By David K. Shipler
During a
presidential debate in 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis sank his presidential
campaign with a clinical,
legalistic answer to a question about his wife from reporter Bernard Shaw: “Governor,
if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death
penalty for the killer?”
Instead
of reacting from his gut, Dukakis responded from his head. Instead of exploding
first with a vengeful desire to tear the man limb from limb himself, he jumped
right to the substantive answer on capital punishment: “No, I don’t, Bernard, and I think you know
that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any
evidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective
ways to deal with violent crime. We’ve done so in my own state. It’s one of the
reasons why we have had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state in America
. . .” By that point, if not sooner, millions of voters were incensed by his
lack of passion, no matter how legitimate his policy.
It’s
not an exact parallel, but it’s instructive nonetheless in how the three
presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania made fools of
themselves in last week’s congressional hearing. Excessively prepared by the prominent
law firm of WilmerHale, according
to The New York Times, they slipped catastrophically into procedural
answers during a sequence of prosecutorial questions on whether calls by
students for the genocide of Jews would constitute punishable harassment.
Again,
instead of the raw gut reaction of “Yes!” two of them in particular, Elizabeth
Magill of Penn (who has since been forced to resign) and Claudine Gay of
Harvard, tried to draw a line between speech and conduct. The first is usually
protected, the second, often not. They failed to recognize that verbal calls to
exterminate Jews, who make up part of their student populations, would at least
blur that line and probably erase it entirely.
They may have been complacent about
antisemitism on their campuses, as some Jewish students have complained. Or they
may have been more sensitive than last week’s blundering made them seem. In any
event, cautionary lawyering apparently made them gun-shy about potential free-speech
lawsuits from students. The presidents acted as if they were in a courtroom
instead of a hearing room. And therein lie some lessons.
1. Never testify before Congress voluntarily. If you’re not under subpoena, obligated as a government official to appear, or seeking Senate confirmation for a position. Don’t naively imagine that the legislators are inviting you because they are actually seeking information. The Republicans especially want you as a foil to posture, perform, and promote themselves into political orbit.
