The Only Thing Those Ivy League Presidents Are Guilty of Is Being Chumps

Don't waltz into a bad faith congressional mugging and expect me to feel bad for you.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

It is a good and useful rule of thumb to simply not care about anything happening on college campuses unless it directly affects your life or livelihood. I’ve personally tried to live by this simple axiom for as much of my adult life as possible, and I’d like to think I’m a happier, more well-adjusted person as a result. Oh, is there some uproar, scandal, or ado happening at a university I’ve never thought about before today? That’s too bad. Or maybe it’s good. None of my business either way.

Having said that, there are times—fewer and much further between than many people named Bari Weiss would have you believe—at which it becomes virtually impossible to ignore a collegiate brouhaha, no matter how stupid or unimportant the actual case may be. This brings me to last week’s disastrous appearance by three Ivy League university presidents at a Republican-led House committee hearing on campus antisemitism. Judging by the growing number of frantic op-eds and wrenching personal essays published by the New York Times and other papers of record, this is apparently an enormous problem in need of federal intervention.

Not that last week’s hearing actually solved anything. Quite the opposite: by running face first into a hilariously obvious trap set by some of the most nakedly opportunistic demons in Congress, Penn President Liz Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth have helped energize an ongoing right-wing effort to delegitimize higher education, and the concept of “education” in general.

If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t…well, watch the video below.