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Opinion | The College Presidents and the ‘Genocide’ Question [1]
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Date: 2023-12-07
To the Editor:
Re “3 University Presidents Criticized for Remarks on Antisemitism” (news article, Dec. 7):
The presidents of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. all failed in their congressional testimony to state unequivocally that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their campus policies, instead stating limply that it would depend on the “context.” Several legal scholars seem to agree that “context” is part of the balancing act for free speech.
As an American Jew holding two degrees from Harvard (one from Harvard Law School), I disagree vehemently that “context” matters. The clear exception to “free speech” has always been falsely calling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, for its propensity to result in harm to a panicked audience.
The same spirit holds true in calling for genocide of any people, for its propensity to result in harm to others. One need not wait for that harm (or in this case, mass death) to occur in order to curtail such hateful, dangerous speech.
And while universities should encourage debate, even over contentious issues, the constitutional right to free speech involves only government constraint. A private university is free to establish its own guidelines for what constitutes acceptable debate, and calling for genocide is clearly not acceptable — as all three presidents could easily have said immediately without legal contortions.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/opinion/college-presidents-genocide-antisemitism.html
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