It can’t get more obvious than this that Harvard’s notional commitment to free speech is nothing but an excuse.

Claudine Gay–you know, the plagiarist, antisemitic President of Harvard University–managed to keep her job despite costing Harvard hundreds of millions in alumni donations and an incalculable amount of goodwill due to her embarrassing performance in front of Congress.

Gay couldn’t manage to condemn her students’ calls for the genocide of Jews and couldn’t manage to write an academic paper without violating Harvard’s standards, but she could still clamp down on speech she disapproved of. She did so only days after asserting that Harvard was committed to protecting speech of even the most vile nature.

Two days after Claudine Gay claimed that genocidal rhetoric might be protected speech at Harvard because that’s how committed she is to free speech, her university canceled an event featuring a congressman who’d mocked …. Harvard cancel culture.https://t.co/6L6fILEUrL

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) December 12, 2023

Gay’s defense of offensive speech on college campuses has a surface appeal to the civil libertarian in me. “I have sought to confront hate while preserving free expression…. The free exchange of ideas is the foundation upon which Harvard is built.”

Sounds pretty good. If somebody got up and argued that the world would be better off if Israel didn’t exist, I would defend their right to say it. I disagree, but people differ.

However, what has been happening at Harvard has little in common with what most of us consider actual discourse. Tantrums that include assault are not speech but rather impermissible conduct. But in principle, Gay’s defense of speech qua speech was defensible but for the context.

The context? Harvard doesn’t protect speech; it protects its ideological confreres and attacks those who challenge the approved Narrative.

No more glaring example of this fact can be made than the recent cancellation of a John Adams Society event that would have featured two congressmen–Democrats in this case. The event had been planned for weeks, the room was reserved, and event planners were working with Harvard police to ensure the safety of the attendees.

Then Harvard canceled it.

On the afternoon of Friday, December 8, Harvard’s John Adams Society, a conservative-leaning student group, was to host a discussion on the future of U.S.–China relations and their ramifications for American industrial policy, featuring Reps. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Ro Khanna of California. The planned event was cosponsored by American Affairs, the heterodox policy journal edited by Julius Krein (and where—full disclosure—I’ve published a single piece).

A month earlier, on November 6, David Vega, a current student affiliated with the John Adams Society, booked a room through the proper channels and received an email from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences confirming the room and the event. “YOUR ROOM HAS BEEN CONFIRMED,” read the confirmation email, which I’ve reviewed. The administration even offered audiovisual assistance and day-of contact information; everything seemed to be going swimmingly.

As the days went by, various Harvard authorities helped the organizers and congressional staff through the byzantine campus process. When Auchincloss’s chief of staff reached out to the Harvard events team to discuss security, Christine Haverty, director of events management, replied, “Thank you! For this, you would work with the team planning the event and Harvard University Police,” adding: “They are wonderful!”

What changed? Harvard claimed that it was because the event was co-sponsored by a non-Harvard entity, a heterodox journal.

Students have a more plausible explanation for the sudden cancellation.

What happened between December 5 and December 7? Gay’s congressional testimony took place on December 5. Auchincloss published a statement on December 6 mocking her for her supposed commitment to free speech. “Harvard ranks last out of 248 universities for support of free speech,” Auchincloss said. “But when it comes to denouncing anti-Semitism, suddenly the university has anxieties about the First Amendment. It rings hollow.” On December 7, the event was canceled.

It’s pretty hard to see how a debating society hosting an event with two Congressmen could do anything but improve the intellectual climate of Harvard, but on the day before the event, it suddenly became impermissible to allow these Congressmen (liberal guys, actually) to dirty the hallowed halls of the University. Tons of non-Harvard students invaded the campus to chant antisemitic slogans on the campus, and Gay stood up for their right to do so, but allowing a discussion between policymakers, one of whom criticized President Gay, was a bridge too far.

A Harvard spokesman claimed that the university has “no record of an event registration request,” notwithstanding the registration confirmation reviewed by The American Conservative and dozens of back-and-forth emails between organizers and Harvard staff, all predicated upon the fact that the event is registered and moving forward.

As I’ve argued, I would be happy to engage with academics whose defense of free speech includes protecting even vile assertions, provided that they are sincere arguments for expanding the Overton window for rational discussion. That is what academic freedom is all about.

But these academics aren’t defending speech; they are defending antisemitism, and everybody knows it. They are censorious in the extreme–literally, as Harvard and Penn have the two worst records for free speech among elite universities–and their pious pronouncements are nothing more than attempts to use our values as weapons to destroy us.

No dice. Live by your own rules. If I have to, so should you.

That Gay lied about Harvard’s commitment to free speech was obvious before and proven beyond doubt.

It took a day to cancel a Congressman for criticizing her.

Case closed.