WSJ breaks down Stanford's fence-sitting response to antisemitic hate
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University leadership that celebrates free speech selectively—i.e., for students chanting for Hamas to “smash” Israel, but not for scientists disproving school lockdowns or judges speaking at club meetings—is either part of the Woke mob or afraid of it, says the Wall Street Journal's Ruth Marcus. Marcus recalls Stanford's ousting of president Tessier-Lavigne, based on journalism now considered questionable, and wonders if his unpopular views on free speech had anything to do with it.
After Hamas massacred some 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, many Stanford students marched in support of the terrorist group, chanting “2, 4, 6, 8, smash the Zionist settler state.” University leaders responded with a statement supporting “academic freedom,” including the “expression of controversial and even offensive views.”
This is the same university where administrators last year undertook an Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative, which published a catalog of words and phrases to be removed from the school’s websites. Among the proscribed terms: “American,” “immigrant” and “blind study.”
Stanford’s motto is “let the winds of freedom blow,” but many administrators and faculty want it to blow only from the left. Denouncing anti-Semitic protests wouldn’t chill academic freedom on campus; it would serve as a desperately needed show of moral clarity amid a tempest of false equivalence.
But cowardly university leaders are afraid of provoking leftist professors and staff. Recall what happened to Stanford’s previous president. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, announced his resignation in July following a series of reports in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, that accused him of research fraud. Much of the reporting turned out to be inaccurate, but that didn’t matter. The die had already been cast against him....
It’s no secret that Mr. Tessier-Lavigne had many enemies on the faculty. He irritated leftist professors by refusing to denounce Hoover Institution scholars, such as Eric Hanushek and Scott Atlas, who argued against lockdowns and school closures....
Whether or not faculty were behind the take-down of Mr. Tessier-Lavigne, the allegations of fraud became a convenient pretext to give him the heave-ho. The lesson is clear. When leaders at Stanford and other universities refrain from denouncing anti-Semitisim in the name of “free speech,” it’s probably because they’re scared of being driven into exile by radical professors.
This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing here.
Related:
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Berkeley dean: “Never in my life” has antisemitism so pervaded local colleges
“More disappointed than shocked”: Stanford student org pres on Woke college takeovers
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