Row over hate speech in U.S. universities | Explained

Universities are thus struggling to find the right balance between protecting free speech and punishing hate speech in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict

The story so far: This week University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned following criticism of her testimony a few days prior, on December 5, at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education. Along with the leaders of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of technology, Ms. Magill was criticised for taking a soft line on punishing hate speech on campus, purportedly in defence of free speech laws. The specific subject in question at the hearing was an issue that is raging across elite university campuses across the country — a dramatic uptick in the number of anti-semitic and Islamophobic incidents against individuals in the wake of the spiralling violence after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7.

On December 5, Ms. Magill along with Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth, respectively the Presidents of Harvard and MIT, attended a hearing conducted by the House Committee on Education, where they were questioned, in the most significant segments by Elise Stefanik, Republican Congresswoman from New York, about whether their respective universities’ codes of conduct did not ban their students from calling for the killing of Jewish people. When Ms. Magill answered that the outcome for that question was a “context-dependent decision”, even in the face of some protestors on her campus calling for an “Intifada revolution”, she was criticised for giving a relatively weak reply, probably in line with the legal advice that she had received on the subject. The same applied to the replies of Ms. Gay, who is African American, and Ms. Kornbluth, who is Jewish. Both of them supplied technically correct answers that seemed to miss the broader context of the ongoing hate speech and attacks. While Ms. Magill went on to resign, and both she and Ms. Gay later apologised for their comments at the hearing, Ms. Gay and Ms. Kornbluth were said to have the support of their respective universities.

The three university presidents were summoned to testify before the House Committee by its Chair, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. The summons came after certain lawmakers said that the universities were “mishandling anti-semitic, violent” protests on campus.

In parallel to the December 5 hearings, the U.S. Department of Education has announced that it had opened an investigation into anti-semitism allegations with regards to at least six other universities, including the Tulane University in Louisiana, Union College in New York, Cobb County School District in Georgia, University of Cincinnati in Ohio, Santa Monica College in California, and Montana State University in Montana. In announcing these investigations, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights indicated that these efforts were part of the Biden administration’s intention to take action amid the “alarming nationwide rise in reports of anti-semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination.”

In numerous instances, the “hate incidents” relate to public protests held on university property. For example, at a New York high school, students stormed through the school in protest of a Jewish teacher attending a “pro-Israel rally”; at Tulane University, assaults against students and a police officer at a rally, led to three individuals being arrested and charged with hate crimes; and at Harvard, after 30 student groups signed a letter partly blaming Israel for “all unfolding violence” post October 7, members of those groups said that they faced public outrage and harassment including doxxing where their names and faces were pasted on a billboard truck driving around the campus.

Some universities including Harvard and Tulane have already started taking concrete measures to support those who have been victims of hate crimes in the present context, including increased campus security and training regarding anti-semitism. Harvard University is said to have set up a task force to aid students targeted by doxxing attempts.

A part of the problem appears to be the fact that while there are vociferous campaigns to end anti-semitism, Palestinian students at these universities allege that Islamophobia has been given considerably less public attention. Anxieties are mounting in this regard after three university students of Palestinian descent were shot in Vermont in November.