Hamas’s Barbarity Heightens the Crisis in Higher Education Jewish students bear the brunt of colleges’ culture of intolerance, conformity and ‘safe spaces.’ By Michael R. Bloomberg
The barbaric attack by Hamas against Israel—the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians, including children and babies, and the taking of hostages—should have been a unifying moment for America. Shamefully, it has become something else: a wake-up call about a crisis in higher education.
It has been painful to watch students at elite colleges implicitly or explicitly endorse Hamas’s attack. They aren’t old enough to remember 9/11, and it’s clear they never learned its lesson: Intentionally targeting civilians for slaughter is inexcusable no matter the political circumstances.
For Americans, this isn’t a matter of defending Israel but of defending our nation’s most sacred values. One can support the Palestinian people and still denounce the intentional slaughter of civilians.
Why have so many students failed to do so? The answer begins where the buck stops—with college presidents. For years, they have allowed their campuses to become bastions of intolerance, by permitting students to shout down the voices of others. They have condoned “trigger warnings” that shield students from difficult ideas. They have refused to defend faculty who run afoul of student sentiment. And they have created “safe spaces” that discourage or exclude opposing views.
College presidents have also allowed campuses to become institutions of conformity. In a 2014 commencement speech at Harvard, I warned that many of America’s top colleges had become Soviet-like in their lack of viewpoint diversity. As I noted, 96% of donations from Ivy League faculty and staff in the 2012 presidential election went to Barack Obama, while only 4% went to another Harvard alumnus, Mitt Romney.
Over the past decade, this combination of campus conformity and intolerance has only gotten worse. It is no surprise that support for terrorism, dressed in the language of social justice, has emerged from this environment. The road to tyranny and genocide lies in refusing to countenance a challenge to one’s definition of justice and pursuit of it. That is precisely the culture universities have been coddling if not cultivating, and they are now reaping what they have sown.
When students haven’t been taught to engage in constructive argument and debate, they default to slogans and slurs. As this has happened, it’s fair for students to wonder why schools that issue trigger warnings for classic novels allow groups to scream for intifada.
Similarly, the public has wondered why some college presidents who were quick to condemn the murder of George Floyd were slow to condemn the murder of 1,200 Israeli citizens. Others might wonder why the presidents issued no statements on Sudan’s civil war or the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Instead of issuing statements on selective issues, college presidents should adopt the policy the University of Chicago has stuck to since 1967, when it declared: “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” Only a few other universities, including North Carolina and Vanderbilt, have adopted this policy.
I understand why some donors are angry with college presidents who failed to condemn Hamas, but the best response isn’t to demand that presidents issue more or stronger statements. We should demand that they stop making them altogether. Let students and faculty freely debate issues on their own, even when speech makes people uncomfortable.
To be clear, no student should ever feel physically intimidated or unsafe going to or speaking in class, as many Jewish students have lately. Students who wish to hurl epithets and reveal their bigotry should be able to do so, but they can’t throw rocks. They can chant slogans, exposing their inability to communicate in ways that college students should be capable of, but they can’t issue violent threats or disrupt others’ studies. Any student who runs afoul of those basic principles should be thrown out of school, and any outsider who does so should be removed from campus. That is the obligation college presidents owe matriculating students.
As part of addressing this crisis in higher education, presidents and deans should make a priority of hiring faculty with greater viewpoint diversity to teach students how to engage in civil discourse, while challenging and expanding their minds. Professors may resist, but administrators must make clear that such diversity is a requirement of academic freedom.
Trustees have a crucial role to play in holding presidents accountable for this work. Running a school and managing professors is difficult and complex, as administrators well know, but organizational complexity can’t be an excuse for faculty conformity.
The bigotry infecting campuses will spread until college presidents directly address its causes and their own role in fostering them. If not now—as students cheer the intentional slaughter of civilians—when?
Mr. Bloomberg is founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies. He served as mayor of New York, 2002-13.
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