In December, Marc Rowan, a major donor to the University of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Board of Advisors of Penn's Wharton School, sent a letter to the trustees of the university, framed as a series of questions. The questions are all reasonable. Here are major excerpts:
What is the University’s mission? What is the process for evaluating whether the University’s actions are consistent with its mission? Is the intention to have one mission for the entire University, or does each school/college have its own mission? In what way should the mission be incorporated into academics, admissions, and faculty selection?Does the University have proper governance and are the responsibilities of Trustees clearlyunderstood?What is the role of merit/academic excellence in admissions, faculty hiring, and other areas of recruitment? Is merit/academic excellence paramount, or one of many factors?What are the Board’s criteria for qualification and admission for membership in the Faculty?What are the Board’s criteria for the instruction of students and recommendations for degrees in course and in Faculty?Should any of the existing academic departments be closed and/or combined as per Provision 10.6 of the Charter?The Supreme Court recently ruled on affirmative action in college admissions. How does the University intend to comply with the ruling?What is the University policy on free speech, civil discourse, hate speech, outside actors, respect, and tolerance?How important is viewpoint diversity in the hiring of our faculty, our administrators and theremainder of the University community? If it is important, is it compatible with our current DEI framework?While recognizing the complete academic freedom of the faculty and the freedom affordedadministrators as individuals, what is the University’s policy on faculty and administratorspromoting a particular viewpoint in their official capacity? Should a student even be able to tell the political and other leanings of their professors? b. Is academic discipline appropriate in the event if a professor or faculty member abuses their official position?Is the University a neutral body that is a hosting entity for its community members or does it have an institutional opinion?Is the University a U.S. institution with foreign diversity, or a global institution based in the United States?What is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations from countries/individuals and, specifically, what is the policy on publicly identifying any such contributions? Similarly, what is the University’s policy on direct and indirect foreign donations to student organizations?
Typically, if a major donor asks fundamental questions like these, a university would scramble to address them. While the questions have a viewpoint, Rowan is not advocating any changes and even he said through a spokesperson that "ultimately, it is what the trustees and faculty want." The letter is simply asking for clarification on the University's stance on important issues.
Yet instead of embracing transparency in answering the questions, the university's faculty is claiming that the letter itself is an assault on academic freedom.
And the New York Times is happy to highlight that absurd viewpoint.
The early paragraphs of the article say:
Mr. Rowan sent a four-page email to university trustees titled “Moving Forward,” which many professors interpreted as a blueprint for a more conservative campus.Amy C. Offner, a history professor who led the protest, called the document a proposed “hostile takeover of the core academic functions of the university.”
Only in paragraph 17 did the Times mention that the letter made no demands or even suggestions but only asked questions.
There is an unmistakable subliminal message in the NYT article, and it is that rich Jews are trying to subvert academic freedom.
The article ties Rowan's letter to the larger question of antisemitism on campus. Undoubtedly the letter is related to that issue, as Rowan was a major critic both of the infamous "Palestine Writes" conference at Penn last year and of former president Elizabeth Magill’s failure to address campus antisemitism. There is nothing wrong with looking at the issue of antisemitism on campus and seeking root causes.
Yet the NYT does not look at this through that prism.
Instead, the link between the letter and the uproar over campus antisemitism is framed more as a bunch of shady Jewish billionaires trying to impose their conservative ideas on faculty from the outside.
Penn is now being assailed from many sides. It is the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Jewish students and partly financed by unnamed donors, and the subject of a congressional investigation with subpoena power. ...Two alumni, Mr. Rowan and Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, were notable among the sponsors of a fund-raiser for the re-election of Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, whose House committee is investigating Penn and other universities over claims of antisemitism.
Mr. Rowan and Mr. Lauder did not attend the fund-raiser, but the event’s organizer — Andrew Sabin, a New Yorker who made a fortune in metal recycling — said that the sponsors shared an opposition to antisemitism and are hoping to pressure Congress to remove federal funding and the tax-exempt status of some universities.A separate investigation by the House Ways and Means Committee has questioned whether campus antisemitism jeopardizes the nonprofit status of Penn as well as Cornell, Harvard, and M.I.T.“We’ve got a very, very aggressive path forward,” said Mr. Sabin, who did not attend Penn.“This is an anti-democratic attack unfolding, not just at Penn, but all across the country, including at public universities in Florida, in Texas, Ohio and beyond,” said Dr. Offner, the president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a professional faculty organization.Penn, she said, had become “ground zero of a coordinated national assault on higher education, an assault organized by billionaires, lobbying organizations, and politicians who would like to control what can be studied and taught in the United States.”
All of these paragraphs are written before a token lone dissenting voice at the university, who the article takes pains to show is Jewish and Zionist:
The faculty, however, is not of one mind. Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology, responded directly in an email to the faculty senate.“Your letter specifically calls out Marc Rowan’s questions, which I have studied and found to be reasonable and helpful,” wrote Dr. Kahana, who shared his email with The New York Times. Dr. Kahana recently organized a trip to Israeli universities by Penn professors, as a show of solidarity with academic colleagues in Israel.
The overall framing of the article is that people who care about campus antisemitism are rich, meddling Jews who want to take over campuses just as they already have taken over Wall Street and Congress.
Unmentioned is the fact that American universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, accept hundreds of millions of dollars from countries like China, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These repressive autocracies have an undeniable influence on what universities teach. University faculty associations are silent about that.
Apparently, their concern over "academic freedom" is one-sided.
On a personal note, sometimes I wonder if I see antisemitism in innocuous articles, since antisemitism is a major focus of my website. But I read the Philadelphia Inquirer article about the same faculty protest. While that article is clearly sympathetic to the faculty, I did not detect even a whiff of antisemitic dog-whistles in that coverage.
It isn't my bias - it is the New York Times.
