Harvard, Penn and MIT presidents under fire over 'despicable' testimony on antisemitism and genocide

[moniss]

30. Well a couple of observations I have about

this "testimony". First of all the people coming to testify fairly obviously thought that this hearing was called in order to elicit facts from them for the purposes of informing Congressional understanding and perhaps policy or legislation. That is usually not at all why hearings are held in Congress anymore and their failure to be better advised of that is naive and on them. These questions from the lawmakers are designed, usually, to allow the questioner to frame a long winded question or a gotcha question in a manner to elicit a response that can then be turned into a soundbite/twisted to imply meaning etc. For example you can now be sure that there has been a ton of media and talking heads claiming these witnesses are anti-Semitic, support genocide etc. That was the whole purpose from the beginning.

Then we come to the responses. Being asked to make responses of specific conclusion for broad open ended questions is an old debate/propaganda trick. There are only 4 scenarios of responses to anything in those circumstances and they all allow the questioner to use the response to play their game.

First if the witness says "I don't know" then the questioner gets to jump on the witness and claim them to be ignorant etc. and therefore failing. The second would be to say "It is a general question and the circumstances can dictate an appropriate action to take" in which case the questioner(s), as happened here, will jump all over the witness and claim they are "trying to go easy", "endorsing", etc.

The third scenario response is to say "We have policies in place to address the situation" at which moment the questioner will immediately shoot back a response like "why are you failing to enforce those policies?" and of course any explanation about needing to go through a process for legal reasons will quickly be cut off by the questioner. The fourth scenario response would be to actually say "It is improper to take a broad term describing something and then immediately strap it over to something far more specific and detailed. There is an entire process in properly addressing these things and that process is there because you don't just go, as a University Official, and make/announce conclusions and disciplinary decisions by way of failing to go through what is an administrative and legal process for complaints about hate speech, bullying, harassment etc." Now of course that answer would also be cut off and in any event would be summarily ignored even if given or twisted to fit a narrative anyway during a media interview.

Honestly the real response that should have been given, in today's environment in Congress, would have been at the outset when requested to appear in the first place. "I see no constructive purpose in my appearing because this Congress has demonstrated over and over again that this is about grandstanding to the media by members of Congress and others. The members and others routinely use this grandstanding to do fund-raising to enrich themselves and enhance their hold on power. They demonstrate by example and experience that once a short time passes the issue they did the grandstanding about will be a forgotten matter on their agenda and they will be on to their next item of outrage.

To further their ends they will use willing sycophants in the media and in political think tanks/consultancy to join in and validate the grandstanding and the sham also for their financial gain and influence as well. Being in leadership at a university in times of controversy clearly means that my priorities for time, effort and dealing with controversy impacting students means that I dedicate all my time and effort towards that." Now of course I'm being polite in phrasing that for how they should have responded. My real feeling is that it would be a delight of my life if one of them would just say it like we might hear it at a pub.