I think what I am trying to say is that trying to make an inaccurate comparison doesn’t bring any light to this debate. I haven’t seen any minority group talking about how well treated or protected they are on college campuses - quite the opposite in fact. It is a myopic view, at best and one that doesn’t take into account any other marginalized group’s point of view.
Anti-semitism is real, it is happening and no other marginalized group should be used to try to highlight some imagined contrast in treatment on college campuses. They are all treated poorly and not well protected.
I just thought I would share this clip of Bill Maher and Greg Lukianoff of FIRE discussing campus free speech and when it crosses the line. They address the hypocrisy of the Penn and Harvard presidents when the “offensive” speech is aimed at Jews.
To paraphrase Maher : “intifada” is free speech, probably calls for violence but ok. “From the river to the sea” is a little more genocide-y, but maybe they can say we just want all the Jews to move not die. “By any means necessary” : now I’m peeing in my pants.
And Maher and Lukianoff don’t have their personal bias? Free speech is free speech. You can’t pick and choose. And there is a lot of “Hypocrisy” everywhere. Calls for violence against any group is where the line gets crossed. University presidents are in an impossible position, every word or nuance is taking through the lens of “what side are you on”. The only real side are innocent people. Anyone harming innocent people are guilty of crimes. It actually is black and white. The end never can be used to justify the means.
Of course Maher and Lukianoff have their biases/personal points of view. Did you watch the clip? They are both proponents of free speech. I don’t think their views are necessarily at at odds with yours. They were saying that the optics are bad for the universities because they have curbed free speech in other circumstances. Lukianoff said the universities have no choice but to have a double standard now or there would be no permissible speech on campus. You have to let everyone express their views so that you know who the Nazis in the room are. If the university presidents find themselves in an impossible situation now, it is because they have been picking and choosing what speech is deemed acceptable on their campuses for years.
The US never was unbiased in this so most would take their definition with a fine grain of salt. Judaism and Zionism are not the same. Zionism is a 19th century political movement.
But don’t they do this? And don’t they sue over cakes and such and call it free speech because G-d? Sure, I wish they wouldn’t, just as wish people wouldn’t defend Hamas, but they do have the right to their beliefs, however much I disagree, and to expressing them. I find it abhorrent. Just as find the pro-life protestors outside my local Planned Parenthood personally offensive and, in my personal view, misogynist. But it is their right.
The responsibility should fall on both sides. I can understand how Jewish students might feel that some pro-Palestinian rhetoric is antisemitic, even if not necessarily intended to be. But I can understand how some pro-Palestinian protestors feel a similar sense of pain in terms of the treatment of Palestinian civilians in this war, as well the treatment of Palestinians in general. I think there is pain and anger on both sides. I know there are some extremists bigots, but I do believe (and maybe I am naive for this) that many students are expressing sincerely held beliefs. That is not to say they are right or wrong in those beliefs or in their understanding of the situation, but I think - extremists aside - that that they acting in accordance with sincere beliefs based on their understanding on what is happening to whom and why. Again, that is not to say they are correct; that is just to say that they are not necessarily antisemitic monsters who hate humanity (even if Hamas is).
But not in the minds of some/many of the protestors. I am not saying they are right or wrong, I am just stating what is. And they certainly have a right to question government policy - isn’t that what many protests do? So it is not strange that they are pushing back on this definition adopted by the US government. Every protest from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam war protests to, well, just about everything else has had an element of questioning government-promoted policies and ideas.
Many of us are probably part of “some” minority it some societal, cultural, heritage, geographic, religious, economically, racially, or whatever sense. The question is, whether it should be sufficient to just treat everyone “equal” (or, equally poorly, if you want) - or whether there should be an expectation that minorities-by-whatever-measure should be treated “specially” (and hence be disappointed when that doesn’t quite happen.)
No one or grouping should be discriminated against by treating them extra poorly - if that’s what we mean by “protecting”.
But it seems to me, that what’s often being complained about is not actual discrimination, but rather not enough extra accommodating.
Denying Palestinian Arabs (there is no separate Palestinian ethnicity) a right to self-determination is, obviously, not antisemitic.
The question of who exactly is doing the denying is beyond the scope of this thread though.
Having said that, I have heard of no demonstrations on college campuses against the establishment of an Arab state in Palestine (in the language of the 1947 UN Resolution 181), or for a Jewish state “from the river to the sea”.
It is the definition adopted by the 31 member states of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), of which the United States is a member.
Judaism and Jewishness are not the same thing either (I expounded on this upthread).
The IHRA definition above is what will legally govern when college antisemitism complaints are investigated by the US government.
They have a right to their opinions. But they do not get an automatic excuse from bigotry accusations by simply claiming not being bigots in their own opinion.
If majority of Jews perceive their speech as antisemitic, ultimately, it is.
Would work the same way with any other minority group.
When Jews were discriminated against in Ivy admissions, they didn’t ask for preferences - merely for a level playing field.
Similarly, they are not asking for any extra accommodations now. Just the same learning environment free from discrimination and harassment everyone else has a right to expect under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I’m of the belief that the only way to truly end bigotry and discrimination, or to get it down to whatever non-zero limit we can accomplish, is if we treat each other based solely on word and deed. Character. Things we can control.
So when we treat a group differently because they’re a minority population, we in fact are engaging in de facto bigotry – even if we think we’re doing them a favor. I take the -isms to mean, literally, basing the treatment or judgment of people, in whole or in part (so there’s a sliding scale, of course… not a binary 0/1), on their demographic attributes: age, sex, race, creed, etc.
