Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, universities across the country have been engaged in anti-Israel violence. Protests. Elite universities have seen particularly aggressive demonstrations that have often included explicit support for Hamas.
On December 5, the college presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appeared at a meeting of Congress he heard, where they were questioned about their schools’ response to allegations of anti-Semitism on campus. During the hearing, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the three whether “advocating the genocide of Jews” violated their school policies.
“It’s a context-dependent situation,” University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill responded. “If speech becomes behavior, it may be harassment.”
Anger over Magill’s answer — both from those who want to see her committed to banning legal but offensive anti-Semitic speech and from those who pointed to Penn’s consistent record of punishing professors for less offensive expression — culminated in her resignation on Saturday.
While First Amendment supporters have expressed hope that these recent controversies will show how easily anti-“hate speech” rules can be abused on college campuses, many administrators appear to be taking the opposite position, advocating more oversight, not less.
On Sunday, Claire O. Finkelstein, who is a member of Penn’s Open Expression Commission and chairs the law school’s Academic Freedom Committee, goes to pages Washington Post in condition It is titled “To Combat Anti-Semitism on Universities, We Must Restrict Free Speech.”
In it, Finkelstein playfully claimed that “the value of free speech has risen to an almost sacred level on college campuses,” adding that “as a result, universities have been forced to tolerate hate speech.”
The idea that freedom of expression is treated as “almost sacred” on college campuses is absolutely ridiculous. Far from being treated as sacrosanct, free speech and freedom of speech are constantly under fire on American college campuses, primarily elite colleges.
said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) CEO Greg Lukianoff pointing toOver the past decade, “we know of more than 1,000 campaigns to punish professors for free speech or academic freedom. Of these campaigns, about two-thirds have succeeded in punishing professors.”
The most disturbing detail? Nearly 200 of those professors were fired, “nearly twice the number estimated in the Red Scare,” Lukianoff says.
Finkelstein further argues that colleges—both public and private—should crack down on anti-Semitic speech by students by using an incredibly broad definition of conduct such as incitement or harassment.
“With or without the First Amendment, calls for genocide against Jews — or even proxies for such sentiments, such as calling for uprising against Jews or the elimination of Israel by chanting ‘From the river to the sea’ — fall into the present context,” she wrote. “Advocates violence against a separate racial or religious group.” “Such rhetoric arguably incites violence, often inspires harassment of Jewish students, and, without a doubt, creates a hostile environment that can impair equal educational opportunities for Jewish students.”
While much of the content of anti-Israel protests at colleges in recent weeks has included genuinely anti-Semitic speech, the First Amendment simply protects the vast majority of even deeply offensive speech. additional, legal terms Such “incitement” and “harassment” have incredibly narrow definitions that almost certainly do not include speech such as “from the river to the sea” chants during anti-Israel protests.
While Penn, as a private university, is not obligated to follow the First Amendment, Finkelstein also makes a non-statutory argument for increased censorship.
“What values do university presidents believe are most important for preparing leaders in a democracy?” Finkelstein writes. “The ability to shout extremist slogans or the ability to engage in rational dialogue with people who have moral and political differences?”
However, Finkelstein’s error is almost universal among censorship advocates. While silencing the most egregious instances of anti-Semitic speech may seem acceptable at first glance, there is no guarantee that the introduction of broad speech codes will not be used against speech that Finkelstein loves, let alone a wide range of controversial political speech.
Finkelstein concludes her article by asking the following question: “Isn’t it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in their institutions’ educational mission?”
Here, Finkelstein is right. They should, but in order to recommit to freedom of expression, not censorship.
In recent years, colleges and universities across the United States have been grappling with the issue of anti-Semitism on their campuses. As a result, there has been a growing debate about the role of free speech and the extent to which it should be restricted in order to combat this form of discrimination. Some argue that colleges must place limits on speech in order to create a safe and inclusive environment for all students, while others assert that such restrictions would violate the principles of free expression. This contentious issue has sparked discussions about the balance between protecting individuals from hate speech and upholding the First Amendment rights of all members of the university community.