Neal Milner: College Presidents’ Legalistic Response To Antisemitism Ignored Real-Life Fears

In the congressional clash that got them into trouble, prominent college presidents leaned on legal niceties that came off as callous.

Recently the presidents of three Ivy League universities testified at a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on college campuses. It was a disaster.

The presidents’ responses seemed so bloodless, clueless and heedless. They no doubt felt victimized.

Maybe so, but they are also perpetrators and enablers.

The presidents were prepared for discussions about the law, but totally unprepared for the spectacle and style of a congressional committee.

They looked bad because the presidents were talking from one perspective. The committee members came at it from another.

Critics talk emotionally about antisemitism while the presidents talk quietly and oh-so-judiciously about the law.

Talking in legal terms takes the passion out of the argument precisely because that is what law is supposed to be — a dispassionate set of rules allowing a judge to act, as Chief Justice Roberts once put it, as an umpire. Law establishes boundaries, dampens things down and makes reasoned distinctions.

From this perch, what the presidents did was legally correct.

But law has another function, less abstract and really more human. Law is a language ordinary people use to expressive themselves. “The law” is not just what the law says. It’s also what you want it and even imagine it to be. It is a way people frame and comprehend their concerns, hopes, and fears.

In this sense, it’s not about the law and procedure. It’s about antisemitism and fear. Safety rather than due process.

Antisemitic graffiti outside the entrance to Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu had to be removed Saturday. (Allan Kew/Civil Beat/2023)

Are these meanings official? No. Are they powerful? Yes, as the antisemitism controversy shows because those sentiments are at the root of something like this: “Don’t you big shots know anything about antisemitism and how it has increased in the U.S. even before the Hama terrorist attack? Our children are afraid. We are afraid. An existential issue and you are dispassionate, unfeeling so-called leaders are treating it as if it’s a hypothetical in a constitutional law class.”

Here is a real example of how the two views differ. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand who called for those presidents to resign, said, “You cannot call for the genocide of Jews, the genocide of any group of people, and not say that that’s harassment.”

Yes, you can, because in the context that the presidents were talking about harassment is a legal and administrative term, and part of a system of rules.

Someone with proper authority needs to interpret the rule, test its applicability in light of the facts and use set procedures to decide.

That’s why the presidents’ “it depends” and “context matters” answers were so on point. And so disgusting to the critics

For these critics, those answers are at best yada yada and at worse offensive. You campus leaders, you are screwing around while our college children feel afraid.

Gillibrand’s position assumes that the answer to her harassment question is “yes!”, and such a powerful yes that nothing else has to be said or investigated before declaring that “from the river to the sea” is on its face threatening enough to ban.

The presidents’ reliance on law got them in trouble because they operated on the assumption, or at least the hope, that their legal responses were definitive enough to stem the tide of anger and fear. Enough to allow university officials to use the proper procedures necessary to get the job done.

It’s ironic, or maybe desperate, for the presidents to fall back on legalistic free speech arguments when they have allowed their students and faculty to do things that threaten a free speech culture.

What’s sauce for the goose …

During the past few years, universities have allowed students and faculty to stop a person from speaking on campus because they were offended by the speaker’s ideas — a heckler’s veto. People have been fired because of their ideas. Members of a campus community have been punished for “micro-aggressions.” There is an exquisite sensitivity toward some groups and some people. Jews are not one of these groups. Neither are many others.

Should be sauce for the gander …

I think hate speech codes are dangerous and counterproductive because they bend too far backwards to accommodate a student’s feelings.

If controversial ideas make a student uncomfortable, so be it. That’s part of the learning process. But if an institution is going to have them, they need to apply across the board.

There’s a bigger argument here against academic theories that Jews can’t be the victims because they are white or because they are “settlers.”

In a development that has never happened in my lifetime, Jewish students and their parents are choosing colleges based on how safe they are.

The bottom line is, as Jonathan Haidt says, that by their actions over the years as well as their recent committee testimony, the presidents are now saying: “Jewish students are not a favored group, so offending or threatening Jews is not so bad. For Jews, it all depends on context.”

That double standard is, he says “institutional antisemitism.”

That kind of antisemitism requires much more than the law to stop. Because law can only go so far to fix things. There needs to be an actively implemented understanding that antisemitism is a moral issue that is a threat to democracy.

Cut way back on hate speech codes and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. They help students by strengthening their sense of identity. Keep that, but also help students understand that they have multiple identities that a single focus will miss.

There is a lot more to say but too little time here to do it justice. So, let me just add this: Antisemitism is obviously important by itself, but it’s also a symptom of bigger things that are wrong with university faculty, students and administrators.

In a development that has never happened in my lifetime, Jewish students and their parents are choosing colleges based on how safe they are.

Understandable, and if I still had college age children, I’d also want them to attend a college whose faculty and administrators don’t operate in ways that made enablers out of the three college presidents.

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