Thoughts About Presidential Leadership And Antisemitism On College Campuses

University presidents Liz Magill, Sally Kornbluth, and Claudine Gay recently were questioned, and often grilled, over their responses (or lack thereof) to antisemitism on their campuses following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Since the December 5 congressional hearing, Magill resigned from her role at Penn, and there have been calls for MIT’s Kornbluth and Harvard’s Gay to resign as well.

The presidents vehemently protected free speech on their campuses, which is essential to the production of knowledge. Some questions asked by the House committee members were hypothetical while others were related to specific activities on the Penn, MIT, and Harvard campuses. At one point Rep. Elise Stefankik (R., N.Y.) asked the presidents if calls for the genocide of Jews violate their campus rules of conduct. Rather than emphatically saying “yes,” the presidents did not answer in a direct manner.

They instead tried to explain the difference between hate speech and the incitement of violence. They, like most academics, said context matters. Magill, stated, “If the speech becomes conduct it can be harassment” — failing to realize that our academic understanding of “context” is often lost on nonacademics. Like Magill, the presidents of both Harvard and MIT were pushed to answer the same question: Would they ban speech that called for the genocide of Jews? Neither president provided a direct response, and both noted that context matters.

To provide a more nuanced, and better understanding of how leaders and scholars are responding to the presidents’ testimony at the hearings as well as accusations of failing to address antisemitism on their campuses — I talked with a wide variety of individuals.

According to Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor in Penn’s Graduate School of Education, “Most reports on the hearing focused on Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who grilled the presidents about whether they’d ban speech that called for the genocide of Jews. The presidents responded cautiously and appropriately: It depends on the context. Is ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free’ a call for genocide? To some people, yes. But if it doesn’t threaten direct and immediate intimidation or harassment to a member of our community, we cannot — and should not — prohibit it.”

Zimmerman added, “I understand why so many people were offended by Magill’s reply. Instead of responding emotionally, she answered like a lawyer by conveying the facts. Hateful speech is indeed protected—under the Constitution and Penn’s own rules—so long as it doesn’t pose an immediate threat of violence, harassment, or intimidation.” According to Zimmerman, “Magill simply repeated that fact without conveying her outrage about genocide and antisemitism.”

Don Heller, retired provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of San Francisco, was “disappointed with the testimony of the presidents.” He feels that they “focused too narrowly on policies and procedures that promote and regulate free speech on their campuses, and did not express enough moral outrage and compassion regarding the impact of some of that speech that had been occurring.”

Heller offers a nuanced view of the president’s testimony. “On the one hand, it is easy to label the criticism of the presidents as Monday-morning quarterbacking, condemning them based on the way their testimony was analyzed by the media and others,” he says. “But it is not unreasonable to expect these three women – leaders of among the most prestigious, elite, and wealthy universities in our country – to have demonstrated their leadership more effectively.”

Concerned that the presidents paid too much attention to lawyers, Heller notes, “It is undoubtable that the preparation they received from lawyers – as noted in an article in The New York Times – was terribly misplaced and likely helped set them up for failure. Their narrow and legalistic approach to answering the committee members’ questions made them appear cold and unsympathetic to the plight of Jewish students on their campuses who were suffering from and had complained about antisemitic attacks.” However, Heller believes there is a lesson for presidents in this experience: “They should spend less time listening to their lawyers, and more time attempting to engage with parties on their campuses who feel aggrieved,” he says.

According to Walter Kimbrough, the former president of both Dillard University and Philander Smith College, (both Historically Black Colleges and Universities), “The hearing was set up to be a no-win situation, not an opportunity to really explore a complex issue, but for grandstanding by a few members of Congress.”

“But the task was even greater for these three presidents who collectively had less than three years of presidential experience.” Kimbrough adds, “They relied too heavily on the lawyers when a more experienced president may have had a better sense as to how to navigate this minefield.”

From the perspective of Larry Moneta, the former vice president of student affairs at Duke University and an adjunct professor at Penn, “Not to condemn overt calls for genocide was a complete failure.”

“It was a failure of inadequate preparation, inept guidance and incompetent leadership,” Moneta says. “A university president has to be able to finesse a public response that makes clear institutional and personal values while preserving the ability to maneuver effectively back on campus. Application of ‘context’ is a tactical matter….condemning any form of violence is the only acceptable strategic response.”

Moneta also drew upon his personal experience. “It’s been clear to me throughout my 50-year career that antisemitism is, for the most part, thought to be a petty annoyance by administrators rather than the perverse prejudice it is,” he says. Moneta adds that “As a child of Holocaust survivors, my antennae for antisemitism are always on high alert and evidence of its pernicious presence on campuses can always be found. I despise the notion of competing biases, but would welcome authentic and comparable Jewish support.”

Pointing to political theatrics and antisemitism being a new “cause célèbre” of the far right, Moneta says: “The politicization of antisemitism may be the hardest pill for me to swallow. The far right desperately wants to tear down American higher education and have now clamped onto the plight of Jewish students as their cause célèbre. But, that crowd benefits politically from extreme accusations of ‘leftist liberal bias’ throughout higher education.”

