World News

As the university presidents were trying to explain to Clown Shoes, sorry, I mean Elise Stefanik: Harassment is conduct that is severe or pervasive enough to create an environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive. A one-time generalized statement calling for genocide not targeted at a specific individual would not usually rise to the level of harassment per se, but can certainly be part of a pattern of harassment. Similarly, actual bullying is a pattern of abusive behavior and cannot be defined by any single act as it is often used colloquially.

That's the game Stefanik is playing: She knows these universities' policies are bound by the actual, legal definitions of "harassment" and "bullying" but she's counting on her ignorant audience not knowing those definitions and instead thinking the words are defined as what they use them for in their own lives: someone being mean.