Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, we've learned how prevalent anti-Semitism is on college campuses, particularly at elite universities. The fact that the leadership at some of these prestigious institutions has failed to properly address the anti-Semitism on their campuses is even more shameful.
After the presidents of two Ivy League universities and one equally elite school testified before the House and refused to address whether anti-Semitic rhetoric qualifies as harassment under the universities' codes of conduct, one billionaire investor is calling for their resignation.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) grilled Harvard President Claudine Gay, University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) President Sally Kornbluth about their schools' policies regarding anti-Semitism, and the administrators' answers — or non-answers — were despicable.
🚨🚨🚨Presidents of @Harvard @MIT and @Penn REFUSE to say whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” is bullying and harassment according to their codes of conduct. Even going so far to say it needs to turn to “action” first. As in committing genocide.
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 5, 2023
THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND… pic.twitter.com/hUY3SgoOOi
Bill Ackman, the founder of Pershing Square Capital, went after these three university presidents in a blistering, epic post on X/Twitter.
Ackman began:
The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?
The answers they gave reflect the profound moral bankruptcy of Presidents Gay, Magill, and Kornbluth.
He recounts Stefanik's questioning of the three presidents and summarized their answers as, "It ‘depends on the context’ and ‘whether the speech turns into conduct,’ that is, actually killing Jews."
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Ackman cites the U.S. State Department's definition of genocide as the "deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group."
"The presidents’ answers reflect the profound educational, moral and ethical failures that pervade certain of our elite educational institutions due in large part to their failed leadership," he writes before encouraging his followers to watch the entire exchange:
The presidents of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn were all asked the following question under oath at today’s congressional hearing on antisemitism:
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) December 5, 2023
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your university’s] code of conduct or rules regarding bullying or harassment?
The… pic.twitter.com/eVlPCHMcVZ
Ackman reaches the conclusion that "They must all resign in disgrace," continuing:
If a CEO of one of our companies gave a similar answer, he or she would be toast within the hour.
Why has antisemitism exploded on campus and around the world?
Because of leaders like Presidents Gay, Magill and Kornbluth who believe genocide depends on the context.
To think that these are the leaders of Ivy League institutions that are charged with the responsibility to educate our best and brightest.
In contrast to the situational treatment of anti-Semitism at elite universities, these schools have no-tolerance policies regarding "misgendering." The Washington Free Beacon's Aaron Sibarium pointed out on Twitter/X, "'In what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn’t?' Rep. Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) asked Harvard president Claudine Gay.
Sibarium added, "The school’s diversity administrators had thrown a fit when Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, stated on Fox News that there are only two sexes, causing such a firestorm that she had to take a leave of absence. Gay didn’t answer the question."
The New York Post reports that Ackman has been on the leading edge in the fight against anti-Semitism since October 7:
Ackman has been a prominent figure in the fight against antisemitism in the US since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, calling for the release of the names of Harvard students who blamed Israel for the attack and the suspension of a Harvard student newspaper editor.
In November, Ackman called for the editor of the Harvard Law Review to face disciplinary action after he was caught on video blocking the way of an individual purported to be a supporter of Israel during a demonstration.
In contrast to the behavior of the university presidents, Ackman lauds the House GOP's line of questioning, even calling it "a masterclass of how our government and democracy should operate."
"On the bright side, our congressional leaders deserve accolades for showing tremendous leadership and moral clarity in their statements, by the questions they asked, and the respectfulness with which they conducted the hearing," he writes.
In his morning post on Substack, Erick Erickson agreed that "the GOP did a good thing here. It’ll get overshadowed by policy fights, but remember the GOP highlighted the morally abominable positions of these Ivy League presidents."
He also had some advice for Ackman and other CEOs and managers, writing, "if you want meaningful reform of these institutions, start publicly hiring from SEC schools. They have academically gifted students in mostly public universities who are not steeped in this nonsense. You change your hiring practices, you’ll promote more change at these institutions more quickly than withholding your money. They want the bragging rights of their students working at your institutions. Deprive them of that and they will change."
It's more than just hiring graduates from the South (and yes, the dyed-in-the-wool Southerner just said that). If hiring managers would look at graduates from what the elites call "flyover country" for the best candidates, it would show these Ivy League schools a thing or two. We need to do everything we can to expose, root out, and neutralize anti-Semitism, and it starts with calling it out at schools like Harvard, MIT, and Penn.
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