Dear Congresswoman,
(How A College President Might Respond At A Congressional Hearing)
Dear Congresswoman,
I understand and share your concerns.
Of course, calling for the genocide of Jews is hate speech, bullying, and harassment. Of course, I condemn it.
But this is a complicated, difficult, and loaded situation. That is true on our campus just as it is in these halls where I note, suddenly Democrats are now dividing from Democrats, Republicans from Republicans along new fault lines created by this horrible war. The same, I know, is happening in communities across the world. Everyone feels upset and frightened and desperately wants to be able to do something.
Everyone is shouting. Some of us are shooting. I do not think that is helping.
At our university, we are doing our best to keep the campus safe and to educate those in our charge. Yes, right now our best is a long way from good enough.
But we have a three-hundred-year history of entertaining unpopular ideas and, however troublesome it may be for someone in my position, we also have a long history of campus activism. We are lucky to employ the most honored and revered experts on the subjects of history, politics, speech, good and evil and many of them disagree with me, with you, and with each other.
Am I able to identify and condemn what I see as hate speech? Yes. But then what? Should I expel these students? Should I have them arrested? If I do that and a year from now students march against President Biden or candidate Trump and call them murderers should they too be expelled or arrested?
I do not want any anti-semitism or any islamophobia on campus. I also want those operating on the fringe of decency to come back to the fold of civility and debate.
I am often upset by what people say and do and I am deeply concerned about what debate now looks like on my campus. In my view, the protestors would be better off going to class to learn from our faculty and spending as much time in our library as possible. That is how they will become more effective agents of change, and how they will be best equipped to make the world a better place in the future. Indeed, I fear that you, like the protestors, misunderstand that a university like ours is an odd place chronologically. Our mission largely does an end-around the present. We study the past in hopes we can improve the future. And one form that better future arrives, Congresswomen, is in upgraded versions of me and of you too. My job is to help produce the next generation of college presidents and congressmen, leaders who do their job in the future better than we are doing ours.
The people protesting now do not see it that way. They want me to be exclusively focused on the now.
Should we shut down our athletics department and send that money to support refugees from Gaza City? Some of them might say yes. I do not agree, do not see that as our school’s mission, or making that happen my job. Should we shutter our engineering program and send those professors and what we pay them to support Israel? Some would say yes. I do not agree, do not see that as our mission nor doing that as my job.
Indeed, Congresswoman, I remind you, as I would remind the protestors who will not listen to me when I go out into the quad to speak with them, that if our university somehow made Israel or Palestine its chief cause, we could never do as much for those places in the immediate as could this body, the body to which you belong.
Because my job is to try and influence the future. Your job is to influence the present. And surely America's foreign policy and the money we spend on our military and on foreign aid more directly influences a war 6000 miles away than anything we do as kids and teachers on our campus. I would politely but emphatically suggest that it is the debate with your colleagues you should be focused on. Given what you do and what I do shouldn't we be talking about the cost of higher education? Shouldn’t you be cross-examining college presidents about that? Dragging me down here for a scolding to virtue signal that you are a true defender of Israel and I am somehow an anti-semite may serve clicks on the internet and it may even highlight my failings, but I don’t see how it serves your constituents, my students, or me as an American citizen.
Again, my job is to keep people safe and provide a place for them to learn from each other, from our faculty, and in our wonderful facilities. Right now I am largely failing at that job. I am largely failing at the job despite a hardworking and patient staff of security and administrators and faculty—and many students too—who are all doing their best to keep a frighteningly overheated situation from igniting into something worse.
We condemn anti semtisim. We condemn Islamophobia. We condemn hate speech.
But it isn’t that simple.
As a human being, I stand with the people of Israel AND the people of Palestine. If your solution to a problem is to slaughter someone, you and I disagree about the fundamentals of what solves problems and what it means to be alive.
As an American citizen, I wonder if this hearing is the best way for my tax dollars to be spent. But O.K., it is not the first time I have had that kind of thought.
As an educator, I ask people of all faiths, beliefs, and disciplines to come into classrooms to do the hard but vital work of talking about difficult and uncomfortable topics. So long as we are talking we are not shouting or shooting.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you here, Congresswomen, and am indeed sorry there is so much shouting on my campus.
If you have a magic wand to help us talk better, Congresswoman, please come to campus and wave it for us. We would be grateful. Certainly, you and any of your colleagues welcome to join us anytime. You would be honored guests.
But otherwise, as I know better than most what it means to be sent to the principal’s office, I wonder if I can go now to get back to school to try and do my job.