on social media that he was 'no fan' of Ms. Stefanik. But, he added: 'I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.'... That Ms. Stefanik emerged as the voice of reason in the hearing was a sobering thought for many of her detractors. More than any other member of Congress, Ms. Stefanik represents to Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans the worst of what happened to the G.O.P. under the sway of Mr. Trump...."

Writes Annie Karni, in "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

Where the university presidents went wrong was not in defending pure speech and distinguishing pure speech from conduct. That was good. Their mistake was the rote repetition of stock phrases in place of real engagement about the line between speech and conduct. There should have been a frank discussion of whether the universities draw the same line for anti-Semitic speech that they draw for speech that is hostile to other groups, such as black people.

I think that by "conduct," the presidents meant the kind of speech that is aimed at individuals and constitutes a true threat or an incitement to imminent violence. These presidents seemed unable or unwilling to talk about freedom of speech and bigotry. I suspect that they didn't dare risk speaking substantively because either they really don't understand the law and philosophy of freedom of speech — a shameful deficiency in a university president! — or because they know the facts are against them and they have not been maintaining the strong free-speech position that they want to take now — now that the offensive speech is hateful toward Jews.