cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9392282

During a hearing on antisemitism, in front of Congress and TV cameras, the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania were asked by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik on Tuesday whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their schools’ rules on bullying and harassment.

This should not be a hard question. Calling for the murder of any race or religious group should be a non-starter at a college. Would screaming for the genocide of Blacks, Latinos, gay or transgender people be tolerated for a second in the Ivy League? Never. Nor should it be. To deny that would get you fired before you could finish your sentence.

But faced with that same simple question regarding the genocide of Jews, the presidents struggled with their answers.

(In)sincere apologies for posting this opinion piece here in c/[email protected]; normally I can take them or leave them, giornalist Mitch Albom’s articles—usually leaning towards the latter—but the piece is a good wrap-up of the recent hemming and hawing and general cowardice of some of our top university presidents. I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt that neither Dr Magill (Penn) nor Dr Gay (Harvard) are actually antisemites or Nazis (who knows?), but there are certain questions in life that have hopefully obvious, one-word answers that you just can’t skirt around.

Alternate links:

• archive.md
• 1ft.io