I find it sad that she has to resign for that and not for covering for the blattant antisemitism of the campus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/16/us/jews-harvard-antisemit...
- "Disgraced former Harvard President Claudine Gay is finally back picking cotton where she belongs"
- "I think the black students should be picking cotton, not studying at Harvard"
Those quotes are also protected under the 1st amendment. Regardless, they're so unbelievable vile, and the merits of the expression are so vacuous that it has virtually no value for mind-expanding endeavors that universities claim to be for. Similar to calling for a genocide.
The interactions that people got mad at were part of a longer exchange of wordplay set up by the congressperson.
The hearing was not in good faith.
I know that at least one of the universities (Penn?) they otherwise suppressed pro-Palestinian speech, including banning groups and presentations.
Of course the premise is that the answer must be one of the two, but you need to establish that premise. It's the claim of a heavily polarized group (which doesn't make it false, but I'm not taking it at face value either).
Is there evidence of it? In all the claims I've seen, I haven't seen evidence.
There is a long tradition of permitting academics to say things that we wouldn't normally allow people to say. The people saying these things normally need to back up their words in a long written argument with citations, etc, and do so in a fairly passive way (IE, publish it as an article in a journal, rather than an op-ed in a newspaper, or during a protest). Even then there can be a firestorm (see the response to The Bell Curve).
I'm pretty sure if we look back we can see historically that academics called for violence against Jews, Asians, Muslims, and many other ethnicities. At times, people have completely supported academics in their privilege, typically when the statements align with their own philosophies. Imagine what people said right after Pearl Harbor.
University presidents want to keep everybody happy- that includes professors, students, and people outside the university. A president like Gay probably thought that by making the statements she did, she was pissing off the fewest people- preserving academic freedom for professors while also carving out a space for protestors to say rather violent things. That sort of subtlety doesn't work when you're being grilled in front of congress- they want you to say "yes or no" (notice all three presidents were asked, and confirmed, their believe that Israel has a right to exist) with no context. If Gay had said "no it's not OK" then she would have returned to a firestorm by students on her campus, and if she said it was OK, then she would have returned to a different firestorm on campus.
I think a lot of the news coverage around this has unnecessarily heightened the level of severity in the claims of the protestors. I imagine many people who called for intifada didn't realize that some folks would perceive that as a direct attack on their lives. We already know many students don't know which river, or which sea is being referenced.
Of the three presidents, Kornbluth of MIT is the only one who will survive this. She has an excellent publication record, the full and total support of her institution, she is much smarter than Stefanik, and it helps that she's Jewish, because people levelling "antisemitism" claims against her just look kind of silly.
If I were doing their media prep, I would tell them to just ignore the questions and launch into fiery monologues about freedom of speech, liberty, American values, etc instead. Maybe accuse one of the unfriendlies of antisemitism and political grandstanding.