Woke Cowardice: Wrong University Presidents at The Wrong Time

by Alan M. Dershowitz 

• As Ecclesiastes observed "to everything there is a season". This seems to be the season for woke cowardice
• [These administrators] are also insensitive to civil liberties and the rights of those with whom they disagree.
• It creates divisiveness on campuses that makes Jewish students and faculty fearful for their safety when their university president seems unwilling to apply the same standard to those who advocate genocide against Jews as they surely would against anyone who advocated genocide against Blacks or the raping of women or the shooting of gay and transgender people.
• What these universities need now are principled advocates of a single standard, rather than leaders who base their decisions on outside pressures and the need to pander to extremist students, faculty and administrators.
• One thing is clear: [university presidents] should be selected on the basis of relevant, individual meritocratic criteria— not the cookie cutter criteria of the "diversity, equity and inclusion" bureaucracies.

The three university presidents who disgraced themselves and their universities by their abysmal testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce represent a far larger concern. Pictured L-R: Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University, Liz Magill, President of University of Pennsylvania, Professor Pamela Nadell of American University, and Sally Kornbluth, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee on December 5, 2023 in Washington, DC, on the subject of antisemitism on college campuses. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The forced resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania is a good first step in dealing with a far more pervasive problem in higher education.

The three university presidents who disgraced themselves and their universities by their abysmal testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce represent a far larger concern.

In recent years, many universities have selected as their presidents woke, progressive cowards who pander to the most extreme and most vocal left-wing students and professors. They are the wrong people, at the wrong time, to be leading American educational institutions.

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