It doesn't say much in one's favor to rejoice in someone else's evil. Unless a collective benefit is derived from that evil. In that case, regretting the personal costs for the affected person, perhaps it is justified to celebrate the misfortune on someone else's head. That is why we are in luck with the forced resignation of the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, and that her counterparts at Harvard and MIT, Claudine Gay and Sally Kornbluth, are on the tightrope.
It was the turn of the three ladies to confront the world that they and their predecessors in their positions have helped build with proven diligence. They appeared in the United States Congress to answer, among other questions, whether the calls for Jewish genocide or other slogans by university students and professors on their campuses fit into freedom of expression or whether they violated the code of conduct required in an environment academic and should be pursued.
They answered impeccably. They took refuge in the greatness of freedom of expression, in the need to add context to any rude statement or in the indisputable truth that threatening words can only become a crime when accompanied by the certain possibility of them becoming actions. Their answers were academically formidable. But it was of no use to them. Magill is already out on the street. And Gay and Kornbluth have been so weakened that they will have to update their resumes with the next breath of wind. And we are happy about it.
Because American universities first, then British universities, and then those of continental Europe, have been curtailing for years, with the complicity of their management teams, not only freedom of expression, but also freedom of thought. They allowed themselves to be kidnapped by the tyranny of the most radicalized students who are active in the woke culture and made it easier for the virus of censorship, self-censorship and cancellation to infest their campuses.
For example, professors, lecturers and ideas that do not fit into the flood of gender ideology have been silenced without the authorities of these universities having dared to break a spear in favor of freedom of expression or in the defense of the centers. of higher education as true temples of free thought and provocation. They have passively, if not actively, supported the most profane silencing.
And now it is the turn of those ladies to ingest the syrup that they first gave to others to try. If to silence the woke pack you had to expose yourself on networks or face the scandal of postmodern left-wing totalitarianism – something that not they, but also their predecessors, have not done –, now you know what it is to deal with another type of group that He also does not like to listen to certain things on campus. It has been enough for the large financial donors of Jewish descent to withdraw or threaten to do so their financial contributions to these universities for the rectors to choke up all their arguments and excuses.
It has been of no use to them to be right. Because what they don't have is credibility. Neither them nor their institutions. It is no use seeking the protection of freedom of expression at convenience: now yes, now no. It is not valid to open the umbrella of the university to take refuge from the sectarian rain when it is only done to defend only the students and teachers of a certain ideology.
The US is very far away from us, some will think. Not so much. In Spanish universities, and of course the Catalan ones in a very prominent place, many ideas have not been able to be expressed freely for a long time. And as in the United States, here also university leaders play to minimize the seriousness of certain silences.
It behooves us all to watch what happens when freedom of expression is not always taken seriously. Because exceptions allow sooner or later someone to impose medication on you that you only thought was valid for others. That is why we are happy about the bad news of the three Yankee rectors even though they are right, the same reason as so many whom they and others before them have silenced first.
Experiencing firsthand what we happily judge harshly in others. Perhaps there is no better life lesson than this to gain generosity and indulgence. To learn to count to one hundred before excommunicating the other. Let's see if we teach someone else's head some lesson.
