The disastrous testimony of three elite university presidents before a House committee in Washington continues to ripple across American college campuses and has cost one president her job.
The presidents of MIT, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard were caught off guard by questioning from Congresswoman Elise Stefanik(R) of New York when she asked each whether calling for the “genocide of Jews” on campus would violate school policy.
Remarkably the answer was not a simple “yes” as the presidents seemed to be caught in a First Amendment trap of their own making. Saturday the president of Penn resigned and the fate of the president of Harvard could be decided at a meeting scheduled for Monday.
Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, appeared on CNN Friday to make clear that a “call for genocide” is without question a violation of basic codes of conduct.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that the same law firm – WilmerHale – prepared both the presidents of Harvard and Penn for their congressional testimony.
In the court of public opinion, common sense often supersedes legal theory.
