By: Karin Fischer Published On: OCTOBER 18, 2023
Some college presidents struggle to find the right words on the Israel-Hamas conflict. Others have opted not to speak at all.
As the violence in the Middle East entered a horrific and deadly chapter, with Hamas’s fatal attacks on Israeli civilians and retaliatory strikes on Gaza claiming Palestinian lives, college leaders on campuses across the United States tried to find the right words.
It has become routine for presidents and chancellors to speak out on issues of the day, adding their voices to conversations around national and world events like Black Lives Matter, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and even the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on abortion. For many on campus, articulating such public positions is seen as part of institutional leadership.
But even as this expectation has become more ingrained, the scrutiny of presidential statements has become more intense, as the partisan landscape around higher education has grown increasingly more polarized. Critics, inside and outside academe, have dissected leaders’ sentences and parsed their phrases.
That has perhaps never been truer than when it comes to campuses’ responses to the war in Israel. Kristen Shahverdian, program manager of free expression and education at PEN America, an advocacy group for free expression, said she asks college leaders and others to identify the issue most difficult to have conversations about when she visits campuses. “Israel-Palestine is the one they say universally,” she said. “Emotions run high.”
For many, the statements issued over the past week by prominent college leaders failed to pass muster. Presidents retreated to the safer ground of denouncing violence and calling for civility — when supporters of both Israel and Palestine often wanted them to take a clearer stance on the politics of the conflict itself. In some cases, they were criticized for appearing to favor one side while not sufficiently acknowledging suffering on the other. A few institutions declared they didn’t weigh in on contentious issues, a position for which they were also assailed. Students said they felt unsupported by campus leadership and, at times, unsafe.
The backlash to such statements, and the broader tensions flaring over the past week on campuses, should in many ways be anticipated. The decades-old conflict in the Middle East has long been divisive at colleges, exposing internal fault lines among academe’s largely left-leaning faculty and staff members. You could call it the third rail of higher ed.
“Statements by presidents can “chill speech on campus for students and faculty.”
Now students and professors, alumni and donors — along with academe’s more-habitual detractors in Congress and state capitals — are faulting college leaders for saying too much, too little, or not the right thing at all. Students have walked out of classes, faculty members have signed petitions, and benefactors have threatened to close their checkbooks over colleges’ response to the bloodshed.
As the criticism has mounted, there are concerns that the war of words over presidential statements could eclipse one of college’s most-central roles, as a place for open, often difficult discussion, and for learning from difference. The worry: Has the campus environment become so inflamed that it’s no longer possible to hear one another out?
“This is what universities do,” said Alex Morey, director of campus-rights advocacy for the free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. “If we can’t get it together at our universities, I don’t have a lot of hope for democracy writ large.”
For college presidents, their first fitful steps into responding publicly to the violence were often far from surefooted. Many, in fact, did not issue statements for several days after fighters from Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S. government, crossed into Israel early on Saturday, October 7, killing 1,400 Israelis and taking nearly 200 hostage.
But others on college campuses did not hang back. At Harvard University, a group of some 30 student organizations issued a joint statement over the weekend, saying the group holds “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” because of its treatment of Palestinians.
The statement quickly sparked a backlash, with critics decrying the university’s official “silence” on the controversy. It wasn’t until Monday night that Harvard put out a statement signed by its president, Claudine Gay, and other administrators. In it, they said they were “heartbroken by the death and destruction unleashed by the attack by Hamas” and pledged their “commitment to fostering an environment of dialogue and empathy.”
But that statement was swiftly criticized by Harvard faculty members for failing to condemn either the statement by the student organizations or Hamas’s violence. More than 350 signed onto a letter that said university leaders “fell short” of the opportunity to have a teachable moment.
On Tuesday, Gay released a second statement denouncing Hamas’s “terrorist atrocities” and saying that while students had the right to free expression, the student groups did not speak for the university or its leaders.
Harvard was not the only high-profile college to have difficulty navigating the situation. An initial statement from Stanford University leaders, also released on the Monday following the attacks, said they were “deeply saddened and horrified by the death and human suffering” and promised to provide “for the support and safety” of those on campus who were affected.
Two days later, Stanford, too, put out a second, lengthier statement condemning “all terrorism and mass atrocities,” although administrators stressed their position not to wade into broader geopolitical debates.
At the University of Pennsylvania, campus leaders issued a succession of statements after prominent donors said they would no longer give to the university because it had not done enough to respond to the violence in Israel.
A week after the fighting began, President M. Elizabeth Magill released a follow-up statement condemning Hamas’s attacks as a “terrorist assault.” But her remarks were criticized for failing to mention Palestinians or the deaths of some 3,500 people in Gaza. Several hundred students, professors, and other supporters of Palestinians staged a walkout from classes. “I have Palestinian students in my class,” Ania Loomba, a professor of English and comparative literature, told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “They are feeling terrified.”
