“I don’t think that phrase was used even once,” is how the retired Columbia University Sanskritist Sheldon Pollack put it. The phrase was “academic freedom"; the event was Wednesday’s congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, the second since December, this time with Columbia’s president Nemat (Minouche) Shafik in the hot seat. The failure of Shafik or any of the other witnesses — David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, co-chairs of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, and David Schizer, a Columbia law professor and co-chair of the university’s antisemitism task force — to name the concept that was at the very heart of the hearing surely had something to do with the watery imprecision of the whole conversation.
The absence of any articulated theory of academic freedom meant, for instance, that when Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican of Michigan, asked Shafik whether the controversial Columbia professor Joseph Massad, who celebrated the “innovative Palestinian resistance” after October 7, had been punished, Shafik meekly insisted that “he has been spoken to.” But Massad’s essay, which appeared in The Electronic Intifada, is obviously protected extramural speech, no less than was the Rutgers University historian Eugene Genovese’s proclamation, in 1965, that “I do not fear or regret the impending Vietcong victory in Vietnam. I welcome it.” Rutgers, in a watershed victory for academic freedom, refused to discipline Genovese — despite demands by politicians that he be fired.
The absence of any articulated theory of academic freedom meant that none of the Columbia officials was able to explain to Congress that Columbia law professor Katherine Franke’s denigration on Democracy Now of Israeli students who come to Columbia after their military service — “They’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus,” she said — is probably not protected by academic freedom, and is therefore not particularly comparable to Massad’s case. From the point of view of academic freedom, the difference between Massad’s essay and Franke’s attack on a particular class of students, as defined by nationality, is essential. (Shafik said that Franke “will be finding a way to clarify her position,” which would be a good idea.)
And the absence of any articulated theory of academic freedom meant that, in the case of student activism, no robust distinction between unprotected targeted harassment and protected protest rhetoric was ever drawn by Columbia’s leadership. As in December’s hearing, the upshot of that failure is that Shafik had no way of explaining why a given protest chant, like “globalize the intifada,” is permissible speech even if offensive or stupid. “I personally find it unacceptable,” Shafik told Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat of North Carolina. “Our current rules have not specified that as not acceptable, but we have sent a very clear message to our community that that kind of language is unacceptable.” This is to say both too much and too little. There is no real academic freedom — which includes the rights of students to associate for purposes of political expression — when a college president dictates which slogans protesters can or can’t use.
Even more troubling, as far as academic freedom goes, was the attack by Rep. Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, on the Columbia School of Social Work by way of a glossary of critical terms its students distributed at orientation. The glossary included the term “Ashkenormativity,” an awkward portmanteau combining “Ashkenazi” and “normativity.”
Banks scored rhetorical points by both mocking the clotted pseudo-sophistication of the students’ language and by appearing to confirm the larger thesis that the academic left is suffused with antisemitism. “‘Ashkenormativity,’” Banks read, “is defined as ‘a system of oppression that favors white Jewish folx [yes, with the x — more on that below] based on the assumption that all Jewish folx are Ashkenazi, or from Western Europe.’ Do you have a response to that definition of Ashkenormativity? Is it appropriate?”
Shafik sighed, at a loss. (She might have pointed out that “Western Europe” was an error in the definition.) Finally she said, “I think it’s not very useful. I don’t condone it.” Banks went on: “It’s not found in the Webster’s dictionary or anywhere else, Ashkenormativity. Is that an acceptable term at Columbia University?” Shafik caved, saying “Congressman, I am with you. I agree with you. I don’t find this a meaningful way …" and trailed off. Banks asked the trustees about the term. One said that it is “shockingly offensive"; the other that it is “ridiculous.”
