Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
I suspect I am not the only one who found it difficult to laugh on Saturday night, watching SNL’s send-up of last week’s congressional hearing on antisemitism and college campuses. Coming only hours after Liz Magill actually resigned as Penn’s president amid the ongoing fallout, the real-world consequences of the hearing had become too… well, real.
Here was a leading university president stepping down, amid a storm of politicians’ and donors’ demands, after an exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) from last week’s hearing went viral. In it, Magill, along with the presidents of Harvard (Claudine Gay) and MIT (Sally Kornbluth), offered a series of technical, “lawyerly” responses to the question of whether calling for genocide of Jews on campus would constitute bullying or harassment under their codes of conduct.
Stefanik’s audacious and frank question demanded a fuller explanation; but the presidents’ curt responses left many aghast at the prospect that such a heinous hypothetical could ever be construed as acceptable.