For generations, Harvard University has been the premier venue for post-secondary, professional and graduate education across North America. In the last six months or so, two events have seriously diminished Harvard’s pre-eminence.The first was the retirement of Harvey C. Mansfield, after nearly sixty years of teaching at Harvard. He was also a Harvard undergraduate (class of 1953) and a 1961 Harvard PhD. Apart from a brief exile to the University of California, Berkeley, Mansfield has been from start to finish a Harvard man.Moreover, he remains arguably the most important living political philosopher in the world. After all, somebody must be.He is best known for his splendid book Manliness, which I have assigned for several years to my first-year students and for his several book-length studies and translations of Machiavelli.Mansfield’s absence from the classroom and from the supervision of graduate students means a serious voice dissenting from wokeism at a great university will have been quietened, if not silenced. A few years ago, another Harvard luminary, James Hankins, a historian, discussed what he called “the honour deficit” in the context of badly behaved students.Specifically, Hankins warned the decline of academic standards would entail the decline of academia.Harvey C. Mansfield was known to many of his detractors among the undergraduate student body as Harvey C-minus Mansfield because of this practice of assigning a “real” but private grade that a student deserved along with an official, inflated and “Harvard” grade that went on the student’s record.Mansfield’s retirement meant that scholarly rigour at Harvard suffered a serious blow.The second event, which confirmed the descent of Harvard to the common denominator of the university as a purveyor of adult day-care, can be found in the testimony by the president of the university, Claudine Gay, before a congressional education committee. Gay was awarded a Harvard PhD in 1998 in political science — or “government,” as they call the discipline there. She appeared before the committee with two other presidents from elite east-coast universities, all of them scripted, self-righteous, and smug. They were appearing before the committee to discuss the question of anti-semitism on their campuses.In her opening statement, Gay remarked that “antisemitism is a symptom of ignorance and the cure for ignorance is knowledge.” The motto of Harvard is Veritas, Truth. The cure for antisemitism, one may reasonably conclude, is a Harvard education.The highpoint of her testimony came in an exchange with Representative Elise Stefanik, a 2006 Harvard alumna, also in government and currently a Republican from upstate New York.Stefanik first asked if calling for the extermination of Israel was “protected speech.” Silence from all the administrative luminaries.“Dr. Gay,” asked Stefanik a number of times, “does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” She added, “this should be the easiest question to answer.”Gay assured the committee that antisemitic speech “is personally abhorrent to me.” Good to know, but Stefanik asked whether calling to the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules regarding bullying and harassment, not what Gay’s sensibilities were.Asked again, Gay replied that calling for the genocide of Jews “can be” bullying and harassment, “depending on the context.”Stefanik: “It does not depend on context. The answer is yes.” Because Gay was unable to understand the irrelevance of “context” where genocide was involved, Stefanik said: “this is why you should resign.”Gay did allow that, when antisemitic speech, which likely would include calling for the genocide of Jews, “crosses into conduct,” that would amount to bullying and so would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.Just to be clear: calling for genocide of Jews is OK at Harvard, but actually conducting genocide is bullying and bullying can get you expelled!Not everyone accepted Gay’s reasoning.Larry Summers, a previous Harvard president and Harvard PhD (1982), broke with precedent and condemned his successor’s handling of the Hamas issue. Indeed, he said that the Harvard administration was “at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.” Bill Ackman, Harvard BA (1988) and MBA (1992), billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management and historically a major donor to Harvard, called for Gay to “resign in disgrace” for her moral obtuseness. Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-Massachusetts), scion of a prominent New England family and yet another Harvard graduate (class of 2010) said Gay offered a “word salad approved by committee.”If calls for genocide do not violate Harvard’s code of conduct, what does? Which is a polite way of saying such a code of conduct is worse than useless. The bottom line is obvious: antisemitism has become protected speech at Harvard. For shame.