Mark Yudof, who led three public-university systems, in California, Minnesota, and Texas, said it was important for college leaders to decide what message they wanted to convey and “to speak out with moral clarity.”
“Don’t count noses,” said Yudof, who is now chair of the advisory board of the Academic Engagement Network, a nonprofit group that encourages college leaders to confront antisemitism. “I don’t think this is a good time to be in the rebuttal business.”
Some college leaders did find their voices early on. Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, in Connecticut, wrote about the attacks on his campus blog within hours, in a post titled “Sickening Violence.”
“I try not to talk much in the political register,” Roth said in an interview. “But as educators, we should speak clearly on things of importance.”
Roth, who has been president for 16 years, operates with the confidence of a longtime leader. That kind of institutional context — the demographics of students, the interests of alumni, the public profile of an institution — matters, said Sondra N. Barringer, an assistant professor of higher-education policy at Southern Methodist University, who studies college governance. The mix of internal and external stakeholders that college leaders must be responsive to can shape their responses to high-profile events, and striking the right balance “makes their jobs a lot harder,” she said.
At the University of Michigan at Dearborn, where between 30 percent and 40 percent of the student body is Arab American, Domenico Grasso, the chancellor, said he gave careful thought to his words and tone. His statement emphasized community ties to the Middle East and support services available to students and employees. “I understand that this is deeply personal to them,” Grasso said of his students.
The statements issued on American campuses felt deeply personal to university leaders in Israel. And, unusually, they told their colleagues in America how they felt.
Asher Cohen, president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, along with other top administrators, sent disappointed letters to the leaders of Harvard and Stanford, two of the university’s international academic partners. The American colleges’ initial statements did not, they wrote, “meet the most minimal standards of moral leadership, courage, and commitment to truth.”
“We expected an unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, not ‘yes, buts.’”
Internecine criticisms, and ones so sharply worded, are rare. In an interview, Cohen acknowledged, “it’s not a standard letter, by any means” but said he “could not not speak out.”
He declined to discuss any response he had received from leaders of either university. Harvard and Stanford did not respond to requests for comment.
Cohen also joined the presidents of Israel’s eight other leading research universities in a joint statement addressed to college leaders worldwide. “Let’s be clear,” they wrote. “This is not ‘war as usual’ or just another chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are not ‘good people on both sides.’” They asked presidents to specifically renounce violence by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian group that has been labeled a terrorist organization.
Daniel A. Chamovitz, the U.S.-born president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, called American college leaders’ middle-of-the-road statements “moral gymnastics.” When he spoke with The Chronicle, Chamovitz had just returned from shiva, or mourning, for one of the 50 Ben-Gurion students or employees who had been killed in the violence. His university is close to the border with Gaza.
“We expected an unequivocal condemnation of terrorism, not ‘yes, buts,’” Chamovitz said. “It never occurred to us that the leading universities of the United States would equivocate on something so clear.”
Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa, earned his doctorate and spent much of his academic career in the United States. He understands the pressures American college leaders face when speaking out publicly, he said.
Still, taking moral stances at critical times is a core part of a college president’s role, Robin said. “We’re educators, first and foremost,” he said. “We have a duty to teach our students that there is a difference between right and wrong, good and evil.”
When college leaders are silent, they abdicate part of their mission, he said.
But even as they were censured by their Israeli colleagues, the statements of American presidents were also castigated by Palestinian and Arab American groups as woefully inadequate. It’s “morally bankrupt” to condemn the Hamas attacks without talking about the blockade of Gaza put in place by Israel in the days since and the displacement and deaths of Palestinian civilians, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
Likewise, statements should focus on the longstanding politics of the region and the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians during years of simmering conflict, Ayloush said.
In their public messages, too many presidents “act as if this all started on October 7,” he said. “These are educated people; they know that’s wrong. Don’t ignore the context. Here, context is everything.”
The critique of American college presidents is coming from one of their own as well. In a message addressed to Jewish alumni of the University of Florida and since broadly shared, President Ben Sasse called out fellow higher-ed leaders for not forcefully denouncing Hamas.
“This shouldn’t be hard,” Sasse, a former Republican U.S. senator, wrote.
In an emailed response to questions from The Chronicle, Sasse expanded on his criticism. “Terrorists who rape, murder, and kidnap deserve unreserved condemnation, not mushy-mouthed qualification,” he wrote.
“Higher education needs more leaders who are willing to tell the truth — and fewer moralists without morals. Frankly, a lot of people in elite higher education have become so morally confused that they’re not able to flatly condemn Hamas immediately.”
But in his answers to The Chronicle, Sasse said college leaders had another option: speaking out only when issues have a “direct, tangible impact” on their students or their institutions. He said he sent out his message only after several people were injured in a stampede, after a peaceful vigil for Israel on the Florida campus ended in panic. The university, Sasse noted in his message, has the largest Jewish student population in the country.
