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Author of a definition on antisemitism: It wasn't meant to chill speech [1]

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Date: 2024-02-15

As the war between Israel and Hamas enters its fifth month, American university campuses continue to be a second front in a proxy war. Early on, university presidents waded in with statements that were attacked for supporting Israel, or the Palestinians, with insufficient zeal. In December three university presidents gave legally correct but tone deaf responses to a loaded question about genocide — based on an erroneous claim that everyone who used the phrase “intifada” or “from the river to the sea” was calling for the genocide of Jews, and shouldn’t they be disciplined? Lost in this viral sound bite was the important distinction between actual threat or harassment, which should indeed be punished, and expression of opinions, which, no matter how hateful, should be countered but not punished.

Academic freedom, let alone free speech, requires ideas, no matter how vile, to be heard — and then opposed with not only more speech but also the major asset campuses should tap: learning. Why do some students talk only about Palestinian suffering and resistance “by any means necessary,” never mentioning the brutal Hamas attack? Why are others seemingly untroubled by the ever-expanding “collateral damage” of Israel’s response, the ever-escalating number of Palestinians being killed?

Campus conflict over Israeli/Palestinian issues is nothing new, of course. For years each side has acted as though it alone held the moral high ground, ardently convinced of its righteousness. In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the battle for the narrative has reached a fever pitch. “Doxxing trucks” visited campuses at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia universities, displaying the names and photos of students who expressed solidarity with Palestinians alongside the caption “antisemite.” Brandeis University banned the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, not for any specific action but for its language. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida banned the SJP on the dubious grounds that its speech constitutes “material support” for terrorism.

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Attempts to intimidate students and organizations engaged in pro-Palestinian speech into silence have been going on for a long time. A shady website called Canary Mission has been compiling information about people — scholars, college students, and others who it believes possess the wrong views about Israel — for years. Both the doxxing trucks and the site are blacklists, an odious tactic perfected by Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee and deployed disproportionately against Jews in Hollywood and elsewhere. (I never thought anyone in the Jewish community would ever want to replicate such a thing.)

Meanwhile, many pro-Israel Jewish students are fearful of being perceived as supporters of Israel. That’s not new either. In 2022 a group called Law Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California, Berkeley banned anyone it deemed to be a Zionist from speaking to their organization — and then asked other groups at the law school to adopt the same “no Zionists allowed” stance. Some did. Of course, groups concerned with climate change or sexual abuse can choose to devote themselves to Palestinian solidarity as well, or even to prioritize it. But to exclude Zionists from such a group because Zionism is perceived as inherently evil is McCarthyism, too.

Increasingly, mainstream Jewish groups have been pushing lawmakers and universities to adopt what’s known as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism on campus to chill or suppress much pro-Palestinian speech. I was the lead drafter of the 2005 text that became the 2016 IHRA definition. It was designed primarily for European data collectors to be able to craft reports over borders and time to measure the level of antisemitism. Examples were the heart of the definition to guide the data collection process. There were examples about Israel, not to label anyone an antisemite but because there was a correlation, as opposed to causation, between certain expressions and the climate for antisemitism. But it was never intended to be weaponized to muzzle campus free speech.

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Everyone on a campus has the right to use their free speech rights to counter expressions they find hateful. Asking the state to suppress disfavored ideas, especially on campuses, is never acceptable. Some Jewish groups and leaders were rightly outraged when DeSantis restricted what could be taught about race and gender in Florida schools. But many partisans of Israel are imitating him by pushing for the adoption of the IHRA definition as a kind of de facto speech code, policing the boundaries of what can be said on campus.

In 2022, a Tennessee bill used the IHRA definition to circumscribe what might be taught about Israel, potentially jeopardizing teachers who assign readings critical of Zionism or allow an “Israel Apartheid Week” demonstration. The bill was sponsored by a Republican legislator who once proposed making the Bible the state’s “official book” — and he also pushed a law that would remove “age-inappropriate” books from libraries. When asked what should be done with said books, he replied, “burn them.” When Jewish groups are aligning themselves with advocates of book-burning, something has gone seriously wrong.

