Pen pal, no longer a major donor to the University of Pennsylvania, has
withdrawn a $100 million grant after the school's president went before Congress
and refused to say that calls on her campus for genocide of the Jewish people
would qualify as bullying or harassment.
Because that's such a gray area, I'm being sarcastic.
For the vast majority of us whose brains are now broken.
That's sarcasm.
In an email seen by the BBC, Ross Stephens said he was, quote, appalled.
Elizabeth McGill, the school president, avoided questions about how
students calling for the genocide of Jews would be punished.
President McGill, along with the presidents of MIT and Harvard,
were grilled by politicians on Tuesday about anti-Semitism on campus.
- Here is how that ish show went down. - Miss McGill at Penn.
Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules
or code of conduct, yes or no?
If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.
Yes.
I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews.
Does that constitute bullying or harassment?
If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.
- So the answer is yes. - It is a context dependent decision.
Congresswoman McGill now faces calls to resign Pennsylvania's Democratic Jewish
governor, urging Penn's board of trustees to meet and discuss McGill's future.
I thought her comments were absolutely shameful.
It should not be hard to condemn genocide.
But all three leaders instead giving careful responses
about circumstances and conduct, including Harvard President Claudine Gay.
So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews
violates Harvard Code of Conduct.
- Correct? - Again, it depends on the context.
The next day, Gay issuing a statement saying calls for violence or genocide
against the Jewish community or any religious or ethnic group are vile.
- They have no place at Harvard. - That right there is wild.
I especially love how McGill was smiling during that exchange with Stefanik.
Mind boggling.
Penn's McGill has since apologized without actually apologizing, it should be noted,
but is still facing calls to resign.
Here is some of that video that she was, it seems, almost forced to make.
But you be the judge.
There was a moment during yesterday's congressional hearing on anti-Semitism
when I was asked if a call for the genocide of Jewish people on our campus
would violate our policies.
In that moment, I was focused on our university's long standing policies
aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable.
I was not focused on, but I should have been.
The irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people
is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can
perpetrate its evil, plain and simple.
I want to be clear.
A call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening deeply so.
It is intentionally meant to terrify a people who have been subjected to pogroms
and hatred for centuries, and were the victims of mass genocide in the Holocaust.
In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.
In her view.
Notice how she was clearly reading a statement.
Notice how she was looking under the camera.
You can see it right there, the whole video, not into the camera,
because she was just looking down at her laptop like I sometimes do
when anchoring the news here for TYT.
But I make it clear and it's also then I look into the camera
and also share my genuine human thoughts.
She was looking down below and reading something.
It seems like lawyers prepared or other administration at the university
prepared so that she can keep her job, which is by no means now certain.
Us media are reporting.
The advisory board at Wharton, the university's business school has written
a letter to miss McGill calling for her to step down with immediate effect.
This, of course, comes as the rapid rise of anti-Semitism
and violent threats continue in frightening ways across America.
Also, just yesterday, a man twice fired a shotgun outside of
a Jewish temple in upstate New York.
Hours before the start of Hanukkah, saying Free Palestine
as he was taken into police custody, saying that world events have affected
and influenced him in recent days and that he's a frequent user of marijuana.
Way to blame a substance that usually brings people
to a peaceful mind frame for his violent, hateful, anti-Semitic actions.
He is now facing a potential 15 years in prison, plus enormous fines and probation.
Following that, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said children were at a preschool
in the building when the shots were fired.
Governor Kathy Hochul said that the faculty and the facility
rather went into lockdown, and that parents have fortunately
since been reunited with their kids.
At a briefing in New York City, she said the prospect of violence
in a place of worship is not just an attack on a building, it's an attack
on the very fabric of our society, our freedom to express our faith,
our collective shared sense of safety.
Luckily, nobody was injured.
But that does not mean the damage has not been done.
I never thought I would see a day in America when not hate groups,
not the KKK or at a neo-Nazi rally, but the presidents of three of the most elite
universities in our nation are unable, when being grilled and given repeated
chances over and over again, to condemn the very simplest thing to condemn.
They call for genocide of any people.
This time it was the Jewish people to not be able to outright say yes,
obviously that's bullying and harassment and immediately would be investigated,
not tolerated and punished to the highest extent that we have the ability to do
at this institution of higher learning.
Anything short of that is despicable.
And I to call for them to resign or be fired.
But that's just my thoughts. Let's go to Sharon.
Daf sterile, privileged. And I hate using the word privileged.
For a group of women that includes Claudine Gay.
But that's how they came off.
I don't like to call for someone to lose their livelihood,
their career, over their worst moment.
But in this case, that 90s was disastrous.
It destroyed everything in 90s that so many had hoped
to put forth about these institutions.
I suspect that, they're very goofy PR
people working at all three universities, and they thought that they could go
before our goofy Congress and just
put on this sterile clinic, if you will.
And they could not.
But it was the body language for me to Ben, that was just disastrous and unkind.
It came off. But I also think this was perhaps.
This 90s was perhaps the most important.
Exchange.
I'm glad it played out the way it did, because there's people sitting at home
like me who thought before that this whole thing about college campuses
and what's going on and that, come on, let let people be free and freedom of speech.
I thought it was overblown. I really did.
So it perhaps is a teaching moment, as disgusting as it was.
That 90s for people at home who who may not understand how deep it's gotten.
