Some colleges have drawn backlash this week from their students and on social media for vague statements acknowledging Hamas’s attacks on Israel. Now criticism is coming from another corner: other college presidents.
In a message addressed to the University of Florida’s Jewish alumni, President Ben Sasse called the Hamas attack “evil” and condemned other institutions for not doing the same.
“This shouldn’t be hard,” he wrote. “Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to ‘provide context’ and try to blame” the victims, he wrote. “In other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists.” (Reports of beheaded babies have come under scrutiny.)
Administrators from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, including its president, Asher Cohen, sent letters to the presidents of Harvard and Stanford Universities on Wednesday for their “shockingly feeble condemnations” of “Hamas’s recent barbaric assault on Israel.”
The letters say each university “is the world’s lighthouse of academic research and teaching,” but that their statements did “not meet the most minimal standards of moral leadership, courage, and commitment to truth.”
Harvard’s statement, issued Monday and signed by its president, Claudine Gay, and 17 other administrators, said they were “heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas.” They also acknowledged the “emotional toll that these events are taking,” and emphasized a “commitment to fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy, appealing to one another’s thoughtfulness and goodwill in a time of unimaginable loss and sorrow.”
A second statement from Gay, issued the next day, clarified, “I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one’s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.”
The world needs more than that from the lighthouse of wisdom. It needs you to show some moral courage, even if some members of your community hold immoral positions about these atrocities.
The Hebrew University letter said that the first Harvard statement is “explicit in giving priority to one value, namely that of maintaining ‘one Harvard community,’ over the commitment to unequivocally condemn evil.” Harvard did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.
Stanford’s statement from President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny S. Martinez, also issued Monday, said: “We are deeply saddened and horrified by the death and human suffering,” and “we hope to encourage thoughtful opportunities for sharing knowledge about the situation, anchored in care for one another as members of a common intellectual community.”
Cohen called out the latter phrase in his response letter: “With all due respect, the world needs more than that from the lighthouse of wisdom. It needs you to show some moral courage, even if some members of your community hold immoral positions about these atrocities.”
On Wednesday, Saller and Martinez issued a lengthier statement, condemning “all terrorism and mass atrocities” while doubling down on their decision to not take a more-definitive stance. “We believe it is important that the university, as an institution, generally refrain from taking institutional positions on complex political or global matters that extend beyond our immediate purview, which is the operations of the university itself,” the pair wrote. “Maintaining university neutrality allows for our individual scholars to explore them freely.” When asked for additional comment, a Stanford spokesperson referred The Chronicle to the second statement.
This sentiment echoes the tenets of the Kalven Report, a 1967 document created at the University of Chicago that argued colleges should avoid making statements on political issues in order to remain a neutral space for debate and discussion. Colleges have been debating the report’s guidelines, with some arguing that adhering to the recommendations is the best way to defend academic freedom.
The Hebrew University made its stance clear: The Harvard and Stanford administrations have “failed us not only as Israelis, who are subject to the imminent threat of being subject to genocide, but also as leaders of an academic institution, who expect their colleagues to present higher moral standards, and more courage.”
