In a Friday broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Wall Road Week,” Harvard professor, president emeritus and former Harvard College president Larry Summers mentioned that “quite a lot of universities have… a double normal, the place anti-Semitism would not get the identical consideration” as different types of racism. Hatred and hatred. He said that problems with “anti-Semitism, boycotts of Israel, boycotts of Israel” have been round for many years.

“It is nonetheless a really tough case,” Summers mentioned. Look, everybody ought to be allowed to have their say with out being explicitly punished, even when it offends folks. Nobody ought to doxxed. However each college president in America has a rule guide for coping with the sort of scenario. It is how they’ve responded to racist incidents or homophobic incidents on their campuses, and the difficulty of anti-Semitic incidents this month is simply as severe, and maybe, in some ways, extra severe, given what we noticed, for instance, at Cornell. Universities must observe this playbook, which they’ve used typically previously. And lots of universities have – I am very sorry to say – a double normal, the place anti-Semitism doesn’t get the identical consideration. Sure, let’s completely talk about the principles round freedom of expression, hate speech and college involvement in politics. These are vital discussions to have, however let’s have one normal for all sorts of bias.

He continued: “I’ve seen so much, and I used to be somebody who was involved about anti-Semitism and boycotts of Israel and boycotts of Israel and all of that 20 years in the past. However I’ve to say that I’ve been deeply shocked and pissed off by what I’ve seen because the Hamas assaults on many universities, however (in) many different locations as properly. That is one thing I feel we must always all take severely. I have been more than happy to see the forceful means by which President Biden has handled these points usually, and the best way by which he and his colleagues on the Division of Training have handled it within the campus context. I hope this conjures up others on these points sooner or later.