UPenn, Harvard and MIT: U.S. Colleges find themselves at the centre of debates surrounding free speech and antisemitism

Photo Courtesy: Tom Dempsey on X

Earlier this month, three college presidents became embroiled in a contentious controversy over answers given regarding on-campus antisemitism.

These questions come as the result of a rapid increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at multiple colleges across the U.S. in the wake of the recent conflict in Israel and Palestine since October 7th.

Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative from upstate New York, interrogated the presidents - of University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT - at a Congressional hearing on December 5th. Ms. Stefanik asked whether they would consider students calling for the genocide of Jews against their schools’ codes of conduct, controversially referring to pro-Palestinian protest phrases that some Jewish students view as threatening.

However, the three presidents failed to answer Ms. Stefanik’s direct question, instead offering vague answers that danced around the subject of free speech, which is emphasised as a priority for these institutions - despite Harvard being the college with the worst free speech ranking, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Elizabeth Magill, President of UPenn, came particularly under fire for arguing that her decision to punish antisemitism against students was a “context-dependent decision”.

Some news outlets have pointed out the legal training that the presidents underwent before the hearing, with Ms. Gay and Ms. Magill both having been prepared by lawyers from the firm WilmerHale. Other specialists have analysed their responses, arguing that the presidents got too absorbed in a legal perspective, which raises further questions concerning their critical thinking abilities. Speaking to Bloomberg Law, Joshua Galper advised that the presidents should have understood that it was “a question about principles” and that they needed to “read the room”.

Conversely, some individuals have come to their defence. David Lat - a well-known legal writer, who is married to a Jewish man and is a Harvard alumnus himself - issued what he called a “partial defence” of Harvard president, Claudine Gay. Denouncing the deliveries of their answers, he argued that Ms. Gay was technically correct in her alignment with the school’s policies on free speech, definitions of harassment, and avoidance of “free-speech selectivity”.

Since then, there have been many developments on the matter: Ms. Magill’s resignation, deliberation on Ms. Gay’s future at Harvard, and even a satirised reenactment of the hearing on the popular American sketch show, Saturday Night Live, which was also met with widespread criticism.

U.S. colleges have seen mounting tensions over the conflict since October 7th, many in relation to free speech. Columbia University has found itself at the centre of much of this, having announced the temporary suspension of pro-Palestinian groups, and the closure of their campus due to divided simultaneous protests.

The Anti-Defamation League found in November that three in four Jewish students in the U.S. have encountered antisemitism in some form this year; Cornell had an incident where a student posted graphic death threats to an online forum, while several leading institutions have recently joined the long, steadily-growing list of American schools under investigation by the Education Department for discrimination, including Stanford.

Journalists, students and schools themselves continue heated debates on the matter. Ms. Gay and Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT who is Jewish herself, both remain in their positions, with Harvard issuing continued support of their president.