I won’t weigh in on the underlying controversy. Setting it aside, the congressional testimony made it clear that President Gay is terrible at important aspects of her job. She was ill prepared for the hearing and did not represent Harvard well.
I agree with this article's comments more than the article itself. Some people in academia, like President Gay, are wildly out of touch with the general public.
> We condemn calls for genocide, as does President Gay — a point she made clear, if it wasn’t already, in a post-hearing statement.
The questions posed to President Gay, and her relevant responses, from The Harvard Crimson[0]:
> “At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” Stefanik asked.
> “It can be, depending on the context,” Gay responded.
> But Stefanik pressed Gay to give a yes or no answer to the question about whether calls for the genocide of Jews constitute a violation of Harvard’s policies.
> “Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action,” Gay said.
> Stefanik tried again.
> “So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard code of conduct, correct?” Stefanik asked.
> “Again, it depends on the context,” Gay said.
> “It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes and this is why you should resign,” Stefanik shot back. “These are unacceptable answers across the board.”
One may interpret that how one wishes, but it certainly doesn't seem Gay is willing to actually make a solid answer in response to fairly direct questions, in the context of student groups using things that can be rather directly interpreted as calling for the elimination of the Jewish state by force.
The questions couldnt be answered with a yes or no though, it does depend on the context. Protests for genocide are allowed, harassing individuals is not. I think she laid out there philosophy pretty clearly.
What does this even mean? Protests against a genocide would obviously be allowed, but what is “protest for genocide”? Protest in support of genocide? If yes, then i don’t see how it makes any sense at all.
I don’t think that’s what the issue with those slogans is.
People aren’t debating whether “protesting for genocide” is ok or not. I think an overwhelming majority would agree that public demonstrations calling for genocide support aren’t ok.
What people are actually debating is whether those two slogans would count as calls for genocide, which is the real point of contention. If they don’t count as calls for genocide, then they are fine. But if they count, that would definitely not be appropriate at all.
No, people are debating whether protesting for genocide is ok. I agree with the uni presidents, they agree the slogans are calls for genocide but admit they are allowed to be protested for as long as individuals arent being targeted. Nazi rallys also allowed. White nationalist rallys also allowed.
The universities were just being consistent - calls for genocide were supported before, and sure didn't result in congressional hearings, so why should it be different now?
Not specifically President Gay, so this is somewhat off-topic, but:
I suspect that an awful lot of those people "calling for genocide of Jews" are also people who, a year or so ago, were saying that "speech is violence".
Back to on topic:
Personally, I think that if you're going to ask universities to allow speech that they don't agree with when it's conservatives, then you have to ask them to allow speech that they don't agree with when it's anti-Israel. Sauce for the goose, and all that. So I personally don't have a problem with President Gay's words in this case.
I hear things about Harvard allowing a history of intimidation against Jews, though, and while she's saying reasonable things here, I'm not sure that the reality on the ground matches her words. But I'm not at Harvard, nor watching it closely, so that could be an inaccurate summary of events.
