Harvard President Claudine Gay faced widespread criticism after she struggled in a congressional hearing to explain why her university protects antisemitic free speech but not other free speech. She defended free speech praising Hamas — whose very charter repeatedly advocates “killing Jews” — despite having punished non-radical speech.
For context, Harvard recently forced biologist Carole Hooven to resign for stating in public that biological sex is real.
Despite the evident hypocrisy, Gay will keep her job, because she knows how to use power.
Although she is my fellow political scientist, I cannot support the Harvard President’s behavior, as a card-carrying member of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). In Gay’s time as an academic administrator at Harvard, that university has plunged to dead last (238th) on FIRE’s free speech rankings of U.S. universities. Surveys show that many Harvard students fear to say what they think, perhaps because of what they see happening to their professors. FIRE reports that in recent years, Harvard sanctioned four scholars for their views and terminated three of them. Rumors suggest that many more have been fired or had their careers damaged.
Were I her employee, I would probably have joined the 700-plus Harvard professors signing a petition supporting Gay out of fear, just as my Sicilian ancestors once publicly praised the Mafia’s “men of honor.” I picture Harvard administrators threatening faculty, saying, “Nice professorship you’ve got there — shame if something were to happen to it.” Where speaking freely brings danger, the sensible don’t dare question the powerful.
We political scientists know this all too well. As John Gaventa details in his classic Power and Powerlessness, power includes observable events such as when its governing body, the Harvard Corporation expressed confidence in President Gay. Power also includes measurable resources, such as Harvard’s $53 billion endowment and armies of lawyers, influential alumni, and scholarly journals---including one that might never again publish my research after this essay appears. (I hope my doctoral students escape collateral damage.)
Yet power also has hidden dimensions. It makes people stay silent to avoid retribution, because they have seen the powerful punish dissenters.
In recent years, I have noticed a disturbing pattern of behavior which seemingly started in elite institutions. Leaders weaponize their vast bureaucracies to selectively enforce rules against those whose ideas they oppose. As one Ivy League professor groused: “Many professors are punished for their findings, and this is kept under the radar. It’s common for deans to tell professors they are fired, the professor says they will go public, so then the university pays them to go away.”
Some of what appears above the radar is not pretty. After tenured Professor Joshua Katz criticized his university’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies, Princeton’s president reopened an investigation into a 15-year old Title IX complaint for which Katz had already been punished, forcing his resignation.
At Harvard, when star economist Roland Fryer faced accusations of inappropriate sexual banter with subordinates, then-dean Gay reportedly overruled university guidelines limiting Fryer’s punishment to sensitivity training. She instead attempting to fire the tenured professor before imposing a costly suspension. Many believe Fryer’s real crime was publishing empirical articles with conservative findings — a hanging offense, in part because Fryer is Black.
By taking down Fryer, the most productive scholar on the planet, Gay sent a "Sicilian message," demonstrating that no one is safe.
Power does not live by fear alone: ideology and group solidarity help reinforce the powerful. In embracing fashionable, identity-based causes, from Hamas to DEI, some university leaders have built constituencies they can engage when under attack, simultaneously playing the race card and the alumni card. I know a Jewish intellectual who fears that criticism of Gay could end up increasing hatred of Jews, by triggering both DEI backers and loyal Harvard alumni.
Moreover, to criticize President Gay is not to praise all of her critics. Gay’s most vocal opponent, Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, is a strident Trump supporter who stoked election conspiracy theories. Like President Gay, Congresswoman Stefanik learned ethics while studying politics at Harvard. Having enemies like Stefanik and fellow Ivy Leaguer Trump (Penn, class of ‘68) will enable President Gay to rally her base and keep her post.
In this holiday season, I hope Gay experiences a road-to-Damascus conversion and stands by her congressional testimony in support of free expression. With charm, intelligence, and bureaucratic savvy, Gay could make an amazing ally. I would invite her to take part in a forum on challenges to free expression at the next American Political Science Association Meeting.
But whatever her strategic decisions, the rest of us could leverage this moment to reform elite education, in at least three ways.
With more than its share of Ivy League alumni, the mainstream press has under-reported and even misreported the free speech recession. Now is the time for reporters to stop dismissing the critics of higher education and instead engage in real investigative journalism to see if we are right.
Second, Harvard’s leaders apologized for their institution’s supposed history of racism, promising one fifth of 1 percent of Harvard’s $53 billion endowment to set things right. Congress can make cheap virtue-signaling a lot more expensive by taxing huge endowments to strengthen under-resourced institutions, such as historically Black colleges and universities, only one of which has an endowment approaching one billion dollars. Let’s spread the power.
Third, we should test Gay’s support for free speech by offering to speak and debate at Harvard. Droves of conservative and libertarian prospective students and professors should apply to Harvard, peacefully crashing the gates with ideological diversity.
If it is to mean anything, then diversity and inclusion must include everyone.
Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and a member of the executive board of the Society for Open Inquiry in the Behavioral Sciences. He has received a grant from FIRE for work unrelated to matters addressed in this oped.
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