The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was founded at UC Berkeley and is perversely active at UCLA where it has spearheaded an attempt to purge, Joe McCarthy fashion, Jews with whom it disagrees about Israel from campus political life. SJP has been investigated and sanctioned across the country for cursing Jewish students who dare to wear a yarmulke, targeting Jewish dorm residents with “eviction notices,” and setting up campus “check points” to hassle Jews who walk to and from class.
This sordid and troubling reality is of only passing interest to Kenneth S. Stern. Instead, Mr. Stern in the pages of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal prefers to ask: “Should a Major University System Have a Particular Definition of Anti-Semitism?” Mr. Stern’s answer is that universities like the UC System, whose Board of Regents is considering adopting the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism, should not only reject a particular definition: they should adopt no definition at all. Apparently, the manifestations of campus anti-Semitism frighten Mr. Stern less than the prospect of adopting a definition of anti-Semitism on campus, much less doing something significant about it.
What is Mr. Stern’s perfect model of a university regent or administrator? Certainly not a profile in courage. More like Major Major in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 who, promoted to his rank by an IBM computer glitch, jumps out his rear window whenever anyone comes into his office urging that he take action on a real problem.
Mr. Stern, who claims partial pride of authorship for the European Monitoring Centre’s “working definition” that the U.S. State Department followed, apparently believes that denouncing anti-Semitism abroad is fine, but that silence and inaction about its everyday manifestations on today’s campuses are the better part of valor. To be charitable, let’s say that Mr. Stern is profoundly out of touch with the actual experience of anxiety and humiliation that half of Jewish college students feel for no other reason that they proudly affirm being Jewish, according to a recent poll.
Again to be charitable, Mr. Stern is like a Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep under a German campus oak in 1922, and then woke in 1932—but failed to understand that the situation was fundamentally changing for Jews for whom pleas for “empathy,” “nuance,” and more colloquia on anti-Semitism were no longer effective. We need to act before a similar situation eventuates in the U.S. Of course, we are not there yet, but the ominous signs are there to be seen by anyone who does not share Mr. Stern’s comforting illusions that American campuses are the same hospitable place for self-respecting Jewish students that they once were.
Of course, Mr. Stern wants more academic discussion of anti-Semitism—or perceived anti-Semitism—on campus. He just doesn’t want to define it as an existential threat to a whole generation of Jews: much less join those on the front line combatting it. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously remarked that he could not define pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it. I am not so sure the same can be said about Mr. Stern and comprehending campus anti-Semitism. Make no mistake about it, those of us who support the Regents’ adoption of the State Department’s definition recognizing anti-Zionist advocacy of Israel’s extinction as the twenty-first century cutting edge of anti-Semitism do not seek to ban free speech on campus or infringe on “academic freedom.” But we believe that speech itself is itself an act, as is silence, and that those who fail to take an unambiguous stand against campus anti-Semitism in its most toxic current manifestations will be judged harshly by history as wafflers and temporizers with evil, not as the free speech paragons they imagine themselves.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement uses anti-Israel invective, not only to make a point, but to instill fear in order to silence Jewish students who disagree. In fact, anti-Israel activists repeatedly harass and single out Jewish students regardless of their positions or involvement with Israel-related issues. At UC Santo Cruz last semester, anti-Israel activists protested a Hillel event hosted for the LGBT community. This is anti-Semitism. To say that we shouldn’t stand in solidarity Jewish students by correctly identifying anti-Semitism as it manifests on campuses today is flat out wrong. Our sons and daughters shouldn’t be forced to defend themselves, their identities and/or their religion under the guise of “political protest.” They should be able to go to college and get an education, unhampered by this type of targeted harassment and intimidation. There will be no escaping the consequences of inaction. Are our young people on campus mature enough on campus to contend with political protests about Israel like any other country in the world? Absolutely. But their identity and rights need to be protected against attempts to use anti-Israel advocacy as a thin disguise to harass, intimidate, and silence Jewish students in ways that would not be tolerate against LGBT or African American students, for example. At the very least, campus anti-Semites should be called out for what they say and do. Jewish students should not face being attacked, targeted, demonized and harassed during campus political brawls without any administrative condemnation of anti-Semitism when it occurs.
We do not pre-judge where criticism of Israel crosses the line into anti-Semitic invective against Jews and the Jewish state, a UN member state. We merely insist that there is such a line that needs to be drawn, and that Mr. Stern is wrong to try to finesse it out of existence. And here we offer some common sense rules.
If there is a LGBT rally on campus, and a protest against legalizing LGBT marriage includes signs saying, “From Sea to Shining Sea, No Gays in America Will I See”—that crosses a line. If there is an anti-Israel rally with signs saying, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free Of Jews”—that crosses a line. To ignore when clear lines are crossed in any society is not only foolish, it is the most dangerous course to take. Our society and especially our schools have an obligation to call out bigotry, hatred, and any form of racism as it occurs. Condemnation is our weapon against bigotry. It does not mean the student with the bigoted sign gets punished for carrying the sign. Free speech is essential to this society and we are very strong free speech advocates. What condemnation means is that the racist student gets called out on his/her bigotry by those in a position to do so. It means administrators no longer stay silent when Jewish students are openly and unabashedly targeted for discrimination. It means our sons and daughters can walk away with a well-rounded educational experience and not an endorsed anti-Semitic experience when they look back on their college years.
Nor do we advocate that college students be cocooned in “hurt free” zones. Yet if Mr. Stern wants no- holds-barred campus politics without any rules recognizing common decency and human rights, he ought to come out and endorse the untrammeled right of campus speakers to defame and stigmatize students on the basis on race or gender or sexual orientation. Why is it that the only students who seem to have no right to be protected on campus against defamation and hate speech are Jews? Why is it only hate speech against Jews and Israel gets a free pass on free speech grounds without university authorities hardly taking notice? Free speech rights should not be violated, but this is no excuse for failing to characterize anti-Semitic hate speech for what it is.
Will the BDS Movement be labeled anti-Semitic under the State Department definition? Not unless the BDS Movement urges that the Jewish people, alone among all the world’s peoples, be denied their right to self-determination and survival. Comparing Jews to Nazis—or worse than Nazis—vilifying Jewish students wearing Magen Davids as “Zio-Nazis,” telling Jewish faculty and students to “go back to the ovens,” and desecrating in dorms the Mezuzah or flags of Israel. All these should be investigated and condemned if proven to have happened. Our common goal should be to discourage, not encourage, discrimination in our colleges and universities.
For the UC Regents to adopt the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism will be an important step in the right direction.
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