Ben Sasse, a Yale graduate, who was President of the University of Florida when he wrote this article for The Atlantic (he resigned from the Presidency of this public university after seventeen months, but continues to earn his one million dollar salary as President Emeritus), is correct when he says that none of the Presidents who testified before the United States House Committee on Education and the Workforce on December 5, 2023 were lying: “The three university presidents… were likely not lying.”

In response to Representative Elise Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, who contended that the chants “There is only one solution, Intifada Revolution” and “Globalize the Intifada” are calls “to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Israel and globally” and who asked “Do you believe that type of hateful speech is contrary to Harvard’s code of conduct”, President Claudine Gay of Harvard said that “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful. It’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment…” She was interrupted by Stefanik, who asked “Does that speech not cross that barrier? Does that speech not call for the genocide of Jews and the elimination of Israel?” President Gay responded that “We give a wide berth to free expression, even of views that are objectionable.” In response to Stefanik’s continued questioning, President Gay repeated that “When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment, or intimidation, we take action. And we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.” More generally, President Gay and the two other Presidents said that whether or not such speech violates their universities’ code of conduct depends on the context. As President Liz Magill of Penn put it to Stefanik, “It’s a context-specific decision, Congresswoman.” Charles Fried, in his article for The Harvard Crimson entitled “President Gay Was Right: Context Matters,” said that “I would have been professionally obligated to answer as the presidents did. It does depend on the context.”

A somewhat more detailed explanation was given by Marshall Breger, a law professor at The Catholic University of America: “[i]n a sense she [Magill] was correct. Is the call for killing an ethnic group—Tutsis in Rwanda, Jews in Israel, Rohingya in Myanmar—speech or conduct? The Constitution would view it as speech, and therefore protected, unless directed to specific individuals. Private universities are not required to follow First Amendment criteria, but their own codes of student behavior promote free speech and academic freedom while also prohibiting the bullying and harassment of specific individuals.” Berger could be said to be concurring with Harvard law professor Jeanine Suk Gersen, who had written in The New Yorker that “The claim that the answer depends on context is correct; any responsible determination of a policy violation is context-dependent. In the context of October 7th, it would have been clearer to say something like “Yes, calling for a person to be killed because they are Jewish or Palestinian would constitute bullying and harassment. And, if the phrase ‘from the river to sea’ was used specifically to threaten to kill someone, that would at a minimum violate the rules.”

To quote Sasse’s article again, “The university presidents who testified before Congress were not wrong that the line beyond protected speech is action—this is the well-established American tradition.”

Lying in their testimony to the House Committee and telling Stefanik what she wanted to hear would have helped these Presidents to keep their jobs (Magill resigned within a week of this testimony, and Gay resigned one month later). They did not lie, however, and they did lose their jobs in the aftermath of their testimony. Perhaps surprisingly, since this committee was clearly conducting a witch hunt, by treating the committee’s questions as sincere inquiries, and by responding with sincere answers. As Professor Suk Gersen says, “The presidents walked into an ambush, having prepared for a deposition (where counsel advises minimalist answers) rather than for political grandstanding. And the moment plainly needed a moral statement rather than a legally precise reply.”

In the most recent issue of The Times Literary Supplement, Rory Stewart, former Tory minister, described Boris Johnson, the current Prime Minister of the UK, as follows: “Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St. Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true.” (“Lord of Misrule“, review of Boris Johnson: The Gambler, by Tom Bower, TLS, November 6, 2020, 4).

The February 20, 2020, issue online of The London Review of Books features a recording of the first of this year’s LRB Winter Lectures, given at the British Museum on January 31 by Colin Burrow, of Oxford University, entitled “Fiction and the Ages of Lies.” It prompted Scott Herrick, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, to write in to the LRB and quote from John Ruskin, in Modern Painters (1860), on the essence of lying. The complete quotation is given above. What Ruskin says here about lying anticipates Mark Twain’s account of the “silent lie”, which is discussed in my essay “The Noble Art of Lying.”

The poster for this Tom Cruise movie about DEA informant Barry Seal says that it is “Based On A True Lie.” There are lies that are true. When a liar asserts what the liar believes to be false, but the liar is mistaken, and the liar asserts what is true, then the lie is a true lie. The liar is still a liar, even if the hearer is not deceived (although the hearer may still be deceived about what the liar believes). This is not what the poster is referring to, however. Presumably, it is referring to a lie (or deception) that was actually told (or perpetrated) by the U.S. government. Interestingly, the movie’s director, Doug Liman, has described the movie as “a fun lie based on a true story.” Strictly speaking, however, a fictional movie cannot be a lie. On why works of fiction cannot be lies, see my “Novels Never Lie.”