Female university presidents are under fire in the wake of Congress’s college antisemitism hearings

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Brands are cutting ties with Sean "Diddy" Combs, the FDA approved the first gene-editing treatment that biochemist Jennifer Doudna helped pioneer, and higher ed's female leaders are under fire. Have a mindful Monday.

- After the hearings. Last week, three university presidents appeared before Congress to testify about their institutions' responses to antisemitism amid campus protests following Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. During their testimonies, all three were asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the schools' codes of conduct.

The leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology responded with lawyered statements they'd clearly prepared ahead of time—and their answers seemed to satisfy no one. While the leaders acknowledged that calling for the genocide of Jews is "abhorrent," as Harvard president Claudine Gay put it, the lack of a simple "yes" angered lawmakers, alumni, and donors.

By Saturday, Penn president Liz Magill had resigned. Calls for Gay and MIT president Sally Kornbluth to follow continue, including from powerful corners of the business world. Hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman has demanded that the leaders "resign in disgrace."

The campaign to remove three university leaders from their posts follows a banner year for women's leadership in higher education. Gay took over as Harvard's president in July; she's the first Black person to lead the 387-year-old institution. Also this year, Sian Beilock took over Dartmouth and Nemat Minouche Shafik became the first female president of Columbia. Overall, six out of eight Ivy League schools had female presidents before Magill's resignation; she plans to remain in the role until the school names an interim president.

The three women who testified before Congress were put in a difficult position. Yes, classifying calls for the genocide of Jews as hate speech should have been a straight-forward task. The leaders, advised by lawyers, answered by-the-book, with freedom of speech in mind, rather than with the human and emotional response required in the moment. Gay apologized in an interview with the Harvard Crimson. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don’t know how you could feel anything but regret," she said.

The exchanges came after long, combative lines of questioning by Stefanik—a Trump-aligned congresswoman who is hardly a moral authority on the issue of antisemitism. Last year, she ran digital ads that echoed the antisemitic "great replacement" theory.

And university leaders are caught between a growing generation gap on the Middle East conflict, with undergraduate students holding more pro-Palestinian views compared to alumni and donors, who tend to support Israel.

Watching the exchanges and their fallout, I was reminded of my conversation this fall at the Women Lead festival in New York with Wellesley president Paula Johnson, which took place just two days before Hamas's attack. She told me that "civil discourse" was one of the most pressing issues facing campuses today. "We are seeing more and more movement against being open to a diversity of opinion—and I'm not talking about hate speech," she said at the time. "I'm talking about a diversity of opinion that is so essential to our excellence. It's happening outside of the classroom, which is a tremendous learning ground for students, and inside the classroom."

The MIT board has said it supports Kornbluth. More than 500 of Harvard's 2,000 faculty members signed a letter in support of Gay, citing a need to "resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom." A meeting of the Harvard Corporation, which will decide whether Gay stays in the role, is scheduled for today.

These centuries-old, prestigious institutions only just started putting women in leadership roles; at Harvard, Gay has been in the job for less than six months. Of course, leaders should be held accountable, but the past week's events should not disrupt academia's progress in appointing more diverse leaders; that would be a shame for students of all backgrounds.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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