Having taught college English in my younger days, I have some sense of the arrogance, isolation and entitlement of those tenured pseudo doyens, particularly college administrators. They’re making the big bucks and have many letters following their often-hyphenated names, so by virtue of their positions—highly paid for very little actual work—they prima facie must be superior beings. They so often act the part, an act hyper-charged by “working” atop the Poison Ivy League.

Imagine the unlimited self-regard of the university presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn, Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth and Liz Magill, respectively. Actually, one need not imagine it. When they recently appeared before Congress, they demonstrated it by refusing to answer direct questions, smirking, and in general, behaving as the self-imagined academic elite. And about what were they so self-absorbedly tone deaf?

They refused to condemn the worst and most widespread antisemitism seen on this continent in generations, wrapping their moral depravity in the First Amendment.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R--NY) did a reasonably good job letting them indict themselves as moral microbes. After all, how hard is it to clearly, and without sidestepping, condemn antisemitism and the genocide it is spawning? For Gay, Kornbluth and Magill, impossible.  They refused to say whether advocating violence and genocide violated their campus codes of conduct.

Watching such spectacles, I’m often amazed when those asking the questions don’t ask the most obvious, telling questions in response to slippery witnesses. A case in point being the supremely smug Claudine Gay of Harvard. I’m waiting for the next Harvard grad to announce that fact so I can reply with the utmost sincerity: “Oh, I’m very sorry.”

It was Gay who repeatedly claimed students crying for the blood, the mass murder of Jews can’t really be condemned nor punished. It’s a matter of context, you lesser beings.  How could you fail to understand such nuance? Oh that’s right; you’re not capable of nuance, are you (que smug smirk)?

Here’s what I wished Stefanik had asked: “Context? Context like the Holocaust? 10-07?  Iran and its proxies daily swearing genocide against Israel and all Jews? Context like your students doing the same, physically threatening and even assaulting Jews? Context like genocide listed as the reason for being of Hamas and Hezbollah in their founding documents? Context like those terrorists raining rockets on innocent civilians, stabbing, raping, mutilating, kidnapping, shooting and blowing them to bits? That sort of “context?” How about the context of purposely allowing your students to be cruel and abusive, to behave like savages toward others on your campus? Is that the standard of the civilized, Harvard scholar? Is that the “veritas” for which Harvard strives? Are those the kinds of people you educate and intend to send into the world? How’s that for context?

Sadly, the university presidents didn’t have to evade any such questions. Instead, they hid behind the First Amendment. Unfortunately for them, as the Supreme Court noted, students don’t leave their rights at the schoolhouse gate. However, schools can regulate speech and behavior for legitimate educational purposes. If anarchy reigns, no learning takes place. Tinker v. DesMoines is the relevant case. 

As they left the hearing room, they surely must have believed they’d won. After all, they always had all of academia, the media and much of Congress on their side. They were female university presidents, diverse, inclusive, equitable and invulnerable.

Then the UPenn Trustees had an emergency meeting after a donor withdrew a $100 million dollar pledge. Even for schools with multi-billion-dollar endowments, that’s real money. Magill and Gay released typical non-apologies, but Liz Magill was suddenly out, and the shock waves began to reverberate throughout ivy-covered halls. It turns out a substantial number of Americans, and most importantly, wealthy university donors, are still decent people who tend to take the barbaric slaughter of innocents, and genocide, seriously. They also tend to intensely dislike people who don’t, and particularly snot nosed college kids who think that kind of demonic barbarism a good thing. Even some congressional democrats have been forced to at least pretend to harbor decency.

Whether Gay and Korbluth will face the same fate remains, as this is written, unknown.  Perhaps a message sufficiently powerful to wipe the smirks off the faces of university presidents has been sent and received. Perhaps they really can feel shame? Perhaps October 7th really has changed the world for the better, if only to expose the putrid moral decay of so many Americans and our institutions of higher indoctrination. Or perhaps our university presidents and faculties will only go into hiding until this latest storm blows over.

Also unknown is whether even nuclear weapons can eradicate the arrogance, isolation and entitlement of our over-educated and under-schooled self-imagined elite.

image: commons.wikimedia.org,  public domain