Elise Stefanik’s Calculated Demagoguery on Antisemitism and Free Speech

Whether for reasons of trauma or political expediency, people have lost their moral compasses when it comes to antisemitism on college campuses.

Case in point: by the time this article gets posted, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Magill, may be out of a job, having fallen into a trap laid by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) at a congressional hearing Tuesday.

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And yet, Magill was clearly right.

Here’s the exchange that may cost Magill her position. See if you can spot exactly where it goes off the rails:

STEFANIK: Ms. Magill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

MAGILL: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.

STEFANIK: I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?

MAGILL: If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.

STEFANIK: So the answer is yes.

MAGILL: It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.

STEFANIK: So calling for the genocide of Jews is, depending upon the context, that is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer. Yes, Ms. Magill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes? Yes or no?

MAGILL: If the speech becomes conduct. It can be harassment, yes.

STEFANIK: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptable. Ms. Magill, I’m going to give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Yes or no?

MAGILL: It can be harassment.

Magill is correct here, and answered with thoughtful nuance. Stefanik, on the other hand, is plainly wrong. There is no “Yes or No” answer to this question, because the answer depends on the context.

First, “calling for the genocide of Jews” is a preposterous phrase, because that’s not how hate speech works.

Even Hamas’ charter doesn’t state “we hereby call for the genocide of Jews.” They say “Israel… will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” In the end, it is indeed a call for genocide—but even that requires some interpretation.

More ambiguous phrases like “from the river to the sea” or “there is only one solution: intifada, revolution” would necessarily come with yet more layers of context. Rep. Stefanik said the latter counts as a call to genocide; others (including me) would disagree. Even the word genocide is hotly contested and ambiguous, with the word frequently being applied (inaccurately, in my view) at Israel at least as much as its enemies.

For that matter, I’ve heard countless Jews say that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people over the years (indeed, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said so). Is that a “call for genocide”? It’s certainly in the neighborhood.

I’ve heard right-wing Israelis call for “transfer” of Palestinian populations out of the West Bank. In the last month, I’ve heard them call for Palestinians to be pushed out of Gaza. Calls for genocide? Again, maybe, maybe not—subject to interpretation and context.

Second, the Penn policy is about bullying, harassment, and intimidation, not speech per se. So, exactly as Magill said, the answer to whether a given speech act violates that policy depends on its context.

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If a torch-bearing mob marauds through a university campus while chanting “Jews will not replace us,” that is surely harassment and intimidation. When, a few weeks ago, a crowd of New York City high school students ran through the school’s halls, shouted “Free Palestine,” vandalized school property, and tried to barge into a classroom of a teacher who posted “I stand with Israel,” that wasn’t mere speech but, as Magill said, conduct that qualifies as harassment.

But what about when someone makes a statement in a classroom or a college lecture? If someone insists, in a classroom discussion, that Israel as a country is an illegitimate colonial outpost and should be “wiped off the map”?

That sounds like a political statement to me, not an act of bullying or intimidation. But if a mob marches into a Shabbat service and shouts the same slogan, then that’s clearly harassment and in violation of the policy. Context matters.

Of course, this is the subtlety one would expect from a university president, and also what we would expect a would-be demagogue to exploit, which is exactly what Stefanik did.

What’s more, the same civil libertarians who are the darlings of Republicans when they defend conservatives in this case have defended Magill.

In The New York Times’ report on the hearing, it quoted a spokesman for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)—an advocacy group that receives funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation and is beloved by opponents of “cancel culture”—as saying that whether speech rises to the level of harassment “’is a complicated and fact-intensive issue’ that stems from a pattern of targeted behavior. ‘For example, it’s hard to see how the single utterance Rep. Stefanik asked about during the hearing—no matter how offensive—would qualify given this requirement.’”

Exactly right. But tell that to the mob of donors and alumni now demanding Magill’s head.

Of course, when it comes to conservative speech, Republicans like Stefanik are warriors against censorship of all kinds. In a 2021 interview, Stefanik complained of a “petition pressuring the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School to remove me from the bipartisan board of Harvard Institute of Politics,” due to her objecting to electors from four states in the 2020 election. “This is how cancel culture works,” she said.

But now Stefanik is practicing cancel culture on steroids. She and others are calling for Magill’s ouster—not for anything she personally said or did, but for merely stating that hateful antisemitic speech may or may not count as harassment, depending on the circumstances.

It’s cancel culture when it’s me, but not when it’s thee.

What I find most personally repellant about this whole spectacle is how it exploits the trauma and pain that the Jewish community is still feeling (while utterly ignoring the trauma and pain that Palestinians are experiencing).

Even those of us profoundly troubled by the extent of Israel’s military action in Gaza are still reeling from the massacres, rapes, and torture of Oct. 7. We are terrified by the rise in antisemitism in America and Europe. We are hurting.

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But that’s what demagogues do, whether it’s Trump or Stefanik or anyone else: they pander to our fear and rage, and sublimate that pain into harmful actions.

Even more than the public square, universities are places where freedom of thought and expression are paramount. When speech crosses the line into harassment, those who threaten the safety of others must be held accountable—and I’m not defending the actions or inactions of Penn, Harvard, or any other institution.

But the spectacle of a demagogue urging a mob to punish an intellectual for articulately and accurately distinguishing between political speech and bullying? That is what I—as a journalist, lawyer, and rabbi—find chilling.