The university presidents called before a congressional hearing on antisemitism last week had more in common than strife on their campuses: The leaders of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT were all women who were relatively new in their positions.
In that sense, they represented the changing face of leadership at top-tier universities, with a record number of women leading Ivy League schools.
Now Penn’s president has resigned over a backlash to comments that she said did not go far enough to condemn hate against Jewish students. And Harvard’s president is facing calls to step down from donors and some lawmakers.
While the Israel-Hamas war has deepened rifts at campuses across the country, the three leaders were invited to testify as the public faces of universities embroiled in protest and complaints of antisemitism. The Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce chose the three presidents because their schools “have been at the center of the rise in antisemitic protests,” a committee spokesperson said in a statement.
Congrats to every news outlet that covered this ambush hearing breathlessly, you’ve done exactly what House Republicans wanted you to do. The thin façade of pearl-clutching over anti-semitism, from a caucus that courts neo-Nazis, was utterly transparent. But they wanted to attack elite universities, and every news outlet gave them a megaphone and context-free coverage.
Journalists still haven’t learned how to cover an extremist party that has no policy agenda and is only interested in culture wars and scoring political points.
This. It was all gotcha and nothing about stopping antisemitism. E-Lies Stefanik is a total piece of shit.
Don’t forget all of the fauxtrage coming from alumni and talking heads.
