[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 203 (Monday, December 11, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S5884]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Anti-Semitism

  Mr. President, now on another matter, years of moral rot and 
intellectual decay began to catch up with America's most elite 
universities. The President of the University of Pennsylvania resigned 
4 days after failing to state whether calls for genocide against Jews 
constituted bullying or harassment under her institution's conduct 
policy.
  In the face of an alarming wave of vile anti-Semitism--including 
death threats--on college campuses, the heads of Penn, Harvard, and MIT 
did everything they could to avoid condemning one of the world's oldest 
forms of hatred.
  Of course, the Ivy League administrators' lack of moral clarity is 
not a recent development. For more than 2 months now, universities 
across the country have been engaged in an embarrassing public cycle of 
equivocations and apologies.
  And for years, elite institutions have sheltered despicable anti-
Semites under the guise of academic freedom and let them poison a 
generation of young minds with hateful, postmodern ideologies. The 
especially alarming part of the Penn, Harvard, and MIT testimony last 
week was just how brazenly--brazenly--their cynical embrace of free 
speech contradicted their response to supposed slights against leftist 
orthodoxy.
  Today's elite college campuses are hardly bastions of free speech. 
The Ivy League's enforcement of speech restrictions against a laundry 
list of wrong-think and ``microaggressions'' would make censors in 
Pyongyang blush.
  There is room to punish faculty for inviting guest speakers with 
objectionable views or assigning controversial class readings as Penn's 
president did just last year. There is room to revoke invitations for 
academic panelists and deplatform visiting lecturers who fail to toe 
the elite liberal line on social issues, as Harvard has done 
repeatedly.
  But apparently there might not be room in the Ivy League's extensive 
speech restrictions to take action against calls for genocide against 
Jews, as Harvard's president told our House colleagues, it would--
listen to this--``depend on the context.''
  Some current--and now former--leaders of America's most elite echo 
chambers would like us to believe they have a deep and abiding 
commitment to intellectual diversity and freedom of speech, but they 
are not fooling anybody. In fact, Harvard ranks dead last in a leading 
watchdog ranking of campus free speech. Its speech climate rated 
``abysmal.'' ``Abysmal,'' how is that for context?
  It is rather simple. Universities can enforce their existing speech 
restrictions evenly or they can start applying their newfound embrace 
of free speech across the board--and not just for anti-Semites and 
terrorist sympathizers.
  Until they decide, the Ivy League's most philanthropic alumni will 
continue to vote with their checkbooks. Harvard alone is reportedly 
facing more than $1 billion in canceled donations over its president's 
astounding failure. Even with their gargantuan tax-free endowment, that 
is real money. And until universities commit to protecting innocent 
Jews on campus, bright, young students might just vote with their feet.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Illinois.