Plagiarism and Anti-semitism and Resignation
The New Year had come and gone, and I had been away from the Aging Matador for too long. As I wandered in, the bartender got my attention. Then poured me a large Bender and set it down, before I even had a chance to speak. He could probably see it on me that I wanted one. Or maybe it was a prescription? One never knows about these things, and smart people don’t ask too many questions about it.
He made a vague gesture with his head toward a lively discussion in the back room. I turned my head to locate the locus of the discussion, and before I turned back, the bartender was gone. That guy is always moving.
Moving cautiously to the backroom, I saw Angus, sitting mostly to the side but paying attention to what is going on. There was a seat adjacent to him, so I sat down.
Without turning toward me - because he was paying close attention to the discussion - Angus said only, “It’s about the Harvard and Penn Presidents’ resignations.” I said, “There are a few unfamiliar faces,” to which Angus replied, “I know, and I’ll let you know what I have figured out as time goes along.” Sounded fair enough, so I took off my coat and settled in.
“It’s s a very complicated situation. I don’t think it is as much about her plagiarism as it is about the fact that she is black and a college President. I think, given her research interests and how they generally involve the treatment and mistreatment of disenfranchised persons, the assumption is she is liberal.” Holding up three fingers, as he lists off the attributes he thinks are important: “Black. Female. Liberal.”
“Cristobal, talking about President Gay at Harvard,” whispered Angus.
“That’s all well and good to talk about such concerns, but neither of them spoke up strongly enough in favor of disallowing anti-semitic protests on their campuses. Jewish people have been hunted and haunted for hundreds if not thousands of years. Threatening our homeland in such a way is the same to me as threatening to exterminate the Jews themselves.”
“That’s Piotr” whispered Angus.
“There is a big difference between hating Jews and hating the state of Israel. Yes, Hamas hates the state of Israel. There is a difference between shouting “FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA” and actually attacking a Jewish person. That’s a distinction that gets lost along the way. When discussing First Amendment rights, it is not proper to falsely compare speech that makes someone uncomfortable with conduct that leads to the physical and bodily injury of others. A college President dances upon a thin line when deciding that protecting a group of people due to their religious heritage is more important than allowing the free expression of ideas.”
“That’s Niamh,” whispered Angus.
“It was obvious that all of the University Presidents had received very similar preparation by their respective legal counsels. The congressional testimony was very lawyer-coached, and relied on the belief that everyone understood and agreed that policy can only act upon DEEDS and not OPINIONS. Yet, there are many folks who see Israel as a proxy for every Jewish person, and that is where the problems start. Jews cannot count on campus police or even state police to judge that a protest is merely free speech. It is Hate Speech, spurring people to act upon the message. And in this case, that message is to eradicate Israel and all Jews. “
“I understand your fear and acknolwedge how hard it is to hear calls for a heritage location to be eradicated. Yet, since even before the time of the Romans, the region has not had any sense of self-determination or local governance. The fact that the British and allies carved out some boundaries when they broke up the holdings of the Ottoman Empire does not change that. The fact that Palestinians were promised their own self-determination and self-governance area is often ignored in these arguments. I won’t incite any further than to say thousands of people were ‘removed’ from their lands to make place for the Jews to settle their manufactured ‘homeland.’ Of course, my people in that region are familiar with occupation and a kind of revolving door of external governors and dictators. The Palestinians just want back the lands that were taken during the Six Day War. Those are the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.”
“That’s Fatima, a Palestinian Christian whose family came to America from Haifa,” whispered Angus.
“I think I need a scorecard to keep these positions straight,” I whispered back. Angus gave a sideways grin.
“I worked in an administrative position for 25 years before I retired last year. What I see as obvious is that the Universities that have asked their Presidents to resign buckled to pressure. This pressure was applied by a politician desirous of attention, to sort of ‘put these academic elites’ in their place, and to call out their non-support for Jewish students who feel threatened and harmed by the increase in protests over the current situation in Israel and Gaza. It hasn’t just been one politician. It has been also - in each case - a bloc of benefactors who threatened to cancel or terminate their benefaction unless the President is removed. I will also say in the case of President Gay that plagiarism on a college campus is like a misdemeanor. Warnings and probation, etc. are the worst a person can expect. In fact, very many of the plagiarism complaints raised by faculty members are turned back before they even reach the level of academic affairs review, let alone punishment. In other words, the plagiarism is a red herring. Yet, it is red meat for people who want to claim malfeasance without making any potentially disparaging remarks about a person’s preparation or ethnicity.”
“That’s Birk, who worked in the Provost’s office at the local University,” whispered Angus.