Well, first of all, I think the Constitution is perhaps I
Revere the Constitution, and I will fight for anybody's right to stand in the public
square and say whatever they want.
But just because somebody has a right to call for genocide or whatever despicable
thing they may say in the public square, there is no right in the Constitution
to attend Penn or Harvard or MIT.
There's no right in the Constitution to teach there.
There's no right to even stand on their campus and exercise the same rights
that you might be able to exercise.
If you're in the public square. These are private institutions.
And for the presidents of these universities,
not to be able to make that distinction and say, okay, if we're adhering
to the Constitution, that's one thing.
But we at Penn University or Harvard, we aspire to lead the nation
and to something better.
And we aspire to say, no, you cannot go to Harvard or Penn or MIT if this is
the kind of stuff you're going to espouse.
To me, this was a slam dunk, easy response for them.
And by the way, this was not the the Law Club seminar,
you know, at one of these universities, you're talking about Congress.
And to be able to misread the room and the way that they did suggest these people
are even more tone deaf and out of touch, never mind whether it's anti-Semitism,
never mind whether it's the emotional sensitivities that everybody has
over the Middle East right now.
These people are so isolated in their ivory towers and so out of touch
with where the country is, that it's troubling on countless levels.
Yeah, very well said.
Also, it's just mind boggling because yes, we want to protect speech
whenever possible.
I don't think we need to protect hate speech.
I don't think we need to protect speech that calls for the annihilation
of a people, for the murder of a people.
It's just common decency. It's common sense.
And that is what seems to be missing in these ivory towers that teach theoretical
life and don't teach just the very basic way to be a decent human in actual life.
It almost made my blood boil more that within.
It seemed like the next moment they were apologizing and saying,
as David said, something very simple.
It's just it's an easy question to answer. And that to me makes them disqualifying.
And I haven't looked at each as an individual.
I collectively looked at the three of them, answering the way they did.
It really ticked me off that you're back home.
You're now outside of your bubble for a moment
and you realize you done stepped in it, and so now you can say the perfect thing.
It's suspicious.
Maybe they actually believe what they said second,
but it was so suspicious and so basic.
These they turned into basic leaders that it's disqualifying to me.
And then I want to take issue with just one thing you said and disagree slightly.
And that is I've said before that whether it's Nazis or KKK or any hate group,
if they want to march and they've got, you know, they've got every right to march
and shout the most vile thing imaginable, and I will defend their right as well as
my right to have a counter-demonstration and march against them.
But we're not talking about marches on a city street.
We're talking about private institutions, universities that are supposed
to be better than this.
And for these university presidents not to be able to draw that distinction
and not be able to say, look, we aspire for the best and the brightest
in all of us at Harvard and MIT and Penn.
And therefore, if you espouse genocide or hatred and wish the death of anybody
or any group, you're not welcome at this university, and we're going to make sure
that you're not welcome for them not to be able to say that.
It's just it's just baffling.
And it does seem like the apologies were written more by their PR people
than something that actually came from their own hearts.
Yeah, I vehemently disagree with your right to say what you just said.
Schuster. So, no, I do not, I do not.
You make a good point.
But but also, like you said, these are supposed to be the institutions
where we aspire to be our best, that inspire our nation, inspire people
to attend these institutions.
And furthermore, universities have plenty of very elaborate policies that police
what students can and cannot do.
I remember I got in trouble back in college
for lighting a candle in my dorm room.
If you can keep that amount of control over people for the protection
of other students, I think you can do it when calling for genocide as well.
It wasn't just that one question.
Also, after Gaye was asked the president of Harvard whether she'd
want an avowed neo-Nazi to be part of the Harvard community, she said it's not
consistent with Harvard's values, but we allow for a wide berth for
free expression and a variety of views.
She wants, it seems, from her statement, she wants to have a variety of views at
Harvard, including the views of neo-Nazis. That is quite wild to me.
I also am perhaps most perturbed that these times are so twisted
that at least Stefanik has me agreeing with her vehemently.
- I don't appreciate that at all. - That part?
Yeah, that part. Well, and the.
Politics of this look, that was the other thing about it is,
look, if somebody would have sent Elise.
Stefanik would be the person who would sort of bring this issue.
I'd be like, oh, come on, she's like the most political,
the most sort of MAGA Trump aspiring sort of Republican from New York.
Why would why would anybody trust her?
All the more reason why, if you're a university president and you're
in an exchange with her, you sort of mute this by saying, of course, of course it
would violate our policy and move on.
You don't let Ashley Stefanik be the person who somehow now stands for,
you know, protecting us against anti-Semitism, if that's a word
dependent on if we're dependent on some of these Trump Republicans,
we're in even more trouble than we know.
And that's the other part about this is I feel like this really
is a sort of a nonpolitical issue.
I mean, this should just be of course, if somebody is espousing hate,
if somebody wants to kill a group of people, they are not welcome in my house.
They're not welcome at this university.
They may be, you know, the Constitution may say they're welcome
out on the public sidewalk, but that's it.
And if we can't draw that distinction, we're in even more trouble than we know.
Maybe the hats can now say MAGA
Make America Against Genocide again. Maybe a slogan we could all get behind.
If you enjoyed this video, that's because of our members.
They make us independent, they make us strong, and they make us honest.
Become a member today by hitting the join button below.