If anyone needed another reason not to go into hock to send their kids to an “elite” university, they certainly got one this week when the three female presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce. Pressed to explain the widespread pro-Hamas protests by leftist students, with their anti-Semitic and anti-Israel chants that have terrorized Jewish students, the three stooges of the left dodged and dissembled, refusing to condemn this vile and violent hate speech as bullying or harassment, or to say that it violated their codes of conduct. They suggested it was “free expression” and had to be considered “in context.”

This from the same people who have spent the past few years firing, expelling and censoring any professors, students or guest speakers who dared to express a moderately conservative thought or even an unassailable fact, like that men can’t wish themselves into being women. But when their leftist students start holding the equivalent of Nuremberg Rallies on their campuses and chanting for a Jewish genocide, suddenly, they become defenders of free speech – even though open threats of violence are among the few legal exceptions to free speech protections.

The public backlash against these noodle-spined enablers of Hitler’s Harvard fan club was swift and furious. Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy declared that his company will no longer hire Harvard, Penn or MIT grads, and I think he’s probably one of many business owners thinking that, he just said it out loud.

One of them is hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who previously called on Harvard to release a list of all the student groups that signed that statement blaming Israel for Hamas’ attack so that he and other CEOs will know not to hire them. He’s given millions to Harvard in the past, but he says he’ll never donate again. He called on all three school presidents to “resign in disgrace” for their “utter moral bankruptcy.”

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2023/12/06/resign-in-disgrace-bill-ackman-excoriates-the-failed-leadership-of-harvard-mit-and-u-penn-n2167235

These academics seem to be notoriously slow learners, but even they quickly realized how badly they’d botched it because within 24 hours, they were already releasing video statements backtracking. NOW, they’re condemning threats of genocide against the Jews as “vile,” and claiming they just weren’t “focused” when they answered the question.

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2023/12/06/harvard-president-under-intense-pressure-to-resign-now-says-threats-to-jewish-students-are-vile-n2167247

https://redstate.com/terichristoph/2023/12/06/watch-here-comes-the-groveling-apology-video-from-penns-president-n2167265

I am as close to a free speech absolutist as any conservative Christian is likely to be, and I certainly didn’t attend Hah-vahd, but I don’t need 24 hours to think it over when asked if calling for a second Holocaust is acceptable on-campus speech.  

What’s happening in our streets and on Ivy League campuses is looking all too familiar to anyone who knows the history of the 1930s.  In the lead-up to the Holocaust, most of the world’s population thought that talk of annihilating Jews was just over-the-top political hyperbole.  It seemed so preposterous that the highly-educated elites in Europe and the US dismissed it as impossible.  Only after eleven million murders, with six million of the victims being Jews, did the world declare, “Never Again!” There was a profound sense of guilt and regret that the threat to Jews, the infirm, the elderly and those who spoke up in support of Jews was not taken seriously until it was too late. 

“Never again” means we can’t sit by silently and let this cycle of evil repeat itself.  If university presidents are just too plain dumb or cowardly to lead the battle to protect all human beings, especially including the Jews from genocide, then we at least need to send our children and our money to institutions run by people who haven’t lost their minds and their decency.