SONGS SUNG BLUE: Laurence Tribe said Stefanik was right!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2023

So did Maureen Dowd: Perhaps understandably, the New York Times played a bit of catch-up last week as it struggled to report the events of Tuesday, December 5.

We refer to the December 5 congressional hearing in which three university presidents were asked to testify—were widely said to have been "grilled"—about antisemitism on their campuses.

Discussion of the hearing quickly went viral. The presidents were widely hammered for one particular part of their testimony—for the part in which they were repeatedly asked whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" violated their schools' codes of conduct.

During the course of the hearing, it was never entirely clear why that particular question was being asked. The presidents responded in ways which were widely described as "evasive."

With lightning speed, this part of the hearing became a major political event. Perhaps understandably, the Times didn't seem to see the tsunami approaching in its initial December 6 report.

That first news report was written by Anemona Hartocollis. In print editions, it appeared on December 6 beneath a rather mild headline:

University Presidents Say They Are Acting Against Antisemitism on Their Campuses

In her report, Hartocollis quickly reported that the presidents had been "hammered" throughout the hearing "by Republican House members who claimed that the universities themselves had sown seeds of bias on campus against Jews." 

That said, and perhaps understandably, the role of that repeated question about alleged calls for genocide was only mentioned near the end of this next-day, full-length report.

By December 7, the Times almost seemed to be playing a bit of catch-up. By now, an unmistakable storm had blown up around the way the presidents had responded to that repeated question. Below, you see the headlines which appeared above the Times' Day 2 news report:

Print editions: 
3 University Presidents Criticized for Remarks on Antisemitism

Online edition: 

College Presidents Under Fire After Dodging Questions About Antisemitism

Online, the headline now accused the presidents of dodging that repeated question. On December 9, the Times again reported on the topic in its print editions. Above that report, the online headline (accurately) says this:

Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral

It was Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) who had repeatedly asked that question. By now, the basic lay of the land was perfectly clear:

Stefanik's questioning had indeed "gone viral," just as the Times now reported. On Sunday, December 10, the headline on the latest print edition report was now saying this:

Penn’s Leadership Resigns Amid Controversies Over Antisemitism

The hearing had become a major big deal. So it went as a hearing run by the five-minute rule turned into a major political event. 

Last Saturday, C-Span re-aired its videotape of the lengthy hearing. We offer links below.

We watched the vast bulk of what aired. When we did, we were mainly struck by how thoroughly uninformative the lengthy hearing had been. 

What's actually happening on those college campuses? To what extent are students at those three universities being subjected to the antisemitism described by Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) at the start of last Tuesday's hearing?

On their face, those are very important questions. We were struck by how little information was produced by the hearing, which ran for roughly four hours and twenty minutes before mercifully reaching its end.

Today, we call attention to one set of reactions to the hearing—to a set of reactions we would describe as a song sung blue. 

By the time of that December 9 news report, it was clear that Stefanik's repeated question about "calls for the genocide of the Jewish people" had in fact gone viral. The presidents were being widely derided for the way they had responded, or perhaps had failed to respond, to that repeated query. 

There was little doubt about those facts. The song sung blue to which we refer was reported in this part of the December 9 New York Times news report:

KARNI (12/9/23): Ms. Stefanik’s aggressive appeals to the far right typically delight Republican hard-liners. But in the hearing, Ms. Stefanik achieved the unthinkable, prompting many Democrats and detractors of Mr. Trump to concede that an ideological culture warrior with whom they agree on nothing else was, in this case, right.

Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on social media that he was “no fan” of Ms. Stefanik. But, he added: “I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.” (He declined to comment further on Ms. Stefanik.)

According to Annie Karni's report, many Democrats had conceded that Stefanik "was, in this case, right." Laurence Tribe was cited as an example.

Through his frequent appearances on MSNBC, Tribe has become a major figure in present-day blue tribe punditry. As a general matter, we agree with Tribe when he says that the responses by the three presidents were "hesitant and formulaic," even perhaps "bizarre." 

As a general matter, we agree with Tribe's assessment of the presidents' responses to Stefanik's repeated question. But when he seems to say that Stefanik actually got this one right, we'd call it a song sung blue.

Professor Trube was hardly alone in awarding Stefanik the win. In her column in Sunday's New York Times, Maureen Dowd joined in:

DOWD (12/10/23): On Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania put on a pathetic display on Capitol Hill when they were asked if calling for genocide against Jews counted as harassment.

It depends, they all said. Penn’s Elizabeth Magill offered a chilling bit of legalese. “It is a context-dependent decision,” she told Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican from upstate New York.

Not since Bill Clinton was asked about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and replied, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” has there been such parsing.

It’s hard to be on Stefanik’s side, given that she epitomizes the grotesque transformation of the Republican Party to an insane Trump , but she was right to pin down the prevaricating presidents.

The presidents had been so bad that Dowd cited Bill and Monica! But here too, the high-profile New York Times columnist awarded Stefanik the win.

How about it? Was Stefanik "right to pin down the prevaricating presidents?" Did Stefanik do any such thing? Did it make sense for Tribe to say that he was "with [Stefanik] here?" 

And by the way:

Why did each of these tribunes make a point of saying that they didn't much like being "on Stefanik's side?" Why did an array of blue tribe pundits make statements much like that?

In our view, the statements by Tribe and Dowd were a pair of songs sung blue. In our view, the presidents performed very poorly in response to Stefanik's repeated question—but in our view, Stefanik's performance was probably that much worse.

Who the heck is Elise Stefanik, and why were Tribe and Dowd making those comments about her?

The answer takes us deep inside a flailing tribe's latest song sung blue. It takes us inside the latest fail by our blue tribe's unhelpful elites.

Tomorrow: Who is Elise Stefanik?

C-Span shows it all: C-Span offers videotape of the entire hearing. For the first three hours and 35 minutes, you can just click here. 

For the subsequent 43-minute session, C-Span gives us this.