Antisemitism

Greg Lukianoff

The Eternally Radical Idea

While I certainly know critics of Israel who are not at all motivated by anti-Semitism, I have run into a lot more outright anti-Semitism over the past 10 years — and particularly in the last six months — than I ever thought I'd see in my lifetime. Anti-Semitism is vile, and I believe it is absolutely a growing problem today.

Given my point of view on this, it might be surprising to people that FIRE and I oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act. To those who understand how a viewpoint-neutral defense of the First Amendment works in practice, however, this should come as no surprise at all.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: What do colleges owe their Jewish students? Administrators, faculty, and members of Congress have debated that polarizing question in recent months. Soon, judges and juries may impose some answers. At least 19 lawsuits pending against institutions of higher education allege anti-Semitism that violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which mandates that no person shall, on grounds of race or national origin, “be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under” a program that receives federal funds.

The way forward is to reaffirm equal treatment for Jewish students without undermining free speech or academic freedom. But we cannot rely on the justice system to achieve that balance. Congress should intervene, amending Title VI to add robust free-speech protections for all.

David Moshman
Academe Blog

Excerpt: Discussions about campus matters related to Gaza, including posts on this blog, have focused on free speech issues associated with campus protests. Let me shift the focus. Universities should indeed support freedom of speech, but their primary function is to seek and communicate the truth, including the truth about Gaza, and their primary concern should be protecting the freedom to teach and do research about Gaza.

Hurubie Meko
New York Times

Excerpt: Columbia University placed three administrators on leave this week, a university spokesman said on Saturday. The moves came a little more than a week after images emerged showing the school officials sharing disparaging text messages during a panel discussion about antisemitism on campus.

Maggie Hicks
Chronicle of Higher Education

Excerpt: This month, Raz Segal learned that he’d been offered a job to run the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota’s flagship. It was an exciting career move for Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University.

Five days later, Minnesota withdrew the offer. The problem, according to key players involved in the search, was Segal’s opinion of the Israel-Hamas war — namely an October 13 article he wrote arguing that Israel’s ongoing attacks on the Gaza strip were a “textbook case of genocide.”

Haley Strack
National Review

Excerpt: The University of Michigan and the City University of New York (CUNY) failed to properly assess whether anti-Israel campus protests made for hostile environments for students, faculty, and staff, the Department of Education said on Monday.

“OCR found no evidence that the university complied with its Title VI requirements to assess whether incidents individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment for students, faculty, or staff, and if so, to take steps reasonably calculated to end the hostile environment, remedy its effects, and prevent its recurrence,” the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which investigated 75 complaints against the University of Michigan and nine against CUNY, said.