Why the Attack on Universities May Be ‘More Dangerous' Than McCarthyism

Yahoo

28-04-2025

When Scott Bok resigned as the chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's board of trustees in December 2023, he didn't know that he was about to become one of the first causalities in a broader political war over higher education in America.
At the time, Penn was embroiled in what was publicly cast as a bitter fight over allegations of antisemitism on campus — stoked, in part, by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik's grilling of three university presidents, including Penn's Liz Magill, at a congressional hearing.
But Bok sensed early on that something deeper than a fighter over antisemitism was brewing on campus.
'Lots of emails to me would mention George Floyd, or they would mention the transgender swimmer from Penn,' said Bok, chairman of the investment firm Greenhill & Co, in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. 'That's when I thought that this is an attack on so-called woke.'
Since Donald Trump's return to office earlier this year, the administration has ratcheted up the conflict. The president has threatened to withhold federal funding from 60 universities unless they accede to the administration's various demands, and in March, the administration pulled $175 million in federal funds from Bok's alma mater due to Penn's policy about transgender athletes.
Bok said that the Trump administration's latest actions have confirmed his initial suspicion that many critics of universities like Penn are seizing on accusations of antisemitism to push a broader 'anti-woke' agenda on campus.
With that in mind, Bok — whose new memoir touching on the controversy at Penn is set to publish next week — is calling on university leaders to learn from his experience. He has no regrets about his resignation. But it's time, he said, for universities to 'give a bit of a stiff arm to the government' and assert their independence.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Take me back to December 2023 when you decided to resign as chair of the board at Penn. What was going through your mind at that moment?
It had been a pretty long and challenging 10 or so weeks by then. I had been firmly committed to fighting for what I thought was important, and I had done that for that whole period, but I felt like the governance on the board had really broken down — the lack of confidentiality, the lack of collegiality, the lack of trust. That led me to think that [former Penn president] Liz McGill needed to resign, because I think her position had become untenable, and also that I needed to follow right after her.
That wasn't something the board was expecting. It wasn't something I'd been asked to do. People in general thought it would be helpful for me to help transition to the next president, but I felt strongly that if [McGill] was going to go, I wanted to go, too — in part, to free me up to say what I believed. And I did take advantage of that. I not only put out a statement that night, but I wrote a lengthy op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that got quite a lot of coverage a couple of days later. When you're the chairman of an institution, you always have to speak for that institution, and there's a lot of times you just have to keep your mouth shut because there's no broad consensus within that group. I got to the point where I felt like I had some things I wanted to say, and I was not able to say them as part of the institution, so I was going to step back and say my piece.
You write in the book that it was clear to you that the controversy was 'a political and cultural' struggle that transcended narrow issues around free speech and antisemitism. When in the controversy did that become apparent to you?
That was apparent to me very early on. If you look at where universities are today, and what's going on between the government and Harvard and Penn and Columbia and Johns Hopkins and all the rest, it's pretty clear that this has got a very broad reach in terms of what those attacking universities want to change about them.
That was clear to me very, very early on. For example, lots of emails to me would mention George Floyd, or they would mention the transgender swimmer from Penn. At one point, I even somewhat facetiously said to some of my inner circle at Penn, like, 'What is George Floyd and what are trans people doing in this discussion about antisemitism and free speech?' That's when I thought that this is an attack on so-called woke, or it's a rollback of DEI.
Did you think that the antisemitism issue was being used in bad faith to get at those broader cultural concerns?
First of all, I would say that antisemitism is real, it's evil, I condemned it numerous times both in writing and orally at Penn and since I left Penn, and I continue to do that. I'm not belittling that issue in the slightest. I certainly think there were many, many people who got engaged on the other side because they thought that's what the entire debate was about. So there's nothing I would question or criticize about the motivations of those people.
But I think undoubtedly there was a group that was looking to this opportunity to fundamentally change things at Penn, and now we've seen this across other universities as well. When people started talking, for example, about 10 or 20 years of decaying culture, the loss of historic values and so on — that's a long timeframe. If you're saying that, what you're really saying is that you're uncomfortable with the direction that the school has been going and you want to fundamentally change that.
Since your resignation, some commentators compared what happened at Penn and what's now happening at all these universities to McCarthyism, where the issue of antisemitism is weaponized in service of a broader political agenda. Do you think that's a fair analogy to draw?
