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At a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on Dec. 5, the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were each asked a straightforward question by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. She inquired if a student calling for the genocide of Jews would be a violation of their respective codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment.

The three presidents were harshly criticized for their tepid responses to Stefanik’s question, and bipartisan calls were made for their resignations.

The hearing provides significant lessons for the University of Hawaii. It makes clear that the university needs to establish a policy specifically banning race-based hate speech by its employees and students, as I advocated in a recent column.

In her testimony, Elizabeth Magill, who , replied in legalese. “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” she said, drawing upon distinctions in First Amendment law.

“It is a context-dependent decision,” she added, implying there are contexts in which a student could advocate genocide against Jews without violating any university rules.

Harvard president Claudine Gay, also speaking legalese, repeated the same response about “context.”  She added, “Antisemitic speech when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation — that is actionable conduct and we do take action.”

Gay later , noting that “words matter.”

Insofar as they are threatening or harassing, words obviously do, which is why race-based hate speech can and should be restricted.

Words Matter

If UH had a policy prohibiting race-based hate speech, our president could confidently respond in plain English that calling for the genocide of Jews or any other racial or ethnic group would be a violation of that policy and the instigator would be subject to sanction by the university.

If questioned what constitutes race-based hate speech, the president could reply that it includes speech that is intimidating, demeaning, offensive and, of course, hateful, against a racial or ethnic group.

While my concern is with race, hate speech can be directed to other groups, such as those based on gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin and other protected categories.

Furthermore, the UH president could emphasize that the rule against race-based hate speech applies not just to students but to staff, administrators and faculty. In this regard, about a month ago at the University of Southern California, the Daily Trojan student newspaper reported on an incident involving a tenured economics professor, John Strauss, at a memorial to Palestinians killed in Gaza set up by students.

Strauss, who said he’s Jewish and supports Israel, remarked to them, “Hamas are murderers, that’s all they are. Every one should be killed.” This confrontation with the students was caught on video and posted on social media.

That same day, “multiple formal complaints” were filed against Strauss with the USC Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX. The USC administration subsequently placed him on paid administrative leave and barred him from the campus. The campus prohibition was lifted in early December, although Strauss is still under investigation by the EEO-TIX office. 

A USC student who helped organize the memorial raised a significant point concerning how race-based hate speech is understood. The student said the agitation with Strauss’ statement was because it “conflated their (Hamas’) identities as Palestinians with the identities of Palestinian students at USC as targets of this threatening statement, and made all of us feel extremely unsafe.” 

In short, whether speech is considered hateful depends on the perception of the victim or target and not on the intention of the perpetrator — the same principle that applies regarding sexual harassment. As I learned from mandatory sexual harassment training at UH, in a workplace setting, one can’t compliment a fellow employee or student about their appearance because it might be interpreted as a sexual advance.

A Moral Issue

I hence stopped decades ago saying I liked the new dresses my female colleagues were wearing, which could be due to their color, because that would violate university sexual harassment rules. Accordingly, UH can establish its own rules pertaining to racial harassment, including speech, and require workers to participate in training sessions on such harassment.

Another lesson the university can learn from the congressional hearing is to view hate speech as primarily a moral rather than a legal issue. At the hearing, both Magill and Gay, perhaps following the advice provided by university attorneys, responded from a legal perspective implying free speech rights.

As leaders of their respective universities, they should have been more concerned with the well-being and security of the workers and students as members of a moral community with its own set of values, rules, norms and beliefs and not primarily with the university as an institution required to comply with state and federal laws. 

UH makes regular references to it being a community, if not ohana, and therefore should act like one by ensuring the safety and protection of its members from racial threats whether in speech or conduct. 

While it’s unlikely that UH President David Lassner will be questioned at a congressional hearing on how the university responds to antisemitism on campus, it’s not inconceivable that he or another UH administrator or board of regents member could be asked about race-related issues by a state legislative committee, such as those concerning higher education.

Three interim regents, including the chair, Alapaki Nahale-a, still need to be confirmed by the state Senate, which probably will schedule a vote during the upcoming legislative session. Prior to that, the nominees will face individual questioning by the Senate Higher Education Committee. 

Like Penn, Harvard and MIT, UH has at least one billionaire megadonor, Meta (formerly Facebook) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, and his wife Priscilla Chan. Last year, they gave $50 million to the university for ocean research, the largest cash gift ever made to UH, and later donated another $10 million to the School of Medicine.

With recent incidents of antisemitic graffiti and threats emailed to synagogues in Hawaii, state senators might question the board of regents nominees on how they think the university should deal with race-based hate speech.  

One can only hope that the three nominees, including former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and attorney Lauren Akitake, will be better prepared for their confirmation hearings than the three elite university presidents were.