Moral reasoning

The fish rots from the head down.

Nowhere is this adage more evident than in the testimonies of the three presidents of our elite institutions, namely, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT. At House of Representatives hearings investigating antisemitism on their respective campuses, these heads of our most prestigious institutions concluded that the public call for genocide of the Jewish people by radical campus students might warrant disciplinary action — depending on the “context.” The questioner, GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, expressed indignation at receiving the same legalistic response from each interviewee.

Lawrence Kohlberg must be rolling in his grave! Kohlberg was the great researcher, educator and moral philosopher who dedicated his professional life at Harvard to helping his students develop moral reasoning skills enabling them make intelligent, just and moral decisions. He sought to develop “autonomous thinkers” who base their moral decisions upon justice without regard to convention or popularity or what their lawyers advise to say. These represent lower stages of moral decision-making.

Having studied Kohlberg’s writings for decades, I believe that he would have been appalled at the notion that the current president of his beloved university, Claudine Gay, would reduce the public call for “genocide” to be a matter of “context.”

Students calling for “genocide” against Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, the LGBTG+ community Asians, , Black people or any other ethnic or religious groups display a primitive sense of moral reasoning. We must have zero tolerance for such speech. Those who call for genocide must face swift and severe consequences up to and including expulsion from the university. There must be no room for equivocation or the ambiguity of “context.”

— Rabbi Michael A Myers, Chicago