The Poison Ivy
Many students, specifically those who do not belong to black, Muslim, LGBTQ+, or similar ‘preferred’ groups, have increasingly felt unsafe and their free speech trampled over on university campuses.
(A version of the article appeared in Organiser Weekly Magazine)
Harvard, MIT, and Penn on the Hill
When Rabbi Hirschy of Harvard Chabad, a Jewish student organization at Harvard University, invited the university president Claudine Gay on November 28 to attend an event on December 4, 2023, her office sent a regret note to the organizers. Her excuse was that she was preparing for her congressional testimony on rising anti-Semitism on US campuses, specifically at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). The testimony was to be held on December 5.
Chabad was to screen a documentary of Hamas atrocities in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador to the UN. Many reputed alumni and donors tried to convince President Gay to attend the event. They argued that it would have given her a perspective on the issue, but to no avail.
Whatever her excuse to turn down the invite, President Gay failed miserably at the hearings. She and others could not convincingly answer House Representatives, including Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s question whether or not “calling for the genocide of Jews violated… rules of bullying and harassment” of their respective institutions. This prompted high-pitched demands by alumni and donors for their removal from their posts.
Over the weekend, on December 9, the President of the University of Pennsylvania and the Chairman of its board of trustees resigned from their posts. After their botched response at the hearings, Harvard and MIT presidents also face increasing pressure to resign. Gay faces additional accusations of plagiarizing her Ph.D. dissertation. Newspaper reports suggest Harvard had investigated Claudine Gay over the accusations of plagiarism but kept the news secret. It even threatened the newspaper through an expensive law firm.
October 7 Pogrom in Israel
Soon after the Jewish pogrom of October 7 in Israel, where Hamas terrorists butchered about 1,400 Jews, including women, children, and the elderly, some of the elite U.S. campuses erupted with anti-Israle and, in some cases, anti-Jew protests. Many protestors, including faculty, also supported Hamas, a designated terrorist organization sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. A professor at Cornell University, for example, called the Hamas attacks “exhilarating” and “energizing,” while a professor at Yale University called Israel “a murderous, genocidal settler state.”
At Harvard University, thousands of students published a statement that held Israel entirely responsible for unfolding violence. The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee is an umbrella organization of over 30 student groups. In their signed letter, they stated that Israel's "apartheid regime is the only one to blame" for the violence.
At Stanford University, a faculty member called the Jewish students colonizers and downplayed the Holocaust. According to news reports, the teacher asked the Jewish students to raise their hands, separated those students from their belongings, and said they were simulating what Jews were doing to Palestinians.
At the University of California, Bertley, students were offered "extra credit" to attend pro-Palestinian rallies on campus. The joint statement from the Palestine Solidarity Groups at Columbia University declared that the "Weight of responsibility of the war and casualties lies with the Israeli extremist government…"
At Yale University, the editors at Yale Daily News, America's oldest college daily newspaper, slapped Sahar Tartak’s pro-Israel column with an update that read: "Editor's note, correction, Oct. 25: “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men." Tarak is the Editor in Chief at the Yale Free Press. The Editor of the Harvard Law Review attacked a Jewish student on campus during an anti-Israel rally.
The Double Standard
While the unfolding of the rampant anti-Semitism and free speech violations on US campuses in the wake of the ghastly October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel may have provided the trigger for unprecedented protests, an implosion on these elite campuses has been brewing for a while. Many students, specifically those who do not belong to black, Muslim, LGBTQ+, or similar ‘preferred’ groups, have increasingly felt unsafe and their free speech trampled over on university campuses.
Over the years and through numerous incidents, these top universities have displayed remarkable double standards in dealing with hate and free speech. “Claudine was technically correct that students can’t be punished for political chants, but when Harvard et al. have no prior credible commitment to academic freedom, institutional neutrality & viewpoint diversity, the born-again appeal to principle seems incriminating,” wrote Steven Pinker, a professor at Harvard,
Under pressure from its leftwing professors and students, including some Indian and Indian Americans, Penn had disallowed then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi from delivering a speech. Many US universities also came together to host a conference against Hindutva, the essence of Hinduism. Labeled Dismantling Global Hindutva, the conference had the same genocidal attributes as the chants of “from river to sea” and the call for “eradicating Sanatan Dharma.”
DEI and Discrimination
Over the decades, universities have downplayed merit in favor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) - race, sexual orientation, religion, etc. Many colleges have eliminated standardized tests, i.e., objective criteria, in admission in favor of race and other identitarian criteria. Oversized and totalitarian DEI bureaucracies expanded their scope and domain in academia.
Harvard University used race to favor some applicants over others, most notably Asian Americans, Indians included. Harvard was sued for affirmative action-based racial discrimination. In the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College case, the Supreme Court of the United States, in its 6-3 decision, found it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions.
The House hearings provide a glimpse of the results of decades-long incubation of blatant politicization of institutions of higher learning in America. “Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasizing through its vital organs,” writes John Ellis, a professor emeritus at the University of California at Santa Crus in the Wall Street Journal. “The radical left is the cause,” he further writes, “most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas.”
As a society, we should not allow fringe, leftwing dogmatic cults to dictate our educational institutions. We must take our institutions back from them and rededicate them to their core values.