Why I Trust Neither Elise Stefanik Nor The University Presidents of Harvard, MIT & UPenn

On Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard University, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania testified on Capitol Hill on the question of anti-Semitism on college campuses in the wake of Hamas attack on Israel. 

Their testimony did not go well. When pressed by New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Harvard President Claudine Gay, MIT President Sally Kornbluth and UPenn President Liz Magill could not bring themselves to say if calling for the genocide of Jews broke their institutions respective codes of conduct. 

Stefanik made these three university presidents look so foolish the damage control has begun. Gay attempted to walk back her statement although she claimed she was misunderstood. That certainly won't help her cause. While the board at MIT is backing Kornbluth for now as is the board at UPenn for Magill there have been calls for Magill to resign by UPenn's Wharton Business School and by major donors following her own videotaped attempt to walk back her testimony. Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has also been critical of Magill and might step into the breach if UPenn's board does not see fit to remove her.

While Stefanik certainly deserves credit for exposing academia's tolerance of anti-Semitism at the highest level, I nevertheless do not trust her any more than I trust the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn. 

My problem with Stefanik has been her promotion of election conspiracy theories constructed out of whole cloth, her attempts to overturn the 2020 election and claims that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the attacks on January 6th. There's a very good chance that Stefanik doesn't actually believe this rubbish, but said it to curry favor with defeated, former President Donald Trump and rise in the House Republican leadership. It's bad enough when one actually believes one's own stupidity. To make a point of sinking to the level of a Steve Bannon descends the depths of disingenuousness. 

While I'm glad Stefanik shed light on campus anti-Semitism, we must never forget her support for Trump, a man who supped with a Holocaust denier. Stefanik is one of those Republicans who has no problem condemning left-wing anti-Semitism but is silent when it comes from her own ranks.

In her support for Trump, Stefanik would supplant Liz Cheney as the Chair of the House Republican Conference. I'm Cheney had Stefanik in mind when she stated during the January 6th hearings, "To my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain." 

In the case of Elise Stefanik, her dishonor has only begun.