# Harvard, MIT & UPenn Presidents Disgrace Themselves

**Creator:** Dad Saves America
**Platform:** youtube
**Duration:** 11m
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE

## Summary

The presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania faced intense scrutiny during a congressional hearing regarding their responses to rising anti-Semitism on campus, particularly in light of recent pro-Palestinian statements following the Hamas attacks. The discussion highlighted a perceived inconsistency in how universities address hate speech and harassment, especially concerning anti-Semitic rhetoric.

- The presidents were questioned about whether calls for genocide against Jews violate their institutions' bullying and harassment policies.
- Responses indicated a reliance on context to determine whether such rhetoric constitutes actionable harassment.
- Following the October 7 Hamas attacks, over 30 Harvard student groups issued a statement blaming Israel for the violence.
- Critics argue that the universities' leadership has failed to adequately condemn anti-Semitic sentiments while being quick to address other forms of hate.
- The tone of official communications from Harvard's president differed significantly between the response to the Hamas attacks and the murder of George Floyd, suggesting bias in institutional responses.
- The current academic environment is characterized by a chilling effect on free speech, with students feeling pressured to self-censor.
- The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) ranks Harvard poorly in terms of free speech, reflecting a broader trend in elite universities.
- The discourse around free speech in academia is increasingly polarized, with a notable rejection of conservative viewpoints.

## Transcript

[[0:00]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=0s)
- The presidents of three elite universities facing questions about the rise in hate on campus. - As the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and University of
Pennsylvania are testifying before House lawmakers- - It looks like there is a
glaring hole in the policy. It doesn't appear to extend to Jews. - Dr. Kornbluth, Ms. Magill,
and Dr. Gay at MIT, at Penn, at Harvard is calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's, Pen's? Harvard's rules of bullying
and harassment, yes or no?

[[0:30]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=30s)
- If targeted individuals
not making public statements. - Yes or no. Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute
bullying and harassment. - I have not heard only for the genocide of Jews on our campus. I've heard chance, which can be anti-Semitic
depending on the context. - If the speech turns into
conduct, it can be harassment. It is a context-dependent
decision, Congresswoman. - It's a context-dependent decision. That's your testimony today? - It can be depending on the context.

[[0:57]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=57s)
- I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's
rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no? - Anti-Semitic rhetoric
when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying,
harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action. - So the answer is yes that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard
Code of Conduct, correct? - Again, it depends on the context. (intense music) - The barbarians are at the gates, folks.

[[1:29]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=89s)
How has this happened? Harvard's MBA program is
renowned for using case studies. So I think it's only fitting
that we use Harvard itself as a case study in barbarism. Let's recount a few recent
facts so they don't get lost. in the fog of war. On October 7th, over 1,400 innocent Israeli
civilians were massacred in an orchestrated, planned, and purposeful paramilitary
assault by Hamas. They came by land, sea, and air. They went door to door killing and kidnapping innocent
men, women, and children.

[[2:03]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=123s)
This was an intentional act of terrorism. It was barbaric aggression and the murder of Jews on a scale not seen since the Holocaust. And that night, while the
civilized were in shock, while I and others around the world
were rushing to WhatsApp to check on friends
and relatives in Israel and offer prayers, condolences, and help. Over 30 student groups on Harvard's campus released a joint statement by Harvard Palestine solidarity groups on the situation in Palestine.

[[2:33]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=153s)
Among these was the school's affiliate of Amnesty International. The letter which we'll link to in the notes below asserted the following. And I quote, "We, the undersigned
Student organizations, hold the Israeli regime
entirely responsible for all unfolding violence. The apartheid regime is
the only one to blame." So Israel was entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence, the only one to blame, what?

[[3:05]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=185s)
Now look, these Harvard
students were not alone, of course, as we've seen
this kind of celebration and defense of barbaric brutality swept the so-called Elite Western World. A Columbia professor
called the Hamas Attacks "Awesome, a stunning victory." A Cornell professor called
the Attack exhilarating. Pro-Palestinian protestors took to the streets producing
the rightfully infamous and again, irony-free
queers for Palestine image that's gone viral for obvious reasons.

[[3:37]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=217s)
I'll come back to this one because in a way, it's a
Rosetta Stone into the nature of the barbarism we now face. There are plenty of
condemnations of these students and professors and their
stances out there already. One can absolutely make the case, which I personally completely agree with, that they are barbarians themselves and supporters of barbarism. But here's the thing. In civilized societies,
we allow crazy, stupid, and even downright evil things to be said. That is in fact a hallmark of civilization and civil discourse.

[[4:10]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=250s)
America leads the world in this with our explicit First
Amendment Protection of free speech and dissociation. Hateful speech is protected speech still, and it still should be because the only way to
discover truth is in an open, full-throated battle of ideas. Hateful speech, as so many
have said, is defeated with more speech, not censorship. Places like Harvard claim to be the absolute vanguard in this
pursuit of truth of Veritas. So how did the institution respond?

[[4:41]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=281s)
On October 9th, two days after the 30-plus student
groups blamed the victims, Harvard President Claudine
Gay signed her name as well as many others
to a letter that was, I would say conspicuously constrained. It makes no mention of the
group's reactionary screed. One long sentence I think
best captures the posture and tone of this letter. And I quote, "We have no illusion that Harvard alone can readily bridge the widely different views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we are hopeful that, as a
community devoted to learning, we can take steps to draw
on our common humanity and shared values in order to modulate rather than amplify the deep-seated divisions and animosities so distressingly evident
in the wider world."

