China’s state-run Global Times on Sunday frowned at the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill after her catastrophic mishandling of questions about antisemitism and genocide on Capitol Hill last week.
The Chinese state paper suggested that if America really wants to tamp down antisemitism, it should stop supporting Israel.
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House Committee on Education & the WorkforceMagill detonated her career last Tuesday by telling Congress that calls by Hamas sympathizers on campus to murder Jews were only problematic in certain “contexts.”
Magill and other university leaders said during their congressional testimony that calling for the elimination of Jews would only violate the notoriously strict “hate speech” codes on campus if the speakers tried to turn their genocidal rhetoric into violent action.
This is a very different standard than the one universities apply to speech that makes preferred minority groups feel uncomfortable, even when that discomfort is very mild by any rational measure. The wave of violent antisemitism protests and incidents sweeping universities made Magill’s nuanced view of genocidal rhetoric even harder to swallow.
Magill quickly backpedaled from her remarks on Capitol Hill and posted a video condemning genocidal and antisemitism rhetoric, but she ended up resigning on Saturday amid thunderous calls for her ouster.
According to university trustees, Magill remains a “tenured faculty member at Penn Carey Law.” Two other university presidents who made similar statements to Congress, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, were still at their posts as of Monday morning.
The Global Times crowed that Magill’s downfall “reflects a deepening social as well as values divide in the U.S.”
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“The fundamental way to curb anti-Semitism is not firing university presidents, but for the U.S. government to stop supporting warfare and inhumane acts in the Middle East,” the Chinese Communist paper advised, a nod to Washington’s longtime support and alliance with Israel.
The Global Times smugly predicted America would tear itself apart with the “two opposing trends” of “anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
“This latest episode reflects the significant gap between political elites and the public. When public opinion runs counter to that of the elites, the latter will attempt to exert political pressure to force those with differing views to abandon their right to free expression,” the Global Times pontificated, displaying a hilarious lack of self-awareness about the gap between China’s political elite and public, and what happens in China when “public opinion runs counter to that of the elites.”
The argument put forth by the Global Times’ stable of “experts” was premised on a stubborn illusion that American public opinion is firmly pro-Hamas and anti-Israel, which is the opposite of the truth.
Some quarters of the American public (and, it should be noted, some members of the Biden administration elite) think Israel could do more to protect Palestinian civilians, but strong majorities favor Israel’s right to exist and defend itself against barbaric attacks such as the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
The Chinese Communist Party hopes to take advantage of the Israel-Hamas war to increase its influence in the Middle East — a strategy the Global Times dutifully advanced in its conclusion, wistfully hoping that America’s support for Israel will “significantly damage the international image and soft power of the U.S.” and generate “strong resentment from the international community.”
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