On Tuesday, Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned. She, like previously defenestrated University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill, had been facing heavy criticism for her appearance at a Dec. 5 House committee hearing at which Republican New York Rep. Elise Stefanik asked them if “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate their campus codes of conduct. Both said it would depend on contextual factors, such as whether it was directed at a specific person or group—an answer that has been defended by free-speech advocates but criticized by others for failing to express sufficient abhorrence of anti-Jewish bigotry.

Gay and Magill’s critics were led by a handful of Israel supporters in the financial world, like Bill Ackman and Marc Rowan, as well as Republicans like Stefanik, Donald Trump speechwriter Stephen Miller, and right-wing activist Christopher Rufo. The groups have found common ground in the idea that the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada,” which have been used during campus protests since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, constitute antisemitic harassment and that Gay and Magill did too little to protect Jewish students on campus. (Gay’s critics have also accused her of plagiarizing passages in her academic work. An initial university review, in the words of the Harvard Crimson student paper, found that Gay was not guilty of any “serious wrongdoing,” but she has requested that citations to other work be added to the passages in question.)

The national press—and in particular the New York Times—has covered the Harvard and Penn scandals in great detail, to the point that the Times posted a “live blog,” a type of coverage usually reserved for the most stunning geopolitical developments, about Gay’s resignation. This coverage has been met with its own backlash from liberal and leftist critics. They complain that the Times’ level of interest in what happens on Ivy League campuses is........

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