On January 2, 2024 headlines blared as on the first work day of the new year a story that had been boiling over for quite some time reached its final crescendo: Harvard University President Claudine Gay was resigning, although she will remain a tenured professor there. So ends a major chapter in American campus politics - although it by no means addresses the broader cultural issues there. In response Glenn Greenwald took the stance that this is part of a wider campaign to silence critics of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians, even though he acknowledged elsewhere that the allegations of plagiarism against her were well grounded.
This viewpoint stands out amidst a sea of other commentators who can be grouped into two broad categories:
Those who campaigned actively to sack Gay because of her lackluster stance on a number of alleged campus incidents of Jew hatred stemming from the October 7 Hamas attacks and the resultant Israeli invasion of Gaza. Others felt that the plagiarism discoveries were more than enough to justify her removal.
Those who defended Gay on the grounds that she was being consistent with maintaining an atmosphere of academic freedom, or felt she was targeted because of her race and gender. Al Jazeera English commentator Marc Lamont Hill for example demanded her replacement be another black woman.
While his stance doesn’t feet neatly into either category, Greenwald is again misguided in categorizing this as a free speech issue. I previously criticized him in November for his dismissive attitude towards safety concerns of Jewish students within campus communities, and emailed him my newsletter warning him that this was more than just an issue of free speech. The reactions to Oct. 7 did indeed include a lot of crude and offensive speech that nevertheless should be covered under the First Amendment, however up until then Harvard’s record on other topics related to free speech was appalling. For example in 2019 they rescinded the admission of Parkland High School student Kyle Kashuv due to older tweets from when he was 16 years old that included racist language. In 2022 feminist philosopher Devin Buckley was disinvited from a panel discussion over her views on gender and sexuality.
Greenwald is reacting to the furor over the reaction to Oct. 7 that was spearheaded by hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, and he has pointed out past statements and positions of Ackman on COVID and other issues that are best described as anti-liberty. Ackman for his part has come forward to say that he has discovered a lot of the rot rooted in Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies as a result of campus activism responding to Oct. 7. Indeed, he would seem to have moved at least publicly from being a lifelong neo-liberal to now retweeting populist Vivek Ramaswamy’s takedowns of reporter demands that he condemn racism. I think that in the interests of having a real conversation on this, Ackman and Greenwald should have a sit-down discussion, and really address how to protect free speech while also fixing academia. Those should both be goals.
But after all this is about Claudine Gay and October 7, so what are my thoughts about it? From the beginning I’ve written here and elsewhere that no matter how appalling the violence against Israelis on that day, I will not call for the banning of offensive speech whether in real life or online. This is not only because I hold free speech to be the most cherished constitutional right we have. It’s also because thanks to their ability to speak freely we can now see the ugly true selves of many supporters of the Palestinian cause. For example today the “MAGA communist” podcaster Jackson Hinkle tweeted a meme comparing released Israeli hostage Mia Schem to a baboon.
A day earlier the notorious 9-11 hoaxer Ryan Dawson (who is coincidentally feuding with Hinkle over petty social media engagement) tweeted a video to attack a Jewish man with Down Syndrome as a result of inbreeding. In the past Twitter had censored both of them completely, and yet through alternative platforms they maintained a consistent following. Now their bilious views can be seen by the entire world. One could argue that it would be better for such garbage never to be seen, but then how would we be able to recognize who these people are?
Similarly, the Claudine Gay saga was a painful but necessary episode. Her weak and shallow commentary on Oct. 7 in comparison to past statements on the death of George Floyd exposed Harvard’s selective commitment to the lives of victims of violence, but it wasn’t a good reason for her to be fired. Rather, this created the impetus for intrepid researchers like Christopher Rufo to dig into her work and unearth that her entire academic career is a fraud. The raucous demonstrations by pro-Palestine supporters also showed that they are not a peace movement but one that glorifies and exults in violence.
I understand the hazards of targeting administrators for their political views, but this story has moved past that because something tangibly wrong was discovered. Would Glenn Greenwald rather that Claudine Gay continue in her position now that everyone knows that she cribbed a lot of her work from others without giving them credit? He has to face the reality of the present given the knowledge we now have.