[Presidents of UPenn, Harvard and MIT questioned by right-wing
Republican New York congressmember and Trump ally Elise Stefanik on
allegations that universities have failed to address threats of
violence against Jewish students.]
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PETER BEINART & OMER BARTOV ON UPENN PRESIDENT RESIGNATION, GAZA &
THE WEAPONIZATION OF ANTISEMITISM  
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Amy Goodman, Peter Beinart, Omer Bartov
December 11, 2023
Democracy Now!
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_ Presidents of UPenn, Harvard and MIT questioned by right-wing
Republican New York congressmember and Trump ally Elise Stefanik on
allegations that universities have failed to address threats of
violence against Jewish students. _

, Democracy Now!

 

University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill voluntarily
resigned her position Saturday after a House Education Committee
hearing last Tuesday on how colleges have handled antisemitism. Magill
has faced demands to resign since September, when she refused to bow
to pressure to cancel the Palestine Writes Literature Festival on
campus. More universities face accusations that they have failed to
protect Jewish students since the October 7 Hamas incursion into
southern Israel amid a broader effort to restrict pro-Palestinian
speech on campus. We speak with Peter Beinart, professor of journalism
at the City University of New York and the editor-at-large of _Jewish
Currents_, and with Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide
studies at Brown University. “This whole discussion seems to me to
be the least important issue,” says Bartov. “What is most
important now is that Israel now has been conducting a war for weeks
and weeks in which it has killed thousands and thousands of
Palestinians.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at allegations that
universities have failed to address threats of violence against Jewish
students following a contentious congressional hearing on antisemitism
and a broader effort to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus.

On Saturday, the University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill
resigned her position over fallout from last Tuesday’s House
Education Committee hearing. UPenn board chair Scott Bok, who
announced her resignation, he also resigned soon after.

Magill was questioned along with Harvard President Claudine Gay
and MIT President Sally Kornbluth by the right-wing Republican New
York congressmember and Trump ally Elise Stefanik. This is Stefanik
questioning Harvard President Gay first, then UPenn President Magill.

CLAUDINE GAY: … free speech extends —

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: It’s a yes-or-no question. Let me ask you
this. You are president of Harvard, so I assume you’re familiar with
the term “intifada,” correct?

CLAUDINE GAY: I have heard that term, yes.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: And you understand that the use of the term
“intifada” in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a
call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel,
including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you
aware of that?

CLAUDINE GAY: That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to
me. …

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Well, let me ask you this: Will admissions
offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against
students or applicants who say “from the river to the sea” or
“intifada,” advocating for the murder of Jews.

CLAUDINE GAY: As I have said, that type of hateful, reckless,
offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me. …

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Ms. Magill, at Penn, does calling for the
genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

LIZ MAGILL: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,
yes.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: I am asking, specifically calling for the
genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?

LIZ MAGILL: If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is
harassment.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: So the answer is yes.

LIZ MAGILL: It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth
Magill. She announced her resignation Saturday and will remain a
tenured law professor at UPenn. Major donors to the University of
Pennsylvania had demanded Magill’s resignation since September,
after she refused to cancel the Palestine Writes Literature Festival
on campus.

New York Republican Congressmember Elise Stefanik herself faced
scrutiny for a campaign ad she ran last year that echoed Donald Trump
and appeared to promote the white supremacist “great replacement”
theory that Jews want to replace and disempower white Americans. She
made similar comments after the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York,
that was inspired by the “great replacement” theory. After news of
Magill’s resignation, Stefanik called for the ouster of the Harvard
and MIT presidents, writing on social media, “One down. Two to
go.” She was echoed by Trump.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, Elise. What a job she’s done. You know, I
watched the way — she’s very smart. I watched the way she was
asking the questions, and they were asked in a very complex way. And
these women, who I guess are smart, but, boy, that was — they were
really dumb answers, weren’t they? But they were asked in a very
complex way, and these people had no idea what the hell they were
doing. I said, “You know, I think she’s got to lose her job.” I
guess they’re all going to be losing their job within the next day
or two, but one down, two to go.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as Harvard President Claudine Gay has
growing support. Some 600 professors signed a petition against calls
for her to step down this weekend. The school’s board of directors
met Sunday.

Congressmember Stefanik is a Harvard alumna and was removed from a
Harvard advisory board in 2021 over her comments about voter fraud in
the 2020 election that had, quote, “no basis in evidence.”

For more, we’re joined by Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of _Jewish
Currents_ and, as well, an MSNBC contributor, and Omer Bartov, a
professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, the
Israeli American author of numerous books. His books include,
recently, _Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person
History in Times of Crisis_. He has been described by the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum as one of the world’s leading specialists
on the subject of genocide.

Peter Beinart, let’s begin with you. Your response to the
congressional hearing and the grilling of the three women presidents
of MIT, Harvard and UPenn, and the resignation then of UPenn
President Magill, as well as the chair of the board of trustees, Scott
Bok, who announced her resignation, then resigned himself?

