If you wanted to sum up the near parodic state of liberal academia in the US, the response of the then president of Pennsylvania University, Elizabeth McGill, to a question about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated its rules on harassment, would do the job nicely. “It’s a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman”, she said. This is a lawyer’s answer – and Dr McGill is a lawyer – to a question that called for an unequivocal response. Elizabeth McGill fell right into the elephant trap laid for her by a Republican congresswoman, Elise Stefanik. She has now resigned.
The heads of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT were appearing in a five hour Congressional hearing this week into the protests at leading American universities about the situation in Gaza which featured protesters calling for intifada – a clip of those protests was played at the start of the hearing – which has made Jewish students and teachers understandably fearful and upset.
