This past Sunday marked the 277th anniversary of Princeton’s founding. It should have been a day full of excitement, a day of celebration and reaffirmation of the value of an American liberal arts education. Sadly, the past few weeks have offered no occasion for celebration. In the wake of Hamas’ evil attacks on Israeli civilians, Princeton and its fellow “elite” institutions have floundered helplessly in moral uncertainty. Although the recent reactions are gravely troubling in their own right, they are indicative of problems that have plagued America’s universities for decades.
In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack, many universities and administrators remained silent. For a public accustomed to university statements on important events, it was only a matter of time before these universities, including Princeton and its fellow “elite” institutions, released their respective stances on the war. At Princeton, it took University President Christopher Eisgruber three days to respond. To his credit, President Eisgruber called the attacks “the most atrocious of terrorist acts,” and rightfully rebuked them as “cruel and inhumane.” However, this is where the value judgments ended and the moral equivocation began. After his initial comments, President Eisgruber attempted to stake out a neutral institutional position on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, claiming that Princeton “embraces many Israelis and Palestinians among its cherished members” and directing community attention to “scholarly contributions and public panel discussions” about the rapidly unfolding events. Although the University’s sudden step toward institutional neutrality is a welcome one, its context sours any possibility of progress.
Princeton’s change in approach did not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it occurred in the wake of Hamas’ evil slaughter of Israeli civilians, an attack which resulted in the largest murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Unlike the unequivocal statement made last year in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the University’s statement on Israel lacks moral certainty. In President Eisgruber’s statement on Ukraine, he condemned the “unjust invasion” as a “blatant, wrongful violation.” He went even further by noting “the damage it has done to international principles fundamental to peace and human rights throughout the world.” No such appeal to “international principles” or “human rights” could be found in his most recent statement. His response to the attacks in Israel, although correctly denouncing them as inhumane terrorist acts, lacked the conviction of his statement on the war in Ukraine.
Implicit in the university’s sudden embrace of “neutrality” is the idea that certain student constituencies, and certain political issues, matter more to the University than others. When it came to the slaughter of innocent Israelis, Princeton and its sister institutions found the time convenient to eschew their habit of issuing unequivocal words of condemnation. In regards to institutional statements, silence can speak as loudly, if not more loudly, than words. If there is ever a time in which universities have a moral obligation to issue statements, the recent attack on Israel is one of them. When evil strikes, American universities have a moral duty to uphold the dignity of human life and unequivocally renounce indiscriminate violence.
Princeton was not alone in its failed response to the attacks. Across the Ivy League, university administrators struggled to articulate a clear moral reaction to the violence in Israel. Harvard was rightfully castigated for President Claudine Gay’s weak response, especially given the heinous statement made by over 30 student groups justifying the horrific violence and declaring “the Israeli regime entirely responsible.” At the University of Pennsylvania, several student groups issued similar statements, and many alumni have urged their peers to withhold future donations to their alma mater. In response, President Liz Magill issued a clear condemnation of the violence, saying that “[t]here is no justification – none – for these heinous attacks” but also acknowledging that the university “should have moved faster to share [its] position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community.” A few days after the responses of Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard’s president issued yet another statement. However, even with words of clearer condemnation, President Gay floundered again in moral uncertainty, qualifying Harvard’s rejection of terrorism with a commitment to respecting all views (even those deemed “outrageous”) in the current of free expression.
Like Princeton’s sudden embrace of institutional neutrality, Harvard’s support for free speech would be welcome if not for the context in which it was expressed. The student views to which President Gay refers are not nuanced opinions on the history of Israel–Palestine relations; they are vile justifications for the slaughter of innocent Israelis. What does it say about America’s “elite” universities when defenses of evil, not reasoned (yet minority) political beliefs, are the perspectives which prompt a sudden commitment to free speech? President Gay goes even further in the video by prizing the ability “to listen with care and humility” over the issuance of “public pronouncements declaring the rightness of our points of view.” Again, in any other context, this commitment would be a cause for celebration. However, in the current context, it is a ringing endorsement of moral relativism. Although universities should and must allow the expression of differing points of view, they should not twist that commitment to protect certain points of view from moral scrutiny, especially when it becomes politically or socially convenient to do so.
Some have argued that this scrutiny is no different than the “cancel culture” against which conservatives have railed for years. However, to make this argument is to equate the substantive value of mainstream conservative speech with the justification of brutal violence. There is a clear difference between legitimately contested political questions and issues of objective morality, and if there is ever an example of an issue with clearly objective moral stakes, it is the brutal murder and kidnapping of innocent civilians. If our universities cannot make the distinction between mainstream political opinions and justifications for the beheading of infants, raping of women, and burning of the elderly, they are failing both their students and the American public. While the concepts of academic freedom and institutional neutrality require that people have the right to express themselves, it does not, nor cannot, require the absence of fundamental distinctions between good and evil.
The reactions to the attacks in Israel highlight the woeful lack of ethical mooring at America’s top academic institutions. The past few weeks stress, above all, the necessity of having a moral component within the mission of the University. Without it, what is the point of intellectual inquiry? If the mind is cultivated at the expense of the soul, then the soul will rot and wither away.
In America’s most prestigious universities, students and administrators are so afraid of intolerance that they tolerate the intolerable. Scholars can debate 2+2 all they would like (as they unfortunately have), but it does not change the fact that it will always equal 4. Similarly, “scholars” can proffer as many arguments as they would like to defend the murder of innocent civilians, but that does not mean their arguments should be treated as valuable or morally respectable. Our institutions of higher learning cannot be neutral in the face of evil, especially when justifications for evil come from within their own ranks. This is not to say that students and faculty who make these arguments should be punished, but it is to say that they should not be shielded from intense moral scrutiny.
Both students and the American public deserve better from the nation’s institutions of higher learning, especially those tasked with educating the next generation of leaders and thinkers. America’s universities, especially those with outsized international brands like Princeton, reflect the health of American society more broadly. If the chief export of American universities is moral uncertainty, then what is to be said about the country’s other important institutions, including governmental ones? A country that is afraid to act on moral truths is one that is afraid to believe them in the first place, and a country that is afraid to believe them is a country that is ultimately incapable of leading on the world stage. Our universities matter because the ideas and students they produce matter.
In the next few months, Princeton and its sister institutions will move on from this moment. They will celebrate more anniversaries, and they will continue issuing institutional statements about current events. Students will keep going to class, administrators will move on to the next project or initiative, and the news cycle will continue its ceaseless churn. However, we must not relent in demanding a higher moral standard for our universities. We must remind them of the country they serve and the values upon which they were founded. It is not yet time to give up on our universities, but we must guard against giving undue credence to their positions and ideas when they fail the most basic of moral tests. The tree still has the potential to bear good fruit, but it must first be cleared of the ivy vines that choke the light of moral clarity.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
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