Testifying before Congress on Dec. 5, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania presented themselves as Ivy League guardians of the First Amendment.
Their testimony provoked bipartisan congressional outrage. Harvard, MIT, Penn and other universities had offered little more than institutional shrugs as pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests explicitly threatened violence against Jewish students after Hamas’s savage Oct. 7 attacks against Israeli civilians, and the administrators explained this by stating that they were simply protecting the free speech rights of student demonstrators.
In George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” as the pigs consolidate power, they justify its arbitrary use against other, lesser animals by amending the commandment that “all animals are equal” to state, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” So it is now at many universities, where certain speech — even particularly toxic and threatening speech — is freer and given more protection than other speech.
Just days ago, Harvard reportedly continued its long practiced directive to its Chabad chapter to remove nightly the menorah displayed on campus during Hanukkah to avoid provoking criminal mischief by vandals.
Harvard’s “hide the menorah” policy exposed the hollowness of President Claudine Gay’s recent testimony that “antisemitic speech, when it crosses [into] conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action.” But the action Harvard took was to direct the removal of the menorah, placed there by peaceful Jewish students, rather than to prevent possible damage to it by malevolent vandals.
Read more at Thehill.com
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