To add to Anne’s point – that the grandiosely named “Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the University” is not above analysis – there is now such analysis from the New York Sun.
Concerning the group’s flagrant double standards, its editors write:
The professors say they are in favor of “the free exchange of ideas” … , but among the signers of the petition are two scholars, Everett Mendelsohn and J. Lorand Matory of Harvard University, who led the fight to oust Harvard’s president, Lawrence Summers, for his sins of speaking out in favor of America and Israel.
They say they are against “outside groups seeking to influence what is taught, “but they raise not a peep against the tens of millions of dollars pouring into American universities from Saudi princes and Persian Gulf governments that are hostile to Israel.
So bring on more analysis. The more these academics show their face, the more apparent their two-facedness.