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The Israel/Hamas conflict has pushed people further into their ideological straightjackets. Each side believes that the other is not just misinformed but malevolent. Each denies that the issue is complicated. Each wants to put things squarely on one side of the ledger (unequivocally antisemitic or obviously benign), when many expressions about Israel fall in a gray area. When we use the term antisemitism so expansively, it’s emptied of its meaning, harming our ability to confront it.

What to do

Instead of vilifying people on campus with deeply opposing views, or focusing only on what pure expressions we want to suppress with a definition-turned-speech code, faculty, students, staff, and those who care about the university should be helping it do what it aspires to do best: teach. Since October, I’ve fielded countless calls from college presidents, university chancellors, other administrators, parents, and students seeking advice about how to navigate these difficult times. This is what I tell them: Anyone who cares about education should be focusing on not only how to respond in the moment but how we can work collaboratively to build a better campus for the future.

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First, mine the expertise of the faculty. Dartmouth offered a prime case study in which friendships between Jewish studies and Middle East studies faculties led them to initiate educational forums in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. As one participant noted, students “can advocate for their side; they can find someone to blame; or they can try to understand.” Students need to hear different points of view and to learn to unpack buzzwords rather than sling them as weapons. At Bard College, where I work, a colleague has organized a new course this spring that delves deeply into such concepts such as antisemitism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide, human rights, Islamophobia, laws of war, settler colonialism, Zionism, and anti-Zionism, among others.

Second, any actions taken should advance, and certainly not diminish, academic freedom. There’s a desperate need for more classes and first-year orientations about both free speech and academic freedom. Too many students believe that ideas they find disturbing are indistinguishable from actual violence. They should absolutely be protected from harassment, threats, intimidation, and discrimination. But they should also know they are on campus to be disturbed by ideas, even ones that cut them to their core.

Students must have the opportunity to think through how to respond to ideas they find unsettling — to learn from those with whom they disagree. Students should have the right to experiment with ideas, including the right to be wrong. And they should expect that college will help them develop the tools to think critically about concepts they’ll find disturbing for the rest of their lives. There are no ideological “safe spaces” after graduation day, after all.

Third, university presidents should reach out to donors who have abandoned their institutions in protest. If campus life really matters to them, their primary concern shouldn’t be communal advocacy and the parsing of what individual students or administrators say or don’t say about Oct. 7 and its aftermath. When funding is pulled in reaction to what a student or faculty member tweets or says at a rally, academic freedom is sacrificed. Donors should be asking how they can help enhance the campus’ ability to teach widely and well about such fractious issues to improve the institution for today’s students and for generations to come.

Fourth, universities need to build programs to teach and research around the vexing subject of human hate (and offer courses on specific hatreds, including antisemitism). There are a growing number of hate studies centers around the globe, and the more students understand why hatred exists, how it works in individuals, groups, culture, and politics, the more introspective they might be about what they are feeling and thinking in such moments. When I run workshops, on campus and off, about how to have rational discussions about Israel and Palestine, I assign, and start with, readings from hate studies. I’ve seen how the power of knowing more about how we, as human beings, default to “us” and “them” can actually change the conversation.

Winston Churchill once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It’s important to recognize that the current moment, despite its evident and ongoing horrors, also represents an opportunity. Universities today have the chance to imagine new courses and programs and teaching, along with changes in campus culture. Do this well and more students may come to value intellectual discomfort over conformity. Do this well and we might graduate future leaders who have the capacity to imagine why and how that otherwise friendly person across a political divide looks at the world differently.

Kenneth S. Stern is director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate and the author of “The Conflict Over The Conflict: The Israel/Palestine Campus Debate.”

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[1] Url: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/02/15/opinion/kenneth-stern-antisemitism-ihra-free-speech/

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