“That’s a reasonable summary, but leaves out what is on the horizon, when it comes to punishing students, faculty, or administrators for perceived misdeeds. Yes, the institutions that had their Presidents resign were responding to monetary pressure. But, let’s also acknowledge where that pressure comes from. It’s not academic standards in the form of ‘plagiarism is a hill that we must die upon,’ and it’s also not ‘Jews must be protected from all forms of hate speech.’ It is deeper than that. It is a fear among very very rich people that their interests are not being adequately represented on ANY college campus. Sometimes, the calls come out as the result of a survey claiming that conservative faculty members are a vanishingly small minority of all faculty. Other times, the calls are more direct and blatant, saying things like ‘College campuses are a breeding ground for liberals, and holding conservative views on a college campus is a death sentence for anyone’s academic career. Here’s my prediction, and not related to this current event because it’s already underway. But colleges will start to announce stricter ‘ethical standards’ for students, which ease the likelihood of expelling students who violate them. Forget about Free Speech. Because a student who is expelled stops being a threat right away, and any lawsuits brought by those students for ‘improper expulsion’ or ‘violation of the 1st Amendment’ can be quietly settled, and most likely out of court. Because, my dear friends, the discussion begins and ends with finance and business. Satisfy the benefactors, keep the enrollments up, manage costs… the almighty dollar!”
“Al Endicott. He’s a former regent and trustee of a large University system,” whispered Angus.
“Who knew the Aging Matador drew this kind of a crowd?” I whispered back.
“Living in a college town will surprise you,” Angus whispered back with a glimmer in his eye.
“I can’t help myself,” I whispered to Angus before saying loudly, “What makes Penn and Harvard different from MIT? I mean, Penn and Harvard seem to fall into the realm of the last point that Al just made. That is, a College or University board of regents or visitors or trustees who cannot tolerate the bad or negative attention. One must presume that each of these presitigious insitutions received somewhat similar volumes of outrage about what ‘their’ President said or didn’t say during the Congressional testimony. So, what makes MIT different?”
I must admit, I was hoping for some enlightened response from Al and/or Birk, to explain why two institutions would toss their carefully selected Presidents under the bus very quickly, while another was more resistant.
Al didn’t hesitate. “The politician Stefanik got almost exactly what she wanted. She asked a tough question about how she framed anti-semitism on a college campus. It was like the Boston lawyer that eventually ended Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist reign in the 1950s, by asking ‘Have you no sense of decency?’ Even though all three Presidents essentially answered the same way, only MIT jumped to support its President while the others pushed their respective Presidents under the first bus available. Stefanik is making the best advantage that she can about the situation. Besides, Kornbluth is Jewish, so the stain of potential anti-semitism had less chance of sticking to her. My guess is that Kornbluth will stay, and Stefanik will use the refusal to fire her as a reason to draw every possible negative inference from any kind of affiliation with MIT, up to and including the ‘common cold.’ And there’s nothing a politician likes more than a worthy adversary who has a smaller bully pulpit. I guess what they’d like more is to get all their opponents out, but this result keeps Stefanik’s name in the news longer. “
“Isn’t it a pain in the neck to find, recruit and hire a University President?” I followed up.
Birk responded this time, “Well, no institution who has asked its President to resign has then later decided that they don’t need one. I’ve served on a few Presidential searches in my career. The process is always very secretive, and the search committee is a representative group of faculty members, staff members, and administrative staff, picked with especial care. There’s often an executive search agency that facilitates the whole thing. It’s exciting and important work, and nobody selected for interview is identified for perhaps obvious reasons. In almost every case, the process leads to a highly qualified candidate who is enough different from the prior President that the need for replacement is satisfied. But not SO different that the business side of the institution suffers.”
Al added, “Yes, it takes a long time to cultivate and develop the group of people who are willing to donate their money to the institution. And these relationships can become VERY strong in both positive and toxic ways. Positive in the sense that some folks want to improve the student experience on campus by donating money toward building or updating a campus building. In a toxic sense, a benefactor may identify some popular, necessary improvements and hang a lot of conditions on that gift. Things like removal of a department, or a major that they don’t like. Those are very sensitive negotiations, to say the very least.”
I raised the last remnants of my Bender to Al and Birk, and said “Thank you, both, and very interesting viewpoints, everyone!”
I then turned to Angus and said good-bye to him, then to the room. Angus nodded and the rest of the room gave a variety of hand waves, head nods, and eye rolls, returning to their conversation. I grabbed my glass and returned to the bar area.
As soon as the Bartender saw me, he motioned with an excited yet questioning look on his face toward the Bender fountain. I put my hand over the top of my cup, signalling I was through. He gave a respectful grin and gave a simple and immediately understandable handwave gesture that said, all at the same time, “thanks for your business, it was a pleasure to see you, and I hope to see you again soon.” They must teach that in a class for bertenders somewhere…