In response to a sharp increase in antisemitism on college campuses following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Education and the Workforce conducted hearings on Dec. 5 about the safety of Israeli and Jewish students. In addition to students and others, the presidents of three distinguished U.S. universities − Harvard, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology − testified. All three of them testified to a principal error. Their universities failed to follow a path of strict institutional neutrality with respect to current events, a policy pioneered by the University of Chicago in 1967 that has served it (and other schools that have adopted it) well.
The presidents’ testimony illustrated the pickle universities can find themselves in when they fail to remain neutral on…
