University presidents bullied by Stefanik should stay on the job
They need to fill the shoes of Edward R. Murrow during McCarthy's heyday
300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20001
Phone: 202-465-8728
December 11, 2023
President Claudine Gay
Harvard University
114 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
President Sally Kornbluth
Office of the President
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Room 3-208
Cambridge, MA 02138
Re: Correct, balanced, and courageous responses to hypothetical posed by Congresswoman Elsie Stefanik during December 5, 2023, hearing
Dear President Gay and President Kornbluth:
Remain on the job. Do not contemplate resignation.
We salute your defense of free speech in refusing to be bullied by Congresswoman Stefanik into unconditionally promising to expel a student who hypothetically called for genocide of Jews during a congressional hearing. It speaks volumes that the Congresswoman eschewed a broader hypothetical addressing any genocide, for example, genocide of Palestinians, Uighurs, Native American Indians, or other national, religious, or ethnic groups.
You correctly understood that even speech advocating violence is shielded from punishment under the First Amendment unless the advocacy is imminently likely to beget such violence under the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). Absent circumstances which the Congresswoman failed to provide; you could not know whether the speech of the hypothetical student would have satisfied Brandenburg.
Of course, expelling a student from a private university is different than a criminal prosecution. But free speech principles are at their zenith in university settings. The Supreme Court elaborated in Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 224 (1957):
The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise, our civilization will stagnate and die.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes emphasized in dissent in U.S. v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929), “if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Anthony Lewis picked up where Holmes left off in his widely acclaimed book, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment (Basic Books 2010).
As Ms. Stefanik was badgering you over a hypothetical genocide, a genuine genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza was occurring with her enthusiastic support in voting weapons for the Netanyahu regime. The Israeli government's siege of Gaza is calculated to create conditions of life to destroy them physically in whole or in part: “No food, no water, no power, no medicine, no fuel, no electricity, no shelter” according to the defense minister and other high-level Israeli officials. The siege fits the definition of genocide in section 2 of the Convention like a glove. It is open, notorious, and aggressively executed by the Netanyahu administration.
The siege has been accompanied by industrial scale bombings of homes, places of worship, marketplaces, journalists, refugee camps, water mains, hospitals, ambulances, United Nations clearly marked relief sites, schools, roads, everything in sight. Babies clinging to life in incubators have foreseeably died because of the siege. Reported Palestinian deaths approach 20,000, with the true number probably many times higher. More than 80 percent of the entire civilian population in Gaza have been displaced and confront death by disease, starvation, or bombing.
These facts establishing genocide are inarguable. Yet Stefanik has eagerly implicated herself by voting unconditional military assistance to the Israeli government to facilitate the crime of crimes. She is more concerned about hypothetical genocides than real ones for which she bears responsibility as an enabling legislator.
We strongly urge you to resist Yahoos screaming or agitating for your resignations. Censorship and self-censorship are running amok indistinguishable from McCarthyism. It is contagious, and we hope or expect you will fill the shoes of Edward R, Murrow on See It Now in 1954.
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein Esq. HLS 72
Ralph Nader Esq. HLS 58
I watched the questioning and she did not bully them. They were cowards who could not say the chants were wrong. You are one sided in your beliefs.