In response to university presidents who seemed hesitant of cracking down on antisemitic remarks, Nikki Haley said the solution was to take away their colleges’ tax-exempt status and ban TikTok.
‘It was disgusting to see what happened,’ she said of the antisemitism hearing on Capitol Hill that drew gasps throughout the country. ‘If this had been the KKK doing protests on the campuses, every one of those presidents would have been up in arms, and this is just as bad.’
Harvard President Claudine Gay said that calls for the genocide of Jews do not violate the school’s code of conduct ‘unless they translate to action.’
Haley listed off a slew of higher education policy changes:
‘It was disgusting to see what happened,’ she said of the antisemitism hearing on Capitol Hill that drew gasps throughout the country. ‘If this had been the KKK doing protests on the campuses, every one of those presidents would have been up in arms, and this is just as bad’
‘We have to get foreign money out of our universities, you have Arab money, Chinese money and others, and we need to go to every university and say you either take foreign money or American money, but the day of taking both are over. And the second thing we need to do, Biden made a mistake not including anti-Zionism in the definition of antisemitism. If you think that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist, that’s anti-semitism, and the third, we need to ban TikTok once and for all.’
She said universities need to be put on notice: ‘If you’re not going to protect these students and acknowledge antisemitism, we’ll take your tax exempt status away.’
Universities enjoy non-profit status which makes them tax-exempt.
Gay said it ‘depends on the context’ of whether calling for genocide violates Harvard’s conduct rules, though calling such words ‘abhorrent.’
It would only be actionable, she said, if the hate speech crossed into ‘conduct’.
After ferocious backlash and a donor boycott, Harvard’s Gay released a statement today insisting she’d been misunderstood.
‘There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students.
‘Let me be clear: Calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account,’ she said.
Harvard President Claudine Gay at the congressional hearing yesterday where she said calling for the genocide of Jews does not violate the school’s code of conduct
Gay released this statement on Wednesday amid growing calls for her resignation
Elizabeth Magill, Penn’s president, also demurred on the question of whether calling for genocide constituted harassment.
Rep. Elise Stefanik asked Magill, ‘Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?’
Magill replied, ‘If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.’
Stefanik pressed the issue: ‘I am asking, specifically: Calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?’
Magill, a lawyer who joined Penn last year with a pledge to promote campus free speech, replied, ‘If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.’
Stefanik responded: ‘So the answer is yes.’
Magill said, ‘It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.’
Today, students from the schools along with some of the shocked Republicans present at the hearing say it is clear that all three must resign.
The boards of each school – which ultimately decide whether the women will remain in their positions – are yet to make their positions clear.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth – who is Jewish – was equally condemned for her remarks. She is yet to walk them back
UPenn President Liz Magill is yet to apologize for her comments or retract them
MIT president Sally Kornbluth said when asked the same question: ‘I have not heard calling for the genocide of Jews on our campus.’
Condemnation rolled in from all sides, even Democrats.
‘It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: Calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,’ said a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates.
On Wednesday evening Magill too apologized for her words.
‘In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the U.S. Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,’ she said in a video. ‘I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil — plain and simple.’
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