The US House of Representatives launched an inquiry into three of America’s top universities over “rampant anti-Semitism” after their presidents failed to condemn calls by pro-Palestine protesters for genocide against Jews.

The three top education bureaucrats, Claudine Gay (picture taken at the Congressional hearing), President of Harvard University, Liz Magill, President of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all said, that calls for genocide did not necessarily contravene university policy.

This prompted public outcry as it revealed America’s Ivy League universities are run by leaders who are models of the left-wing ideology that deems the rights of certain people less worthy of protection than others. You can call for the murder of all Jews, but say sex is biological and you will be punished.

Thank goodness for  Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik who said overnight on Thursday.

“It is unacceptable that presidents of esteemed institutions like Harvard, MIT, and Penn, have not firmly condemned this hatred. Their failure to do so warrants their immediate dismissal from their positions”.

In attempts to retain their jobs both Liz Magill and Claudine Gay, went into damage control:

“I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human ­beings can perpetrate,” Liz Magill said in her subsequent video.

President of Harvard University, Ms. Gay contradicted the words she had spoken at the Congressional hearing. First of all, she said: “I am sorry, Words matter.” she then explained what had gone wrong. “I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” she said. “Substantively, I failed to convey what is my truth.”

Few phrases are as reliable as “my truth” for identifying seasoned purveyors of cant and doubletalk. Truth isn’t something that can be identified or modified by a possessive pronoun. If my truth is different from your truth and your truth is different from her truth, these aren’t truths. “My truth” is the device deployed to elevate the particular viewpoint of a member of a particular group or identity, by claiming the validation of the “truth” for a narrow ideological cause.

And this is what we saw last week at that hearing — the narrow, exclusive intolerance of the ideology that has our universities in its grip.

The university president’s response to Rep. Elise Stefanik’s question was a lie cloaked in “a truth”. They claimed to operate their approach to free speech on what we might call the Voltaire principle: I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

But that isn’t how these places work. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression puts Harvard dead last in its ranking of colleges by the climate of free speech. Penn is second to last. The principle that actually operates on these campuses is Lenin’s: I disagree with what you say, and I will do all I can to prevent you from saying it.

Adapted from an article in The Australian, Wednesday 13th Dec. 2023 by Gerard Baker “Higher Education’s slide from Veritas to My Truth”.