Ralph Avi Goldwasser
Whenever pro-Israel Jewish students on campus complain that they are being harassed, or intimidated, they are accused of attacking free speech. No matter how harsh, cruel or mendacious the “criticism” of Israel, students who try to respond to distortions and lies are scolded for trying to suppress criticism of the Jewish state and limit academic freedoms.
A Jewish Advocate article by Avi Goldwasser
Leah Burrows (“In face of campus furors, Jews debate limits of free speech,” May 6) provides a good example of this phenomenon.
Burrows wrote about last month’s program at Temple Emanuel of Newton on the delegitimization of Israel on college campuses. The program focused on the lack of intellectual integrity in academic discourse on the Middle East conflict, and the indecent and sometimes violent treatment of Jewish students who support Israel. Yet Burrows focused less on the ugly – sometimes dangerous – situation on campus and more on the thorny issue of free speech.
The program, which I moderated, featured a professor, a lawyer, and a campus activist. We screened a short video (hostilecampus.org) with vivid examples of Jewish students being harassed and university administrators ignoring and minimizing their suffering.
While universities more than ever are accommodating to Jewish religious needs, the campus has become an incubator for a growing anti-Jewish animus. Campuses have become politically radicalized; Marxist post-colonial ideology is all the rage. Petrodollars flood universities, and off-campus Islamic extremist preachers are radicalizing the growing Muslim student population.At many colleges, a matrix of false narratives, half truths and outright lies about Israel is being imposed on the next generation of American leadership. Adversaries of the Jewish state now control the culture on campus, in which Israel is always the problem. Supporting Israel is politically incorrect, unvirtuous and just not cool.
Young students find it difficult to not conform to prevailing fashions, and you cannot use facts, logic and reason to counter a fashion. And that is a major challenge to the Jewish community, which values rational discourse.
It is painful to see how Jewish students – who enter college believing in American ideals of equality, fairness and respect for all people – quickly discover that if they support the Jewish state, they are second-class citizens on campus.
To take one recent example, Lihi Benisty, a Jewish student at Hampshire College, attended a pro-Israel event at UMass Amherst and thereafter suffered daily harassment back on her own campus. As she walked to class or to her apartment, Lihi was called a “baby killer,” “apartheid lover,” “Zionist pig,” “genocide supporter” and “racist.” She was physically pushed, and she got an email death threat. It took the college dean almost a week to meet with her. Fortunately, Jewish organizations, including The David Project and the Anti- Defamation League, quickly came to her support.
University of California Berkeley student Jessica Felber was violently assaulted by a Muslim student leader while holding a sign reading “Israel Wants Peace.” She had to receive medical treatment and has now filed a federal lawsuit claiming that UC Berkeley has ignored mounting evidence of dangers for Jewish students.
Amazingly, some Jewish leaders seem more concerned about “free speech” than they are about Jewish students. Susan Tuchman of the Zionist Organization of America has been leading a successful effort to expand the protections in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to Jewish students. Yet Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee expressed concern that protecting Jewish students under the historic 1964 Civil Right Act may impact free speech on campus.
Sensitivities to other groups already limit free speech on campuses. University speech codes bring a quick and strong response to infractions. Recently, the Department of Justice launched an investigation into allegations that Yale permits a hostile environment for women, in part because of a campus sign there proclaiming “We Love Yale Sluts.” This is clearly not acceptable; yet yelling similar slurs at pro- Israel women on campus provokes no such official response. Interestingly, hardly anyone is bringing up the free speech issue in the Yale incident.
University administrations have clearly adopted a separate and unequal approach to behavior on campus. A single incident of insensitivity against other groups is sufficient proof of a climate of hate requiring collective punishment for the entire university community. These punitive actions typically include lectures and sensitivity training to pacify the offended groups. But for Jewish students, it’s more complicated. There is never enough proof, never enough incidents, never a discernable pattern; no connection between hateful rhetoric and anti-Semitic attacks can ever be established. The university administration’s answer is always the same. Nothing can be done because of free speech, academic freedom and such.
Pro-Israel Jewish professors who know what is going on fear to speak out. And while all of this is happening, some want to have a Talmudic debate about whether the application of the Civil Rights Act to Jewish students’ safety on campus could possibly inhibit free speech in the academe. Amazing.
Avi Goldwasser was cofounder of The David Project and the executive producer of “Columbia Unbecoming,” a documentary about the intimidation of Jewish students at Columbia University in New York.
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