Decrying Black Lives Matter, preferred pronouns and transgender athletes in women’s sports is a good way to get canceled on campus, but celebrating the bloody terrorist attack on Israeli civilians is another matter.
The ongoing pro-Palestinian rallies at U.S. universities have thrown into sharp relief the ingrained political bias in academia, say conservatives, as universities known for muzzling disfavored views defend the free speech rights of those showing solidarity with Palestinians and even Hamas after the Oct. 7 massacre.
Examples include praise for “our heroic resistance in Gaza” by Ohio State University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, a Cornell University professor saying he was “exhilarated” by the Hamas attack and University of North Carolina’s SJP group sanctioning “violence” in the name of “liberation.”
“There is a double standard in higher education that rewards extremist, leftist and even terror-supporting [Hamas] views, and yet when conservative speakers come to campus — expressing the views held by our founding fathers — they are attacked and vilified,” former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker told The Washington Times in an email.
Mr. Walker is in a position to know: He serves as president of Young America’s Foundation, which seeks to bring conservative speakers to college campuses, often over the objections of administrators and student protesters.
“We plan to support Jewish students while also working to expose and oppose the hypocrisy of faculty, staff and students who support Hamas,” Mr. Walker said. “Light drives out the darkness.”
Those looking for evidence of a double standard need look no further than Harvard University.
After the Hamas attack, Harvard President Claudine Gay condemned terrorism while championing the free speech rights of the 33 student groups that signed a letter blaming Israel for the terrorist assault on Israeli civilians that left more than 1,400 dead, including 30 Americans.
“That commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous. We do not punish or sanction people for expressing such views. But that is a far cry from endorsing them,” Ms. Gay said in a video message.
Her full-throated defense of free speech came even though Harvard ranked dead last in the 2024 College Free Speech Rankings compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard received a free speech score of 0.00.
The university has pressured students to use preferred pronouns based on gender identity, not biological sex, and warned that failing to do so could constitute a violation of the university’s “sexual misconduct and harassment policies.”
“Harvard president Claudine Gay is a hypocritical fraud,” declared Campus Reform, the conservative education watchdog.
Also scoring in the bottom five was the University of Pennsylvania, which was accused last year of warning female athletes to keep quiet about Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who smashed women’s records after having competed for three years on the men’s team.
Following the Hamas attack, UPenn was hit with a donor revolt over Palestine Writes, a literature festival held on campus last month that included speakers with a history of antisemitic statements. The university responded by condemning antisemitism as “antithetical to our values” while defending free speech.
“As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission,” a Sept. 12 statement led by UPenn President Liz Magill reads. “This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.”
Groups hosting right-of-center speakers on campus say their reception has been far chillier.
Young America’s Foundation is on schedule to host 100 campus lectures this year. So far about 60% of those have been met with protests or had “helicopter administrators create needless roadblocks to delay approval of the events,” said YAF Vice President Patrick X. Coyle.
For example, YAF threatened legal action in March after Purdue University allegedly tried to stop the College Republicans from advertising a speech by Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles and charged a $5,000 security fee. The university ultimately allowed him to appear.
Mr. Knowles was greeted by hundreds of protesters, egged on by Purdue, which released a statement beforehand: “External speakers do not represent the university. We encourage anyone who disagrees with the student organization speakers’ viewpoints to speak up with theirs.”
At least Mr. Knowles was able to deliver his speech. Not so with U.S. District Judge Kyle Duncan, who was shouted down in March by noisy student protesters at Stanford University. He had to cut his remarks short and was escorted from the campus by federal marshals.
In April, 12-time All-American swimmer Riley Gaines was pursued down a corridor by a mob of transgender activists at San Francisco State University. Campus security hustled her into a vacant room and hid her there for three hours as demonstrators waited outside, causing her to miss her flight.
The school refused to discipline the protesters but mandated free speech training for students. The SFSU president expressed sympathy afterward not for Ms. Gaines but for the student activists, saying her speech was “deeply traumatic for many in our trans and LGBTQ+ communities.”
Turning Point USA, the conservative campus group that sponsored Ms. Gaines’ speech at SFSU, said there was a “massive difference” in how pro-Palestinian rallies had been treated versus appearances by right-tilting speakers.
“The entire academy has been infected with anti-civilization, anti-white, anti-Semitic bigotry producing much less real knowledge than ever while empowering and giving credibility to ‘professors’ who are actually just highly paid activists whose sole job is to indoctrinate the next generation,” said Turning Point spokesperson Andrew Kolvet.
Cornell University was accused of going soft on associate professor Russell Rickford after he described the Hamas attack as “exhilarating” at a pro-Palestinian rally. He has since apologized for his “horrible choice of words.”
The university initially put out a statement that denounced “glorifying the evils of Hamas terrorism” without mentioning Mr. Rickford. Under criticism, Cornell issued a second statement that used his name and said the university was “taking this incident seriously and is currently reviewing it consistent with our procedures.”
Cornell University Law School professor William Jacobson, who runs the Legal Insurrection blog, said the administration was far less restrained after he and another faculty member denounced the 2020 Black Lives Matter rioting.
“We were standing against rioting and looting. We were standing up for peace. And we were quickly denounced by name,” Mr. Jacobson told Fox News.
“Now you have a professor who stands up for violence, who feels exhilarated by the mass murder, mass torture and mass rape of Jewish Israelis and other Israelis, and the university is very slow to react to him,” he said. “It just shows how ideological things are on campuses.”
Then-Cornell Law School Dean Eduardo M. Penalver ripped Mr. Jacobson’s BLM comments as “offensive” but rejected calls to take disciplinary action against him, saying it would “fatally pit our values against one another in ways that would corrode our ability to operate as an academic institution.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.