PETER BEINART: This really isn’t about those individual
presidents. It’s about the fact that given the extraordinary
slaughter that’s happening in Gaza, there is a movement on college
campuses and across America for a ceasefire and to end American
complicity in that slaughter. And in response to that, the effort is
now to try to limit the ability of people who want to protest U.S.
policy and support Palestinian rights from being able to organize on
college campuses. So the reason that you’re going after these
presidents is to try to set a precedent and bring in people who will
be much tougher on restricting the ability of students and faculty and
others who want to organize politically against this war in Gaza. This
is what this is about.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you can talk about exactly what happened, for
people who missed it this past week? We just played an excerpt of the
questioning by Stefanik. I mean, it went on for hours, the overall
congressional testimony, but it came down to these points. And this is
the critical point. She said, “It’s a yes-or-no question. Let me
ask you this. You are president of Harvard, so I assume you’re
familiar with the term 'intifada,' correct?” And President Gay says,
“I’ve heard that term.” Congressmember Stefanik says, “You
understand the use of the term 'intifada' in the context of the
Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance
against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and
the genocide of Jews.” This was the question they were asked.
Elaborate on that, Peter Beinart, and talk about their responses.

PETER BEINART: Right. The premise of the question was just nonsense,
right? The premise of the question is that “intifada,” which
essentially means “uprising,” is the equivalent of an attempt at
genocide at Jews. “Intifada” is actually a term that has been used
even in uprising against Arab governments. Intifada can take
nonviolent forms. The First Intifada had a lot of nonviolence. The
Second Intifada, tragically, involved suicide bombings, which were
horrifying and totally immoral. But these were uprisings in the
context of oppression. It’s like saying a Ukrainian uprising against
Russians that also killed Russian civilians would be an attempt at
Russian genocide. It makes no sense.

But the problem was that these presidents, because they were not
willing to contest the premise, because they were so lawyered up and
defensive in their answers, that they basically accepted the premise
and then were put in this ridiculous position where they didn’t —
when they didn’t say it would be unacceptable for people to call for
the genocide of Jews. Of course it would be unacceptable for people to
call in mass protest for the genocide of Jews, but that’s not what
was happening.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Omer Bartov into this discussion
— you’re considered by the Holocaust Museum one of the leading
scholars on genocide — and go to this second point. Congressmember
Stefanik was asking the college presidents, she said, “Well, let me
ask you this: Will admission offers be rescinded or any disciplinary
action be taken against students or applicants who say 'from the river
to the sea' or 'intifada,' advocating the murder of Jews?” equating
“from the river to the sea” and “intifada” with the murder of
Jews. Can you respond to this? And also explain that term and how
it’s been used by both Hamas but also protesters and the Likud party
in Israel.

OMER BARTOV: Well, hi, and thank you for having me.

First of all, I want to agree with what Peter was saying. I think that
this whole debate is so off-kilter, that the terms that are being used
are being misused and are not being challenged by these three
presidents, who should have been better prepared, not by their
lawyers, but actually to have studied the issue itself and to have
spoken about how they think about it. Using the term “intifada”
is, of course, wrong, as Peter was saying. It means “uprising.”
And uprising against oppression, one should support it.

Using the term “from the river to the sea” can mean all kinds of
things. There are 7 million Jews living between the river and the sea,
and 7 million Palestinians. Historically, speaking about “from the
river to the sea,” or, in fact, both banks of the river in the
traditional Zionist revisionist ideology, meant that the Jews should
be in control of Eretz Yisrael, of the — sorry, of the land of
Israel. I apologize.

AMY GOODMAN: Repeat —

OMER BARTOV: Sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Repeat that point.

OMER BARTOV: Yeah, sorry. So, the term “from the river to the
sea,” or Greater Israel, which means Eretz Yisrael, the land of
Israel, that land stretches between the Jordan —

AMY GOODMAN: We’re hearing you fine.

OMER BARTOV: Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m getting interruption here.
Means the land between the Jordan and the sea, and, in fact, for some
of the traditional revisionist movement, the right wing of the Zionist
party, meant also across the river, even east of the river, into what
is now known as Jordan, Transjordan at the time. So, to say that that
is an antisemitic term or that it calls for the genocide of the Jews
is nonsense. It can mean, if you look at it from the point of view of
the Israeli right, that Jews have the right to rule over all the land
of Israel. And many of the people who are now in Netanyahu’s
government, the settler right-wing Jewish supremacists, such as
Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, they would like to rule over all the land, and
they would like the Palestinians to go away or to agree to be ruled
over by the Jews. Now, it can also mean the opposite. If you look at
what Hamas has been saying, it can mean exactly the opposite. Hamas
indeed wants to create an Islamic Palestinian state where Jews would
either have no room or would have to be living there in much smaller
numbers and be tolerated.

And so, it does not mean what people say, unless you ask them what do
they mean. And in that sense, putting these three presidents to answer
these questions, to my mind, A, they should have said, “Look, if you
speak about genocide, no one should condone genocide, not of Jews and
not of anyone else. If you’re speaking about intifada or about
political slogans, you have to explain what they are, how we
understand them.”

