If the questions had been whether calling for the genocide of blacks or the killing of homosexuals, there is no way on earth that university Presidents Liz Magill of Penn, Sally Kornbluth of MIT, or Claudine Gay of Harvard would ever have said that such decisions on violations of rules or codes of conduct would ever depend on the “context” of such speech. Nor would Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer, be telling us that Dr Magill’s “ouster” at the University of Pennsylvania is an attack on free speech, but a horrible racist who just had to go. And while the newspaper’s Editorial Board have not weighed in on the subject, the selection of articles and OpEd columns in the Inky is certainly on the side of allowing open debate on a question once thought completely settled.

On Saturday, Inquirer reporter Rob Tornoe published an article entitled: Penn chapter of national professors organization slams critics for ‘misrepresenting’ position of faculty and students.

On Monday, Jonah B. Gelbach, the Herman F. Selvin Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and a member of the faculty at Penn’s Carey Law School from 2013 to 2019, was given OpEd space to publish: Magill’s ouster is just the beginning of the attacks on open expression at universities: The censors won’t stop at Penn — they’re already targeting Harvard and MIT. At the heart of the debate lies a crucial question: Who will decide what speech counts as a call for genocide?

On Tuesday, Inquirer reporter Susan Synder told us: Penn faculty fear the donor who started the effort to oust Liz Magill is attempting to set the agenda for trustees: Marc Rowan, who co-leads Wharton’s board of advisors, is asking questions about instruction, faculty hiring, free speech, and political orientation.

Also on Tuesday, OpEd space was given to Scott L Bok, who resigned from Penn’s Board of Trustees to give us his lament:

Donors should not decide campus policies or determine what is taught

The former chair of Penn’s board of trustees, who resigned Saturday along with president Liz Magill, cautions that universities need to be very careful of the influence of money.

by Scott L Bok | Tuesday, December 12, 2023 | 10:33 AM EST

In recent months, America’s elite universities have been at the center of a firestorm. None more so than my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, where I served as chair of the board of trustees until I resigned last Saturday evening.

My devotion to Penn is understandable. I first came to campus 43 years ago as a scholarship kid from rural Michigan, the first in my family to go to college. I met my wife in a campus dormitory and earned degrees from three of Penn’s schools.

Before I speak to recent events on our campus (now that I am unconstrained by university affiliation), let me make clear a few preliminary points.

I unequivocally denounce the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. I fully recognize Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself.

There follow four separate, one-sentence paragraphs in which Mr Bok tells us that he is appalled by the anti-Semitic tone of some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, supports freedom of speech, and despairs of the way in which “social media” misleads, distorts, and amplifies harmful rhetoric. He then tells us how safe and well-policed Penn’s campus is. There have been “a handful of loud but otherwise peaceful protests where hateful things have been said,” including “some well-publicized acts of deplorable antisemitism,” but that the authorities can only do so much, and that there is a difference between speech and action. Yet we all know that, had these demonstrations in which “hateful things” had been shouted aimed at blacks or homosexuals or the ‘transgendered,’ the people who yelled those things would have been severely disciplined, most probably to include expulsion. Such ‘hate speech’ would have created a hostile educational environment to racial and sexual minorities. And Penn itself earned some notoriety by telling “strongly advising” the actually female members of the school’s women’s swim team not to speak out to the press about Will Thomas and tried to instill fear in the women that if they did, their employment prospects would be diminished.

But, further down, near the end, following an impassioned defense of a more liberal faculty, freedom of speech, and a claim that “real-life examples of discipline for such offenses are almost as uncommon as Eagles Super Bowl appearances” — the Philadelphia Eagles have four Super Bowl appearances in 62 contests, or 6.45% of all of them — so the three university professors should be excused for having no experience in such disciplinary cases, we come to the meat of the OpEd, the part that inspired the headline:

On all these issues, universities need to be very careful of the influence of money, especially one like Penn, which has a business school with a brand larger than that of the university itself. And I say that as both a Wharton graduate and someone who understands that contributions play a critical role in everything from lifesaving medical research to scholarships for kids like I once was.

But donors should not be able to decide campus policies or determine what is taught, and for sure there should not be a hidden quota system that ensures privileged children a coveted place at elite schools.

For nearly all of the 19 years I served on Penn’s board, I felt like there was a very broad, largely unspoken consensus on the roles of the various university constituencies: the board, donors, alumni, faculty, and administration.

Once I concluded that this longtime consensus had evaporated, I determined that I should step off the board and leave it to others to find a new path forward.

The original OpEd title, as the ‘tab’ on the article reveals, is “Donors are not entitled to influence campus policies.” I do not know if that was the title Mr Bok put on it, or whether it came from an Inquirer editor. In the end, someone slightly softened the headline. But Mr Bok, himself a graduate of Penn’s Wharton School as well as the law school, and currently the CEO of Greenhill and Company, Inc, with an estimated net worth of $776.71 million, has made one rather significant error: unlike the “board, .  .  . faculty, and administration” of the University, the donors are all volunteers, are all people, often very wealthy people, who voluntarily donate money, sometimes in the millions of dollars, to the school. They are primarily graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, who believe that their education has greatly contributed to their success in business, but they are not required to donate, not obligated to donate, and no matter how much they may love their alma mater, if the college pisses them off, they have every right to close their checkbooks, to not donate to the university again. When now outgoing President Liz Magill allowed an anti-Semitic Palestinian writers’ ‘festival’ on campus, despite being warned about it by one deep pockets Jewish donor, is it any surprise that that donor, Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, decided that he will no longer contribute to the school? When the University tolerated a vocally anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian demonstration, is it shocking that donor Marc Rowan, who made a $50 million donation previously, called on other donors to withhold their gifts?

It’s not just the donors. Several major corporate CEOs have said that they would not hire Harvard students who signed a stupid document blaming Israel for Hamas’ October 7^th attack, and at least one CEO has said he will never again hire anyone from Harvard, MIT, or Penn following the three presidents’ debacle. That makes degrees from these institutions worth less than they were previously, and with tuition and fees at Penn, not including housing, of $73,494 per academic year, why would anyone choose to matriculate there?

As much as colleges would like to pretend that they are somehow above it all, are a different world, they are not; universities are a part of the world, and a part that depends on the rest of the world, for their existence and support.