He adds, “Not for a minute do I believe the MAGA crowd to be my saviors. Nor do I expect that termination of college presidents is their primary objective. Institutional approaches to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) may have [their] problems, but demonization of all diversity efforts under the convenient trope of ‘woke’ simply lets the right pander to their base and frighten the uninformed into siding with them.”

Providing further explanation for his thoughts, Moneta shares, “I lament the shift of the far left to various unreasonable and unhealthy partnerships. Being supportive of Palestinian lives does not require calls for the death of Israelis and Jews. Cheering on Hamas is simply disgusting. Cries of “from river to sea” are equally perverse. Full stop.”

Karen Gross, the former president of Southern Vermont College and a tenured law professor of 20 years, is concerned about the fallout for women and women of color leaders as a result of the hearings.

“I am worried about an issue that many are not raising but that is in their minds. When three women presidents from prestigious institutions, one of whom is of color, fail to answer a straightforward hypothetical about whether genocide of Jews violates their respective university rules, will those who are skeptical of women of all races and ethnicities serving as leaders take this opportunity overtly or in the recesses of their minds have a prejudice (or reinforced prejudice) against women in leadership roles prospectively? And, will this whole debacle diminish — consciously or subconsciously — the hiring of very qualified women to high positions?”

Gross finds it hard to fathom how all three highly intelligent, accomplished leaders failed to answer, as if they were in “lockstep and scripted.” She shared, “OK, one ill-advised president could provide an inappropriately fuzzy answer,” she says. “Perhaps even two. But all three? Did they all get the same advice and accept it without qualification? Where did their individual independence of thought, their moral North Star and their courage go?”

“All three presidents could have answered the Stefanik’s hypothetical with more than the word ‘yes,’ Gross adds. “Of course, ‘yes’ is the minimum acceptable answer. They could have answered: ‘YES, overtly calling for genocide of Jews, and I would add any other group, violates our institutional rules and norms, and if these rules don’t state this explicitly enough, they must and they should and they will.’ ”

Gross assumes that none of the leaders were properly prepared for the “obvious follow up question” if they answered Stefanik’s hypothetical with ‘yes, Genocide of Jews violates our institutional rules and norms.’ The obvious next question, according to Gross is: “Would you expel or suspend the offending students?” For Gross, there is an obvious answer: “There are many forms of ‘punishment’ that a student disciplinary board could impose (the decider of these issues on our campus) including but not limited to suspension or expulsion or more restorative/rehabilitative approaches like mandated hours meeting with Holocaust survivors/relatives and visiting Holocaust memorials in the U.S. and reporting on them to the campus.”

Sadly, according to Gross, “I think the three presidents were running scared of many things including offending some students and lawsuits for First Amendment violations. In so running, they missed a remarkable opportunity to lead in troubled times and share their moral fiber for the benefit of their institutions and the larger world to see. We live in complex troubled times; our educational leaders can give us guidance but sadly, in this instance, they failed to do so.”

Deborah McDowell, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, tells me via email that she is concerned about the “donor class that overpopulates university boards of trustees.” She commented on X and also paraphrased in that email to me, “It’s all about the money, about appeasing donors. I am not standing atop anybody’s intellectual Mt. Olympus, but it seems to me that if you are heading one of the “leading” institutions in the land, you should be able to think on your feet. This was a hearing, not a court of law.”

McDowell adds, “But at the same time (and without contradicting myself), I deplore the racist, sexist vitriol being hurled at these women. As long as universities let the donor class set their agendas, their presidents’ tongues will be tied and their heads will roll.”

What do today’s presidents do amid current political and social realities? How do they navigate free speech on campuses? According to Moneta, “We need a reasoned discussion of the boundaries of speech and other forms of expression not under the pressures of the crisis du jour. I lean to more speech than less speech…but not to overt calls for violence of any sort.”

“I can’t imagine being a college or university president today,” Moneta adds. “But if I were, I hope I’d have the sense to err on the side of students, faculty and staff safety, to proactively engage my community in difficult discourse, to speak out more often than not, to take guidance from multiple perspectives and not just from my public relations or legal staff, to think before I act, and to know when I need help.”

Kimbrough, who is known for his student-centered approach to presidential leadership, shared that one issue for him is “which issues a president should respond to.”

“If a random student ‘calls’ for some action, does that necessitate a statement or response?” Kimbrough asks. “What about a random group of students? And if a student or students calls for some action, will anyone listen and heed their call? It seems that sometimes we give more oxygen to incidents than they deserve, when they can be addressed appropriately in other ways.”

Although they have different views, the scholars and leaders I talked with are all concerned about the future of leadership at colleges and universities. Who will control leadership? Who will step up to lead? Who will have the courage to make difficult decisions? How much influence should outsiders have on college and university leadership? And unfortunately, who will be cancelled?