To The Editor: Context Cannot Become Collateral Damage

Over the past two months, Harvard and The Crimson have been thrust into the national spotlight.

To many students, who perhaps went to college to pursue academic interests and make friends, this attention is unwanted. But for student journalists, the sharpened focus on our community comes with responsibility. A responsibility to accurately convey what happens here to our readers.

Because this paper has been home to tremendous examples of brilliant and honest reporting, I feel compelled to speak up when it is not.

In a story published on Sunday about Harvard President Claudine Gay’s testimony before Congress last week, alongside University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill and MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth, we did not live up to our own standards. The article claimed the three university presidents “repeatedly declined to directly answer a question from Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.) about whether calls for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s policies on bullying and harassment.”

President Gay repeatedly and directly answered the congresswoman’s question on genocide. The question was simply not capable of being answered as “yes” or “no” because context does, in fact, matter, per the University’s codes of conduct, as Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried brilliantly explained in an op-ed yesterday. Stefanik’s question was a demagogic and bad faith attempt to delegitimize free expression on college campuses.

We published her piece in our opinion section and then adopted her fallacious rhetoric — effectively divorcing Gay’s technical answer from its context, as Stefanik did when she claimed Gay’s response was a moral failure — in our news section. In doing so, we unwittingly aided her long crusade against American democracy and rule of law.

The trap was laid and The Crimson walked right into it.

There are many people unhappy with President Gay’s response, including Stefanik, as is their right. But her response was direct. In fact, it was tailored to answer a rhetorically tangled question that was, as our Editorial Board put it, layered with “insidious subtext.”

Her answer was legalistic, yes, but she was asked a question about a contract and that contract’s specifications, one all Harvard students sign. Contracts do not bend in the face of political pressure, and those tasked with enforcing them must faithfully represent the nature of those contracts, especially when under oath.

To say her answer was not direct is to imply that the question should have been answered with a yes or no response, when fair, legally-informed readings of the school’s Code of Conduct show otherwise. It is to accept the Congresswoman’s demagogic framing and spread an egregious falsehood about a matter of national importance.

Intelligent people can disagree over the language in the Code of Conduct and its applications. But when we refuse to accept complexity and context as legitimate answers, the debate is over, the truth has lost, and we along with it. And in a war on speech and rule of law, the truth is our only defense. It cannot become collateral damage.

Had President Gay not been repeatedly interupted, shouted down, or even asked for her personal stance on calls for genocide, we can infer — based on her opening remarks and prior statements — that she would have reaffirmed her repeated, and unequivocal, condemnations of antisemitism and the despicable violence it breeds. However, it’s highly irresponsible to pretend, or imply, that those were the conditions under which she was questioned.

As journalists, as students, as people, we should not accept the narratives fed to us by those with power and influence to set agendas, by those typing in prestigious newsrooms, by politicians — by anyone. We should seek out context and complexity in every story, when it requires thorough investigation and when it is made plain.

We do our best when we think, when we ask questions, when we reject false narratives, however pervasive they may be.

Our ability to recognize the truth and confront lies is all we have. It is why I joined The Crimson. It is why I feel the need to critique when we fall below the journalistic standards I know we are capable of reaching.

I am glad the Harvard Corporation rejected this false narrative and that President Gay will remain in her office, despite The Crimson’s missteps. The effort she embarks on “​​to preserve free expression while combating prejudice and preserving the security of our community” will not be free of complexity; she should try anyway.

Stefanik and her allies will continue to condemn these efforts, and construct a binary in which protecting free expression and protecting our Jewish community are in conflict, that the choice is either/or — yes or no. It is essential that we reject this framing. We must, and we can, do both.

Updated: December 12, 2023, at 9:09 p.m.

Gordon J. Ebanks ’24, a Crimson Diversity and Inclusivity Chair and an Associate Editorial Editor, is a Social Studies concentrator in Leverett House.