‘No credibility’: Critics cry foul as colleges press for free speech amid Israel-Hamas conflict

Universities are facing allegations of hypocrisy over their calls for a free exchange of ideas on campus amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, with some saying that how colleges have dealt with free speech controversies before puts them in a tough position to turn down the current tension. 

Colleges have come under fire during the bloodshed, receiving condemnation for either statements from university leadership seen as too weak on Hamas or for defending professors’ right to free speech after they made statements against Israel. 

“When facing tragedy, we can feel our differences intensely. Regardless of how we view the war in the Middle East, I believe in the strength of this community. We remain committed to open dialogue and to sustaining a community of respect. I call on all of us to treat each other with compassion and understanding and to reject discrimination and intolerance in any form,” Yale President Peter Salovey said three days after Hamas’s attack on Israel. 

More than 40,000 people have signed a petition to fire a Yale professor over their comments on the war. 

And calls for open dialogue from leaders at multiple colleges are ringing hollow for critics who point to how past free speech controversies have been handled.

“They can’t pick and choose the issue. ‘Oh, we’re going to denounce this or that’ and then some other issue comes along, and they decide to be silent when a good part of the public is outraged,” said David Keating, president of the conservative-leaning Institute for Free Speech.  

On other issues, such as the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, many U.S. colleges have taken strong positions.

Harvard University’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights called that decision last year “harmful” and said it would “cost lives, hurt families and communities, and disproportionately impact poor people and people of color.” 

Schools weighing in on hot-bottom issues such as former President Trump, gay rights and Ukraine, but being unable to put together stronger statements on the Israel-Hamas war makes their calls for free speech look “opportunistic,” according to Alex Morey, director of Campus Rights Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

“Now you know, thousands of Jews are being murdered and now suddenly, you don’t want to weigh in, or now there’s war crimes in Gaza. Now, you don’t want to weigh in. Oh, isn’t that convenient? You know, certainly, there are going to be accusations,” Morey said. 

The sentiment that they were initially too soft or too slow in their statements against Hamas has led to some Ivy League schools such as Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania losing billionaire donors and facing accusations of antisemitism. 

“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate,” long-time donor and former U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said in a letter to the president of UPenn announcing he was cutting ties to the school.

Keating said, “A lot of these institutions have no credibility,” pointing to past campus events that have been canceled or lost official support because of controversy.

While the Israel-Palestine issue is a particularly volatile topic on campus, students and bystanders seem to be dismissing universities’ calls for free speech due to inconsistency on the issue in the past. 

“Universities have really taken sides on a lot of issues. And they’re also catering for students who are saying ‘There are views on campus, there are speakers on campus that don’t align with the university’s views, with my views. Administrators, censor them, cancel that speaker. We don’t want these views here,’” Morey said. 

“Now we come to a moment where there are two really entrenched sides, both with views that finally the university understands, ‘Gosh, there are points on both sides. We ought to be able to talk through this issue.’ Suddenly, no one on campus knows how to do that, because there’s been this growth of orthodoxy on campus.” she added.

Moving forward, experts are saying university leadership needs to take back their role of host of debates on campus, not participants.

The University of Chicago is held up by many as the gold standard for free speech policies on college campuses after it created the “Kalven Report” in the 1960s to clearly define and make “a statement on the University’s role in political and social action.” The committee concluded the school “must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community” and should not be announcing opinions on political issues of the day except in extraordinary circumstances.

Kristen Shahverdian, senior manager of the free expression and education team at Pen America, said the riff today shows campuses need to be “a lot more proactive” in creating policies like the Kalven report that clearly define free speech principles in order to “build a culture to have deep, respectful discourse.”

“If [the colleges had] been doing that consistently throughout, students would know where to turn to, they might know already where different resources are, they may understand the policy that the university has on expression on campus and all of that could serve as a better foundation” for productive debates on campuses, Shahverdian said.