But beyond that, I have to say that this whole discussion seems to me
to be the least important issue. What is most important is that Israel
now is — has been conducting a war for weeks and weeks in which it
has killed thousands and thousands of Palestinians. It has moved them
to a very small part of the Gaza Strip. It has destroyed their
property and has not even made a commitment to allow them to return.
And it’s been doing that with enormous amounts of American-supplied
munitions, not only rockets, but also tank shells, artillery shells
and anti-rocket rockets. And that has to stop, and there has to be a
political plan as to how to move to the next day, which is what
Netanyahu is refusing to do. This is the main issue, not how we talk
about politics on American campuses. That’s useful to talk about it,
but it’s not the main emergency issue right now to my mind.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you two questions. You’re in Paris,
France, now, but you’re generally in Cambridge, and you’re a
professor at Brown University in Providence. What should Claudine Gay,
the president of Harvard, do you feel, at this point, should she do?
Hundreds of Harvard professors have rallied around her. And I also
wanted to ask about Hisham Awartani, who is the Brown University
student, a student at your school, who was shot with two other
Palestinian students in Burlington, could well be paralyzed, a
horrifying situation. I mean, I think there’s no question that
antisemitism is increasing around the country, and that is very
serious, and also Islamophobia.

OMER BARTOV: Yes. I mean, both are, of course, increasing, and we
should do everything we can against them. And what happened with
Hisham and the other two Palestinian students is horrible. In some
ways, I would say, it reflects both the heated discussion that we have
about Israel-Palestine and also the kind of gun culture and violence
that we have in America, quite separately from what is happening in
the Middle East.

As for resignations of presidents, I think this is — this would be
terrible. I totally support those — I’m not a Harvard faculty. My
wife is. But I totally support those people who have come out against
her resignation. I think it would give completely the wrong signal,
because the pressure is coming in large part from donors. That will
create an impression that there is pressure from moneyed people, that
there’s pressure from often people identified with Jewish interests,
with right-wing Israelis, with the Israeli government, to control
speech. And just as there has been, I must say — and that was
reflected in the responses by these presidents — great sort of
timidity in saying anything that is not correct speech, to correct it
the other way, to try and control it in a way that does not allow
criticism of Israel, presents criticism of Israel as antisemitism. And
to do it by firing, for instance, at Harvard, the first African
American president of Harvard would be an absolute disaster, and I
would totally oppose it.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end by asking Peter Beinart about
Democratic Congressmember — Republican Congressmember Stefanik and
her history. This is Democratic Congressmember Jamie Raskin of
Maryland speaking on MSNBC.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN: With lax Republican gun laws across the country,
we’ve got to take very seriously anybody who’s making any kind of
violent threats, especially genocidal threats. Having said that, where
does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about antisemitism, when
she is the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in
antisemitism all the time? She didn’t utter a peep of protest when
he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner — Nick Fuentes,
who doubts whether October 7th even took place, because he thinks it
was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis. And the
Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with
antisemitism like that, and yet somehow she gets on her high horse and
lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.

AMY GOODMAN: So, last year, Republican Congressmember Elise Stefanik
of New York was criticized for seeming to endorse the racist “great
replacement” conspiracy theory, the white supremacist theory
maintaining white people are being replaced by people of color and
that Democrats are deliberately trying to deluge the U.S. with
immigrants in order to gain an electoral advantage. We all know what
happened in Charlottesville, the mass protest where the
Trump-supporting white supremacists kept repeating “Jews will not
replace us.” Peter Beinart, can you respond to the woman who’s
taking these women presidents, at least attempting to, and succeeded
in the case of UPenn President Magill, down?

PETER BEINART: First of all, there’s a tremendous irony in the
fact that Elise Stefanik is supposedly so upset about people saying
Palestine will be free from the river to the sea, because Elise
Stefanik supports the existence of one country which denies
Palestinians basic rights between the river and the sea. And as for
the idea that she has some great concern for Jews, as you said,
she’s actually trafficked in the same “great replacement” theory
that is what motivated the Pittsburgh shooter because of this insane
idea that Jews are bringing in Black and Brown immigrants into the
United States to replace white people. Elise Stefanik doesn’t
actually care about Jews. What she believes in is ethnonationalism.
She believes in a white Christian state in the United States. And
she’s sympathetic to forces in Israel that believe in a Jewish
supremacist state, because fundamentally she’s hostile to the basic
principle that people should be treated equally under the law
irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity. She’s hostile to it in
Israel-Palestine. She’s hostile to it in the United States. That’s
what motivates her.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. We’ll
continue, of course, to cover this issue. Peter Beinart,
editor-at-large of _Jewish Currents_, and Omer Bartov, professor of
Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, author of a number
of books, including, most recently, _Genocide, the Holocaust and
Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis_.

_PETER BEINART is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents and contributor
at MSNBC.
OMER BARTOV is professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown
University._

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