Colleges can’t selectively decide when to wade into current events or public controversies, Sasse said. “You can’t talk about everything — from Halloween costumes to culture wars, from international affairs to Supreme Court cases — and then not talk about the slaughter of innocent Jews.”
Confronted with a choice of all or nothing, a growing number of college leaders are deciding to opt out, staking out positions of neutrality during contentious debates.
That idea is far from new, dating back to a 1967 report issued by the University of Chicago that argued that by not taking official stances on political and social issues, colleges could better foster open debate and intellectual inquiry. More recently, the university developed a set of guidelines for free expression, known as the Chicago Principles, based on the early document. Since 2015, more than 100 colleges have also adopted this approach, according to FIRE.
Speaking out on the controversies of the day simply isn’t central to colleges’ mission to advance knowledge, said Tom Ginsburg, a professor of international law at the University of Chicago and faculty director of a new Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. “It’s about brand communication,” he said, “not intellectual inquiry.”
None of the colleges — in addition to Stanford, Northwestern University and Williams College said they would not substantively weigh in — that prominently invoked neutrality in their response to the violence in Israel appear on FIRE’s list. But Alex Morey, the campus-advocacy director, said the blowback presidents have gotten could bring renewed interest to the approach, whether or not institutions formally adopt the Chicago Principles.
Opining as a sort of moral arbiter can detract from the work colleges do to encourage open debate, Morey said, adding that recent events illustrate how by speaking out in their public capacity, college leaders can silence students.
She points to a decision by the University of Arizona chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to cancel a planned campus protest on Gaza after the university’s president, Robert Robbins, criticized statements made by the pro-Palestinian student group, calling them “antithetical to university values.” Organizers said they no longer felt safe holding the rally.
“We know these kinds of statements by presidents can chill speech on campus for students and faculty,” Morey said.
Too many presidents “act as if this all started on October 7. … They know that’s wrong. Don’t ignore the context.”
In its statement, Stanford spelled out its decision to refrain from taking a more-definitive position on the Israel-Palestine conflict. “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,” President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny S. Martinez wrote.
While some college leaders said remaining apolitical was a way to safeguard debate, others saw it as amounting to sitting on the sidelines, abdicating a critical leadership role. “If the president says something, and then everyone else is terrified to speak out, then what kind of institutions are we building?” said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University.
McGuire said she felt a responsibility to take positions on issues of public consequence and believed that doing so could actually spark campus discussion. After her message last week about the war in Israel, she received a number of responses from students and faculty members, sharing their perspectives. “Neutrality,” McGuire said, “is a cop out.”
Still, students, both Muslim and Jewish, while not calling for neutrality, said timid or one-sided messaging by college leaders had created a climate in which they no longer felt safe. At the University of California at Los Angeles, a group of men allegedly approached students watching a panel organized by professors on the “crisis in Palestine” calling them “mother-f***ing terrorists” and threatening to tear the students’ “heads off.”
Dina Chehata, a civil-rights managing attorney with CAIR, said a University of California at Los Angeles statement that denounced Hamas’s attack without ever “explicitly” condemning Israel’s reprisals “emboldened these men to attack pro-Palestinian students with impunity.”
Meanwhile, Samuel Ben-Ur, a student at Tufts University, and Alec Bachman, who goes to Williams, circulated a letter, signed by more than 5,000 students on 650 campuses, criticizing administrators for failing to provide Jewish and Israeli students “with the support we so desperately need.”
Their “both-sidesing” of the issue left many students feeling vulnerable and unwelcome on campus, Ben-Ur, a junior majoring in political science and history, said in an interview. “It’s completely irresponsible.”
Shahverdian of PEN America said colleges can demonstrate their commitment to campus speech by supporting students, including those who may have been negatively affected by speaking out, such as those who had their personal information publicly exposed because they were affiliated with student organizations that signed the controversial Harvard statement.
You can’t talk about everything — from Halloween costumes to culture wars, from international affairs to Supreme Court cases — and then not talk about the slaughter of innocent Jews.”
It can be hard to repair the campus climate for speech “in the heat of controversy,” Shahverdian said, “and right now could not be a bigger one.” But she said she was hopeful that the high-profile nature of the current debate could spur reflection and help colleges “do better next time.”
Still, cultivating open and constructive discussion on a subject about which many on campus have deeply held, and often intractable, views is likely to be a tall order.
Even for the experts, such issues can be difficult to navigate, said Shibley Telhami, a professor of peace and development at the University of Maryland at College Park. In a survey he conducted with Marc Lynch, a political scientist at George Washington University, 57 percent of Middle East scholars said they self-censor in an academic or professional context, citing pressures from external advocacy groups and concerns about campus culture.
And if scholars of the Middle East, who are experts in this most divisive of topics, can’t find a way to speak openly and honestly on the subject, who can?