[[5:25]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=325s)
But, John, you may be wondering, doesn't this sound right in
tone for an institution seeking to avoid taking a stand so that all points of view can duke it out
in the battle of ideas? And frankly, my answer to
that would be yes it does. This is proper if it were
applied consistently, but it's not. See, this same Claudine Gay
wrote a very different letter in May 2020 in the aftermath
of the tragic murder of one man, George Floyd.

[[5:51]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=351s)
Though not yet the president of Harvard, she was a dean at the time. And the tone and language of
that letter speaks volumes for the bias at work, not just
with Claudine but at Harvard and every institution like it. Since I don't trust my own
biases in reading this frankly, and you shouldn't either, I decided to ask ChatGPT
to analyze both letters. My prompt was simple and as neutral as I could
make it and here it goes.

[[6:16]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=376s)
I wrote, "I am going to feed you two different letters written in the immediate aftermath
of an event signed by the same person. I would like you to
analyze the tone of both of them individually and
then compare the tone. I may ask some follow-up
questions for clarity. Are you ready?" You know you've gotta be polite with ChatGPT for some reason. Then I fed it Claudine's 2020
post-George Floyd letter. Here's a section of ChatGPT's response. Quote, "The letter's language
is strong and purposeful.

[[6:46]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=406s)
Phrases like 'Callous and
depraved actions,' 'Heartbreak and outrage,' and 'Acute
sense of vulnerability,' drive home the urgency and weight of the moment. Overall, the tone
encapsulates a mix of sadness, frustration, and a
clarion call for change." All right, fair enough. Then I fed it the October 9th letter, and ChatGPT responded with this. Quote, "The tone of the
second letter is somber but more restrained compared to the first.

[[7:16]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=436s)
Unlike the first letter, which
had a stronger call to action and a direct acknowledgment of systemic issues such as racism, this letter is more focused
on the emotional aspects and community support. The language used is somewhat more neutral and less emotionally
charged than the first. Overall, while both letters
are written in response to tragic events and aim
to address the concerns and feelings of the respective
communities, the tone of the second letter is less impassioned and more focused on communal
support and education."

[[7:46]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=466s)
Now, (scoffs) first of
all, it's completely crazy that the computer can do
this and have it be coherent. And I frankly judge it as
being less biased than me or any other human
reading these two things 'cause they are very charged. But you need to remember something. Ms. Gay was in a position of institutional authority
in both instances and both letters were posted on official university websites. So the difference in tone
reflects a difference in the institution's culture,
not just Claudine's behavior as a private citizen versus as
a university representative.

[[8:16]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=496s)
It wasn't like the bombastic
2020 was posted on her substack and then the very reserved and restrained one was
put on Harvard's website. These are relatively equivalent documents. One more bit of context you should know about the current president of our oldest and most prestigious university. She is a verified cancel culture warrior. Ms. Gay went on a successful
warpath to destroy the work of multi-award-winning
economist Roland Fryer, an attempt in an
unprecedented attack to try to strip him of his tenure.

[[8:50]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=530s)
Roland is a Black professor
from a broken home who rose to the heights of academic achievement, but dared to actually
review the statistics on the lethal use of
force by police in America against Black people. His findings not only undermine Ms. Gay's impassioned 2020 letter, but call into question crucial elements of the America as
oppressor narrative Ms. Gay and others like her across
academia push on our kids and frankly, profit from
immensely as an accepted fact.

[[9:18]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=558s)
So she canceled him in what one of Roland's colleagues called "The most cold-blooded
murder I've ever seen." It wasn't literally a
murder, but figuratively. You can get a fuller picture of this story in the
beautifully produced documentary by Rob Montz titled "Harvard Canceled Its
Best Black Professor," and we'll link to that down below. This is the person that
Harvard promoted to president of the university, an enemy of discourse, a cancel culture warrior. And though I am hesitant
to say it, a barbarian, I recently interviewed Greg Lukianoff, the President of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual
Rights and Expression.

[[9:54]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=594s)
His new book, "The Canceling
of the American Mind," lays out just how barbaric
our universities have become. The current environment
makes the McCarthy era look like an Oxford debate. Academia has become a place where debate is only entertained at best between the farthest reaches of the utopian revolutionary
left and that's kind of it. So free speech and civil discourse between radically different points of view is explicitly rejected. Free speech is now considered right-wing under the philosophy of Herbert Marcuse.

[[10:25]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=625s)
And being right-wing, as
Greg notes, is grounds enough for total cancellation and
you can simply ignore people. So it should come really as no surprise that Harvard ranks dead last and FIRE's Free Speech
Rankings of universities. It's joined at the bottom by
a civilization, murderer's row of poison ivy leaguers. If the school ranks highly in US news and world reports, it's a good bet. It's an incubator for barbarism. Super majorities of
students nationwide say both that they feel the need
to self-censor at school and that they approve of censoring others.

[[10:58]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-si67sX5_sE&t=658s)
Our kids are an irony-deficient lot. (logo whooshes) (logo whooshes)