The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology emphasized the importance of free speech on campus when pressed during a Tuesday congressional hearing on how antisemitism was allowed to run rampant at their respective institutions, which have in recent years failed to defend the First Amendment on countless occasions in the name of protecting marginalized communities.
Addressing lawmakers in front of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce Tuesday morning, Harvard president Claudine Gay condemned Hamas’s brutal attack and the resulting antisemitism on American campuses. Asked how antisemitism had become rife on her campus in particular, Gay emphasized that all points of view are tolerated at Harvard, which was ranked dead last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) 2024 college free-speech rankings.
“When we recruit faculty, we do so with the understanding that they are joining a community where we honor, celebrate, and nurture open discourse both on the campus and in the classroom,” Gay told committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.).
Sally Kornbluth of MIT agreed, stressing the importance of valuing free expression and noting that her university allows professors “to say what they’d like in the classroom.” She also made clear her belief that “speech codes do not work,” that the best way to combat speech with which one disagrees is more speech, not limiting opinions deemed outside the bounds of acceptability.
This focus on freedom of speech within higher education is new for these presidents. Seventy percent of students at Harvard — which Gay described as a bastion of intellectual discourse and expression — “say shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus is at least rarely acceptable,” according to a FIRE study, and over half report self-censoring on campus out of fear for their reputations.
“I don’t think it’s an accurate representation of how Harvard treats free speech on campus,” Gay said when Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) mentioned the FIRE ranking. When Walberg asked how Gay could justify that claim, given the myriad instances of faculty being sanctioned for speech and guests being disinvited from speaking on campus, she said that the university’s commitment is not solely to free expression but to ensuring that speech is “exercised mindfully and with empathy for others.”
When Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) confronted Gay over the chants of “intifada” that can be heard on Harvard’s campus, Gay demurred, saying the calls for violence do not breach the university’s code of conduct.
Representative Kevin Kiley (R., Calif.) asked Gay whether she understands why people might have a problem with the fact that Harvard has “literally the worst record in the country on free speech, and it was only once chants of ‘globalizing the intifada’ and disrupting classes and harassing students” began that she feels compelled to defend free expression. Once again, Gay said Harvard has a strong commitment to free speech and ideological diversity.
MIT, for its part, ranks 136th out of 248 universities on FIRE’s list. Seventy-three percent of its students believe that shouting down a speaker to prevent them from expressing ideas is an appropriate tactic for combatting beliefs with which they disagree and, like Harvard, over half of MIT’s student body fears being ostracized for saying something out of step with prevailing attitudes on campus. That university also has a history of disinviting speakers once students on the left lodge complaints, FIRE reports.
Both universities have been the sites of antisemitic incidents since the Hamas attack of October 7. Student organizations at Harvard signed one of the first statements blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack, and pro-Palestinian students accosted an Israeli student at a Harvard “die-in.” When the university belatedly announced its initiative to combat antisemitism, 112 faculty members signed a letter opposing the effort.
At MIT, pro-Palestinian students violated university policy by holding a rally that disrupted classes in a building not meant for demonstrations. University officials promised suspensions for those who did not disperse after receiving a warning, but ultimately issued “non-academic” punishments after, according to Kornbluth, the realization that suspension from the university could threaten those students’ visa statuses.
Before the hearing, House Republicans held a press conference where four Jewish students described what they have faced on campus. Talia Khan, president of MIT’s Israel Alliance, recounted being told that Israelis at a music festival attacked by Hamas “deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.” She said that when she spoke up after a post-doctoral fellow repeated claims that “Jewish Israelis want to enslave the world in a global apartheid system” and that “Israel harvests Palestinian organs,” a DEI officer told her that “nothing he said was hate speech” and that the organ-harvesting conspiracy theory and blood libel is “confirmed.”
Eyel Yakoby, a student at Penn, explained how he, “along with most of campus, sought refuge in our rooms as classmates and professors chanted proudly for the genocide of Jews” Sunday night. He described the comments he has heard from those students and faculty members at Penn, which include such remarks as “the glorious October 7” and “you’re a dirty little Jew, you deserve to die.”
“I refuse to go back to 1939 when Jews had to hide their religious symbols and hide who they are due to the intimidation and harassment of us,” Yakoby said. “I used to think this was nonsense, fear-mongering, until I was made aware that Penn recommended students not wear clothing-slash-accessories related to Judaism.”