Penn’s Liz Magill was right and wrong: Calls for genocide are odious, but with free speech, context matters

It is the context, of course.

No one in touch with the facts could plausibly regard former Penn president Liz Magill as an antisemite. Yet that’s the false narrative let loose on the land in the wake of her forced resignation over a bungled answer to grilling by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) during a congressional hearing last week.

Asked by Stefanik whether students calling for the genocide of Jews “violate Penn’s code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment” (and should therefore be disciplined), Magill replied that it was a “context-dependent” decision. She was referring to First Amendment law that protects hate speech unless it is intended to incite violence and is, in fact, likely to do so. Her legalistic answer was technically correct, but it failed to address the moral issue: Even if calling for the elimination of Jews is free speech, it’s an odious idea that, though legal, deserves condemnation.

» READ MORE: Liz Magill’s ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed | Will Bunch

Magill’s response — which echoed responses from the presidents of Harvard and MIT during the hearing — was insensitive to the raw emotions on college campuses and in the larger community that have been stirred up by the Israel-Hamas war. But how could a rhetorical misstep result in the effective firing of a talented, sensitive, and open-minded university president who made clear the next day that she condemned any call for genocide against Jews?

The answer lies in the context of contemporary American culture, politics, and the state of affairs at the nation’s most prestigious universities.

University presidents at top-tier schools used to be primarily thought leaders, scholars who could offer sage advice about the problems facing the nation and the world. No more. Today the main charge is to raise money for their institutions. To do so, they have to watch their words, avoiding statements that might alienate potential donors.

Penn’s former president, Amy Gutmann, played the role well. A political scientist who wrote about “deliberative democracy” — in which political decisions stem from public discussion and debate — she largely set aside insightful political analysis during her presidency to be an ambassador for the university, boosting Penn’s endowment from $4 billion to $20.5 billion during her 18-year presidency. I worked briefly as a speechwriter for Gutmann when she first arrived at Penn in 2004, but we amicably parted ways when it was clear she could not afford to express strong opinions about contentious issues.

The controversy about Magill and the other college presidents also comes at a time when Americans are losing faith in institutions of all kinds — the government, organized religion, the news media, democracy itself. Institutions of higher education, particularly those regarded as elite, are easy targets of criticism by conservative lawmakers, including those whose constituencies consist of large numbers of the 70% of Americans who do not have a four-year college degree. In her interrogation of Magill and the other presidents, Stefanik pressed for terse, binary answers to a complex issue. “Yes or no!” she demanded as Magill tried to frame a nuanced response. This, too, fits with the tempo of the times.

We have little patience with complexity these days, whether that’s in politics or the media. Political discourse has descended into name-calling and one-sentence explication of complicated problems. Even the best in the news media now frame stories as summaries, sound bites, bullet points, visuals that are here now and gone in two seconds.

We have little patience with complexity these days.

When it comes to the Middle East war, now the flash point of campus activism, the issues are not amenable to simplistic analysis with good guys and bad guys. It is possible, for instance, to condemn the murderous attacks by Hamas on Oct. 7 while also speaking up for the Palestinian people, just as it’s possible to condemn Israeli policy and the bombing of civilians in Gaza while also respecting Jewish people and the right of Israel to exist.

The issue of hate speech on college campuses is just as complex — a delicate dance between ensuring a safe environment for students while also honoring the First Amendment right to free speech and the importance of wide-open debate of ideas, even hateful ideas. This is what’s being lost in the hyperbolic response to words spoken at a congressional hearing.

Huntly Collins is a retired journalist and college professor who covered Penn as The Inquirer’s higher education reporter in the 1980s.