For generations, Harvard University has been the premier venue for post-secondary, professional and graduate education across North America. In the last six months or so, two events have seriously diminished Harvard’s pre-eminence.The first was the retirement of Harvey C. Mansfield, after nearly sixty years of teaching at Harvard. He was also a Harvard undergraduate (class of 1953) and a 1961 Harvard PhD. Apart from a brief exile to the University of California, Berkeley, Mansfield has been from start to finish a Harvard man.Moreover, he remains arguably the most important living political philosopher in the world. After all, somebody must be.He is best known for his splendid book Manliness, which I have assigned for several years to my first-year students and for his several book-length studies and translations of Machiavelli.Mansfield’s absence from the classroom and from the supervision of graduate students means a serious voice dissenting from wokeism at a great university will have been quietened, if not silenced. A few years ago, another Harvard luminary, James Hankins, a historian, discussed what he called “the honour deficit” in the context of badly behaved students.Specifically, Hankins warned the decline of academic standards would entail the decline of academia.Harvey C. Mansfield was known to many of his detractors among the undergraduate student body as Harvey C-minus Mansfield because of this practice of assigning a “real” but private grade that a student deserved along with an official, inflated and “Harvard” grade that went on the student’s record.Mansfield’s retirement meant that scholarly rigour at Harvard suffered a serious blow.The second event, which confirmed the descent of Harvard to the common denominator of the university as a purveyor of adult day-care, can be found in the testimony by the president of the university, Claudine Gay, before a congressional education committee. Gay was awarded a Harvard PhD in 1998 in political science — or “government,” as they call the discipline there. She appeared before the committee with two other presidents from elite east-coast universities, all of them scripted, self-righteous, and smug. They were appearing before the committee to discuss the question of anti-semitism on their campuses.In her opening statement, Gay remarked that “antisemitism is a symptom of ignorance and the cure for ignorance is knowledge.” The motto of Harvard is Veritas, Truth. The cure for antisemitism, one may reasonably conclude, is a Harvard education.The highpoint of her testimony came in an exchange with Representative Elise Stefanik, a 2006 Harvard alumna, also in government and currently a Republican from upstate New York.Stefanik first asked if calling for the extermination of Israel was “protected speech.” Silence from all the administrative luminaries.“Dr. Gay,” asked Stefanik a number of times, “does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?” She added, “this should be the easiest question to answer.”Gay assured the committee that antisemitic speech “is personally abhorrent to me.” Good to know, but Stefanik asked whether calling to the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules regarding bullying and harassment, not what Gay’s sensibilities were.Asked again, Gay replied that calling for the genocide of Jews “can be” bullying and harassment, “depending on the context.”Stefanik: “It does not depend on context. The answer is yes.” Because Gay was unable to understand the irrelevance of “context” where genocide was involved, Stefanik said: “this is why you should resign.”Gay did allow that, when antisemitic speech, which likely would include calling for the genocide of Jews, “crosses into conduct,” that would amount to bullying and so would violate Harvard’s code of conduct.Just to be clear: calling for genocide of Jews is OK at Harvard, but actually conducting genocide is bullying and bullying can get you expelled!Not everyone accepted Gay’s reasoning.Larry Summers, a previous Harvard president and Harvard PhD (1982), broke with precedent and condemned his successor’s handling of the Hamas issue. Indeed, he said that the Harvard administration was “at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.” Bill Ackman, Harvard BA (1988) and MBA (1992), billionaire CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management and historically a major donor to Harvard, called for Gay to “resign in disgrace” for her moral obtuseness. Representative Jake Auchincloss (D-Massachusetts), scion of a prominent New England family and yet another Harvard graduate (class of 2010) said Gay offered a “word salad approved by committee.”If calls for genocide do not violate Harvard’s code of conduct, what does? Which is a polite way of saying such a code of conduct is worse than useless. The bottom line is obvious: antisemitism has become protected speech at Harvard. For shame.
