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.
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