What Penn Got Right and Wrong about Antisemitism on Campus Last Fall
Readers may find that six links in this unpublished op-ed are blocked from connecting to their source: https://brandeiscenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/University-of-Pennsylvania-Title-VI-Complaint-1_Redacted.pdf. All six go to a formal complaint filed on November 9, 2023, by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law with the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights under the title, “Civil Rights Violations by the University of Pennsylvania.” These six links appear in the op-ed followed in the text by parenthetical page references to that document. This essay was completed on February 9, 2024.
A series of incidents occurring at the University of Pennsylvania last fall, culminating in Penn president Liz Magill’s fateful Congressional testimony (in which she failed to say that calling for “the genocide of Jews” would necessarily violate the school’s code of conduct) and her subsequent resignation, brought widespread charges that the university had ignored or even encouraged an outburst of antisemitic “hate” on its campus. As the war between Israel and Hamas continues and students have now returned to campuses throughout the country, it pays to look back at what Penn got right and wrong in its handling of this volatile subject so as to minimize future confrontations.
Even before the savage assault by Hamas on Israeli civilians on October 7, precipitating the ongoing war, the fall semester at Penn began with a provocative event: a high-profile, three-day conference in September showcasing Palestinian literature and political activism. The university took heat for allowing this conference to go forward, because some of the invited speakers had been accused of making antisemitic statements in earlier appearances. But in greenlighting the conference, Penn did something right that was important. Universities exist to promote the pursuit of truth in both research and education. This pursuit, as John Stuart Mill pointed out almost two centuries ago in his classic, On Liberty, requires the widest berth for the free expression of ideas. Only in this way can wrong-headed and even dangerous assertions be shown to rest on erroneous facts or faulty logic, while truthful elements might be discovered within even the most unpopular positions.
As long as speakers did not threaten any individual or group, or use foul language in their presentations, Penn was correct to refrain from stepping in to halt the conference. Some critics said that the Penn administration should at least have rebutted any statements made at the conference that could be construed as antisemitic (see link at p. 12). But this is not the job of a university administration. The academic committees and departments responsible for setting up and endorsing the conference should have arranged in advance for a wide range of views to be represented, thus enabling criticism and reflection to be built into the conference itself. It sounds like these sponsoring bodies did nothing of the sort, which points to a deep, underlying problem at Penn and other universities: the lack of value placed on viewpoint diversity among its academic staff. This was something Penn got wrong, though the fault lay with the university’s faculty more than with its administration.
When Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, slaughtering some 1200 people and dragging another 240 people back to Gaza as captives, Penn’s president equivocated before issuing a statement of condemnation (see link at p. 15). Critics pointed to the hypocrisy of university presidents quickly condemning other national or international atrocities, like the killing of George Floyd or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but then hesitating over what to say about an attack on Jews and others in Israel. Here, Penn walked into a mistake of its own making. Universities should not be in the habit of supporting or condemning any political event, precisely because to do so undermines a university’s special mission of promoting the all-sided pursuit of truth. All viewpoints must feel welcome at a university, and that can’t happen when the top officer of a school – and that goes as well for department chairs and other institutional heads – embraces a political position. (Former president Magill might have spoken as an individual citizen about the Hamas attack, provided she made clear she was not representing Penn in doing so.)
When a number of incidents of vandalism and harassment hit Penn’s campus – including a swastika found painted inside a campus building; a man entering the school’s Hillel center, overturning furniture and yelling an anti-Jewish obscenity; a pro-Palestinian demonstrator shoving a bystander; a library staffer tearing down pictures of Israelis held hostage by Hamas (see link, at p. 17); graffiti, “The Jews R Nazis,” discovered on a door next to a Jewish fraternity; an Israeli flag ripped down from atop an Orthodox Jewish residence hall (see link at p. 18); pro-Palestinian slogans projected at night on campus buildings; and antisemitic threats left on the voicemails of some Penn staff members (see link at p. 21) – Penn’s campus police acted with swiftness in investigating these incidents and apprehending a few of the perpetrators. Penn got this right, assuming it goes forward with disciplinary actions where merited. However, it should have done more to rein in campus protesters when they blocked pathways, took over a section of the student union, or interfered with the ability of students to study quietly in the library, as was reported (see link at p. 17).
When a Jewish student group tried to show a documentary film critical of Israel, Penn told them to wait several months until tensions had cooled. This was a mistake. Not only was there little reason to believe that the film showing would have resulted in violence, but even if that threat were real, it’s the university’s job to provide police to safeguard any legitimate educational function and, if necessary, to bar outsiders from attending a campus event.
In response to criticism from organizations like the Anti-Defamation League concerning some of these instances, former president Magill agreed before she resigned to add “antisemitism awareness” to the topics already covered in Penn’s mandatory diversity orientation sessions. This, too, was a mistake. Colleges should not be in the business of teaching morals or civics. That job is best left to families, religious bodies, primary and secondary schools, and voluntary organizations. There is little evidence that so-called diversity training can accomplish its stated goals, while it more reliably puts a chill on the voicing of unpopular views. There is no reason, in the case at hand, why, for example, such propositions as that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, or even that the nation of Israel should not exist as a refuge for Jewish people, abhorrent as these notions are to me and many others, should not be civilly voiced and debated at a university. Teach-ins, provided they make every effort to present a wide range of contexts and views, offer ideal settings for universities, led by their faculties, to take up even the most controversial subjects.
Finally, President Magill’s resignation itself did not need to happen. No doubt she answered the question posed to her toward the end of a grueling Congressional hearing poorly, for which she did try to make amends in the days that followed. (She is certainly no antisemite.) Her confusion at the time, as at many other times throughout the fall semester, however, reflected a fundamental failure, common to university leaders today, to understand and articulate just how free speech and academic freedom should function when confronted by radical political passions. This failure has been evident for years, leaving Penn and many other universities open to the charge of hypocrisy in defending free speech only when it fits with the left-leaning political views shared by those who currently dominate these campuses. A college president who was more sure of the proper boundaries separating academic freedom from politics might have been able to stand up to the forces that drove her out of office.
In going forward, the general rule for Penn and other colleges should be that universities need to become less permissive about disruptive behavior and more permissive about unorthodox ideas.
