OPINION - Harvard's Claudine Gay saga shows how the poison of cancel culture has infected US universities

If you wanted to sum up the near parodic state of liberal academia in the US, the response of the then president of Pennsylvania University, Elizabeth McGill, to a question about whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated its rules on harassment, would do the job nicely. “It’s a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman”, she said. This is a lawyer’s answer – and Dr McGill is a lawyer – to a question that called for an unequivocal response. Elizabeth McGill fell right into the elephant trap laid for her by a Republican congresswoman, Elise Stefanik. She has now resigned.