I think it's very fair to compare it to the McCarthy era, and it may be more dangerous because that was just one senator. That's quite a lower level of authority compared to the whole group of forces arrayed against elite universities right now. Many others who are bigger experts on antisemitism than I am have spoken out on this issue — that yes, antisemitism is real, and it needs to be addressed wherever it pops up, but that there are people trying to piggyback on that issue to implement a much broader agenda.
If it was apparent to you at the time that this controversy was about more than narrow issues about antisemitism and free speech, why step down? Why not take a stand against it and say 'I will not be cowed into submission by these bad-faith actors?'
It's hard to overstate how chaotic the board was at that particular moment, and I'm not somebody who quits easily anything — I'm quite determined, and I've been through tough situations before. Sometimes you can best resist by staying in your position and battling out the issues with whomever is engaged on them, and sometimes you can best resist by stepping away from the constraints of being in a formal position at the university or any other institution and fight from the outside.
Even in retrospect, I'm very glad I stepped back. I loved my time at Penn, and I have tremendous loyalty toward the institution, but I think I would have been bogged down in a morass of impossible issues had I stayed. I've been trying to be a significant voice — one that many others are now joining with — in terms of protecting the long-term values that made elite universities great. So I think I did the right thing by going on the outside and trying to fight the battle there.
Have you been in touch with any university presidents or board chairs who are wrestling with similar dynamics?
Definitely.
Anyone you're willing to name?
I wouldn't want to name names, but I would say that people have been very, very supportive since I stepped down and wrote my views. And now, as the attack on universities gained momentum, I think people have figured out that this really is a major debate that needs to be resolved. I think people have come around to the point of view that I had at the beginning, which is that this is really a fight for the soul of universities.
What's your advice to board chairs and presidents who find themselves in similar situations?
My advice would be to hold true to the values that made these universities the extraordinary institutions that they are. And secondly, I would say — and this is very important in today's world more broadly — don't believe everything you hear. Don't believe every fragment of information on Twitter. Don't believe every social media posting somebody puts on Instagram. Don't believe it if somebody makes generalizations about universities like, 'Oh, they're so woke,' or 'DEI went too far.' Step back and say, 'Is that really true, or is that hyperbole that's being used to get people excited?'
On the question of those values, you argue in the book for a kind of maximalist free speech stance for universities, and you argue against private universities adopting carve-outs for 'hate speech' — which, as you point out, aren't supported by the First Amendment, but which some people have advocated for. Lay out your argument on that.
Public universities, because they are government-owned and operated, are sort of stuck with the First Amendment. They can't have speech policies that are stricter than the First Amendment. So as I point out in the book, it really would be odd if you had more open free speech opportunities at Rutgers or UMass than at Princeton or Harvard or Penn. I think there are a lot of good arguments in favor of going with the First Amendment at private universities.
More broadly, I learned in this whole process with Penn that hate speech is sort of in the eye of the beholder. I found that there were an extraordinary number of people who were very strong free speech advocates in a lot of circumstances, but when it came to an issue that they really cared about, suddenly they weren't such strong free speech advocates.
How far do you take that position, though? Does it cover things like neo-Nazi speech or white nationalist slogans?
Going back to first-year law school constitutional arguments, you can't shout fire in a crowded theater, you can't extort, you can't bully, you can't threaten. Those are all words, too, but those are beyond the line. Those are not within the realm of free speech. So I absolutely think there are cases like those where words go beyond pure speech there need to be constraints.
But say a neo-Nazi student group sets up a white nationalist community group on campus, and it doesn't make explicit threats or cross the constitutionally prohibited line where speech turns into something else — we need to make space for that somehow on college campuses?
Obviously, that would not be welcome. But going all the way to the Nazis in Skokie, Illinois, that kind of thing was allowed. Frankly, I think that if that kind of thing did crop up again, it would induce an uprising of people who felt otherwise that it would swamp the bad people and the evil people who are spouting Nazi or racist propaganda. The old John Stuart Mill argument about good speech drowning out bad speech — I think that works in a lot of cases. In the really egregious examples, it would most likely work to galvanize the silent super majority who don't buy into KKK-type theories. It would bring those people together, and you could survive some terrible things being said on your campus or in your city.
