How Colleges Should Address Anti-Semitism

September 01, 2024 1 min read

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Stanford found anti-Semitism to be “widespread.” Harvard reported that Jews and Israelis faced “shunning, harassment, and intimidation.” Columbia found that they “have been the object of racist epithets and graffiti, anti-Semitic tropes, and confrontational and unwelcome questions.” All of the task forces explored how to protect Jews from discrimination, harassment, and barriers to educational access, while also honoring commitments to free speech. Most schools urged expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion frameworks to encompass and benefit Jews.

But Stanford rejected that approach, arguing that DEI is itself “fundamentally flawed.” Instead, its task force recommended treating all students equally and helping them to forge a culture that encourages constructive disagreement. Alone among the reports, the Stanford recommendations offer its campus and other institutions that heed its advice a path to a better future.

Click here for link to full article

Leave a comment


Also in National Free Speech News & Commentary

West Point Is Supposed to Educate, Not Indoctrinate

May 08, 2025 1 min read

Graham Parsons, professor philosophy at the USMA at West Point
New York Times

Excerpt: It turned out to be easy to undermine West Point. All it took was an executive order from President Trump and a memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dictating what could and couldn’t be taught in the military and its educational institutions.

Read More
Trump Is Using Title IX as a ‘Battering Ram,’ Experts Say

May 08, 2025 1 min read

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed 

Excerpt: The Department of Education’s demands that University of Pennsylvania “restore” swimming awards and honors that had been “misappropriated” to trans women athletes and apologize to the cisgender women who had lost to them offer a glimpse into how the second Trump administration could use Title IX to force certain changes at colleges, experts and attorneys say.

Read More
Commentary: Can ‘Fear Equity’ Revive Campus Free Speech?

May 07, 2025 1 min read

Lee Jussim and Robert Maranto
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Now, thanks to the Trump administration’s—in our view questionable—policies regarding academia in general and elite institutions like Columbia and Harvard Universities in particular, policies that many plausibly view as political vengeance for leftist activism, higher education is rapidly approaching fear equity: The presidential right has joined the campus left in using intimidation to punish those whose speech they dislike. Now, everybody in academia gets to be afraid of being canceled, or at least having their grants canceled.

Is it possible that the new fear equity, with both left and right afraid to speak their minds, may be a necessary precondition to pave the way for a free speech renaissance?

Read More