By: Noah Rothman – nationalreview.com – December 7, 2023

They must have felt good about themselves and their performance in the moment. The smirking condescension to which the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology treated a House committee this week suggests that the display of moral vacuity they put on was practiced. We can only imagine the blood rushing from their faces as they retreated to more private quarters where they were confronted with the all-but-universal revulsion their testimonies produced.

Granted every opportunity by their interlocutors to condemn the antisemitic agitation that has exploded on their campuses — and many others — since the 10/7 attack that killed and wounded over 5,000 Israelis, foreign nationals, and Jews, the presidents of these institutions balked. They insisted that calls for “intifada” and “one solution” to the Jewish question need to be contextualized into something more anodyne. They maintained that this rhetoric does not constitute a violation of their rather strict speech codes, that only when words evolve into “action” — e.g. violence — are they obliged to intervene. And they said it all with a half-smile and a cocked head that conveyed their contempt for the naïveté of their inquisitors.

It was an illustrative moment. These presidents didn’t just reveal how insular the ideological hothouses over which they preside had become. The response their comments produced demonstrated the degree to which their principles burst into flames when exposed to a broader audience. On that, we don’t need to speculate. Before Congress, each of these three presidents steadfastly refused to budge from their unethical defense of anti-Jewish harassment and abuse on their campuses. Not 24 hours later, however, their tunes changed dramatically.

“Let me be clear,” read a statement from Harvard president Claudine Gay, as though someone had previously prevented her from achieving desirable clarity. “Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.” University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill performed a similar about-face. The calls on her campus “for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate,” she insisted. “It’s evil, plain and simple.”

What changed? Little more than the fact that the presidents were finally confronted with tangible pushback on their permissive policies. That must be a new experience. Previously, there were no consequences associated with retailing highly abstracted justifications for their luxury prejudices. The vilest language, the worst supremacist rationales, the most despicable justifications for discriminatory practices targeting whites, males, heterosexuals, and of course, Jews, weren’t just tolerated — they were celebrated.

Those poor demographics who occupied the lowest rung on intersectionality’s ladder of oppression were ripe targets. The fashionable anti-egalitarianism on American campuses was rewarded in the popular culture. Adherence to faddish bigotries had become a litmus test enforced through conventions like “diversity statements” and the like. Now, all of a sudden and for the first time, there are material downsides to this academic exercise — not just for their institutions but for these presidents personally.

Magill has been condemned by elected officials in her state across the board — from county officials to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Billionaire donors to her institution are pulling out. The calls for her resignation are growing louder by the hour. Gay faces a similar backlash. Demands for her resignation are coming not just from her Republican critics but the left-wing support structure upon which she relies. “It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting.” The White House has only joined the stampede of well-heeled donors running away from Harvard’s radioactive president. Their jobs and their status are now on the line.

These mewling appeals for atonement are edifying. It turns out that the inviolable principle these university presidents doggedly defended in their testimony before Congress was no principle at all. It was just the path of least resistance through the thicket of radicals these institutions have spent decades cultivating. When faced with consequences for their advocacy, their advocacy melted away.

The bigotries they retailed were not buttressed by any deep, abiding belief in the righteousness of their worldview, or they would still be defending it. There was no grand theory or high-minded ideal at stake when they went to bat for rank antisemitism. It was only a cowed response to displays of menacing power on their campuses from students, faculty, and non-faculty administrators alike. When they were confronted with greater power — political and commercial power in opposition to their pusillanimity — they folded. It was only ever about power.

There’s some comfort in that realization. The lizard-brained biases American universities have ornamented with a pseudo-academic justification don’t hold up under scrutiny, and those who subscribe to the prejudice that masquerades as enlightenment on college campuses have embraced them only out of convenience. These grotesque values are not closely held.

This is, however, a cold comfort. The backtracking to which we’ve been privy also exposes how malleable America’s most celebrated institutional stewards are. These are empty suits. They have specialized only in navigating the internal politics of their hermetically sealed institutions, and those politics are so divorced from broader American values that they might as well be wholly alien.

But at least now we have a fuller view of the scale of the threat to the American social compact the universities represent. And we know that their commitment to the supposed values that predominate these institutions is skin deep. All it takes for them to abandon their commitment to moral relativism is a real threat to their personal bottom lines. The path forward is clear.

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Source: Antisemitism on Campus: The Fashionable Bigotries of Our Elite-College Presidents | National Review