On another issue about university values, you write in the book about the pressure you faced from the donor community, and you note that donors were major players in the controversy. Do you think universities have ceded too much influence to their donors?
In retrospect, I think they probably did get a little too beholden to major donors. Of course, everybody wants to grow the university, but I think that as a university leader, you have to hold the line that you're not getting a quid pro quo for that. You can't influence the politics of the university, you can't influence the faculty choices, the student admissions.
I think in general, that works. I don't think a lot of people making major donations to universities are expecting to get some influence from it. But what we had in this case — and now across America, really — is an unusual confluence of events that came together, and we find ourselves in this big debate about 'woke.' It brought out some ugliness in terms of people who had given donations and didn't say they wanted a quid pro quo, but perhaps they did.
You write about one alumni and donor who bemoaned 'the broken alumni bargain' at Penn, which you interpreted to be a complaint about the declining number of legacy admissions at the school. Does that speak to a broader sense of entitlement among the donor classes that needs to be combated somehow?
Undoubtedly some people think donating is going to help their child or grandchild get in, and I do think that has become a significant problem at elite universities. There are a few schools that have eliminated legacy admissions, and I think that has to be eliminated.
The recent Supreme Court decision means that you can't give an advantage to somebody because you're trying to get some degree of racial or other kinds of diversity, and it seems perverse that we still have another [kind of preference]. It's one thing to say we're going to make room for some people who can be extremely generous and who are going to provide financial aid so we can bring in all kinds of students who don't have the financial means to pay the high cost of tuition. But once you say you're not going to give that thumb on the scale in favor of underrepresented groups, I just don't know how you can justify putting a thumb on the scale in favor of the most privileged people in America.
What is preventing more colleges from doing that tomorrow?
I think it's the controversy they would have with their alumni. There are alumni out there who have 17-year-old children who were really hoping it would help their child, and the whole college admissions process at various high schools across America is built on guiding people toward where they may have some sort of advantage, so it would be a dramatic change.
One of the great misconceptions of this whole process was this anti-DEI view that we need to get back to the pure meritocracy we once were. But for a large portion of the history of elite universities, women weren't allowed at all, Black people were certainly not welcome at many elite universities, there were quotas on Jewish applicants — there's a whole period of history where it was not a real meritocracy. To me, the better argument is we need to create more of a meritocracy and eliminate all the preferences that don't have to do with the quality of the individual candidate.
Stepping back to think about the places universities are in more generally: On the one hand, they need to defend themselves from this onslaught by the Trump administration and others, and on the other hand, they need to actually do the work carrying out the reforms you're suggesting. How can they do both of those things at the same time?
I think they can happen at the same time. It will take tremendous leadership to do it. Stepping back, you have to ask, 'What's the size of the problem we're dealing with?' If you wind back the clock two years, we were in a golden age of American universities. Applications were up every year, people from around the world wanted to send their children to American elite schools, alumni were increasingly generous, so the universities were able to offer more and more financial aid every year, and you've got more and more people able to get in on merit from different walks of life and across America and across the world.
So I don't think there was a huge problem with these universities. Universities could have fought for their independence and fought to keep government control away, but at the same time, said, 'Look, we probably should be more open to viewpoint diversity, we probably should be even more meritocratic than we are, so we're going to look at things like legacy admissions.' I don't think these universities were broken in any sense. I thought things were going incredibly well just even a couple of years ago. And to the extent there's antisemitism on some of these campuses in a meaningful way that should absolutely be stamped out.
I think leaders of universities need to give a bit of a stiff arm to the government and say, 'We are the experts, we are private universities, we have our traditions, including shared governance where faculty play an important role, and we're going to reform ourselves to the extent we think necessary.'
Knowing what's happened since your departure, do you have any regrets about the way you handled the situation?
I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I really don't have regrets. I think the way things have played out not just at Penn but across the elite university sort of tells you that this was a battle that was going to be fought. There was no maneuver we were going to make back in September, October or November of 2023 that was going steer us back onto a course where everything was collegial and positive and campus was the placid place that it was for the decades before that.
The forces were gathering to fight a battle over diversity, over what admissions should look like, over what we want these universities to be and how much freedom we want to give faculty members. I don't think there's anything I could have done to avoid having that battle being fought, and I think by stepping away when I did, I put myself in a position to play some role in that.