free speech – Page 5

Consumerism meets identity politics

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. The first examined Oberlin College’s “Jewish problem.”

When Nathan Heller’s “Letter from Oberlin: The Big Uneasy” appeared in The New Yorker (May 30) his sub-headline asked: “What’s roiling the liberal-arts campus?”

At least for some Jewish students, Oberlin’s obstacles to Jewish life are signs of two roiling processes: “identity politics” and higher education’s drift toward business models in which students primarily are customers.

From its origins in 1833, Oberlin College has been at the forefront of social changes. In particular, no institution in the United States has an older coeducational baccalaureate program. As well, before the Civil War, members of the Oberlin community were active in movements to abolish slavery. The college advertises that it “regularly admitted African American students beginning in 1835.”

Oberlin’s avant-garde history influences student applications and admissions, as well as faculty recruitment – and some unexpected campus activities. For example, in December 2015, unnamed members of the Africana community referred to Oberlin’s legacy and/or public relations when they delivered to the administration an undated multi-page list of “demands not suggestions,” which included a “four percent annual increase in black student enrolment”; “divestment from all prisons and Israel”; “that spaces throughout the Oberlin College campus be designated as [segregated] safe space for Africana identifying students” (exclusively?); that several professors (identified by name) should be subject to “immediate firing”; and that other professors should be given preferential treatment.

Oberlin College proclaims efforts to ameliorate affronts or afflictions perceived by cohorts such as African-Americans, Muslims, students with physical handicaps and non-heterosexual students. A “Campus Climate Report” (May 19, 2016) also includes a section on problems experienced by some Jewish students, but does not specifically deal with reports that “progressive” protesters who confront other forms of bigotry often deny the significance of antisemitism.

This phenomenon occurs on other campuses, too.

In August, the Washington Post published an op-ed focused on “an Iranian Jew,” Arielle Mokhtarzadeh, who traveled “to attend the annual Students of Color Conference” at the University of California, Berkeley. There she found: “Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, my history was denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish homeland was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered.”

Also in the Post, Molly Harris, a student at McGill University, addressed students just beginning post-secondary education: “Get ready to meet new people, learn things that fascinate you, and figure out who you are and who you want to be.

“If you’re Jewish, you should probably also prepare yourself for the various forms of anti-Israel sentiment, and maybe even antisemitism, you’re likely to encounter on your new college campus.

“In the past year alone, as a Jewish student at McGill University in Montreal, I’ve been called a ‘Zionist b—.’ I’ve been told several times that Jews haven’t suffered (never mind the Spanish Inquisition, Eastern European pogroms and centuries of violence and marginalization leading up to the Holocaust). I’ve seen my friends mocked for their Judaism in crude, hateful language on popular anonymous social media platforms.”

Following his May “Letter from Oberlin,” Heller again wrote in The New Yorker (Sept. 1): “Students … may try out defensive ethno-racial flag waving, religious and political dogmas, athletic and fraternal self-segregation…. My work elsewhere has made me think that this isn’t just an Oberlin, or liberal, thing.”

Indeed, on Aug. 5, the New York Times printed a front-page article about racial and identity politics at many campuses. This reporting was not about Oberlin, but it named other “small, selective liberal arts colleges” as well as Ivy League universities. An Amherst graduate said, “As an alumnus of the college, I feel that I have been lied to, patronized and basically dismissed as an old, white bigot….”

But perhaps Oberlin still is a cultural leader. In an Aug. 27 article, the Times mentioned Oberlin as a counter example to the University of Chicago, which sent first-year students a letter saying Chicago did not support “trigger warnings” and did not condone “safe spaces” nor disruptions of speakers. (Disclosure: I was a Chicago faculty member from 1968 to 1970.)

In Frank Bruni’s June 23 New York Times essay about Oberlin – as one of the campuses “roiled the most by struggles over political correctness” – he wrote: “Students at Oberlin and their counterparts elsewhere might not behave in such an emboldened fashion if they did not feel so largely in charge. Their readiness to press for rules and rituals to their liking suggests the extent to which they have come to act as customers – the ones who set the terms, the ones who are always right – and the degree to which they are treated that way.”

Bruni built upon a poignant essay about “Customer Mentality,” written in February 2014 for Inside Higher Ed by a Western Carolina University assistant professor of English, Nate Kreuter. When students transformed into customers, Kreuter observed concomitant re-purposing of campus infrastructure, curriculum and faculty.

Bruni provided photographs of water parks with pools and slides on campuses, and described campus entertainment complexes, golf putting greens and other resort-like amenities. He also wrote: “Small wonder that grade inflation is so pronounced and rampant, with A’s easy to come by and anything below a B-minus rare.”

Barry Schwartz, professor of psychology at Swarthmore, told Bruni: “There’s a big difference between teaching students and serving customers.”

Kreuter in 2014 noted that the student-as-customer business model had adverse consequences within and beyond academic programs: “The impulse to protect the brand also frequently compels universities to shirk responsibility when missteps or scandals occur, rather than immediately taking responsibility and corrective action.” He argued that administrators may “protect the brand” in instances of “high-profile college athlete crime” or sexual assaults or injuries from fraternity hazing.

A Times essay (Sept. 4, 2016) by a Yale faculty member, Jim Sleeper, argued that right-wing “wealthy donors” exaggerate negative impacts of political correctness, while they promote more potent poisons. But he also agreed that: “Most university leaders serve … pressures to satisfy student ‘customers’ and to avoid negative publicity, liability and losses in ‘brand’ or ‘market share.’…”

Oberlin College’s publicists like to recall the institution’s abolitionist era rather than its place in the history of the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition. So perhaps it is not surprising that Prof. Joy Karega could post anti-Jewish materials and conspiracy theories for many months, and that Oberlin administrators and trustees reacted only last March, after Karega generated condemnation both online and in worldwide print media – likely to harm Oberlin’s brand.

At the University of Lethbridge, Prof. Anthony Hall’s “globalization studies” promoted “open debate on the Holocaust” and claims that the 2001 destruction of New York’s World Trade Centre was a “Zionist job.” Administrators tolerated Hall for 26 years – suspending him only this month, after news stories about “possible violations of the Alberta Human Rights Act.”

During my one-to-one conversation with Oberlin College president Marvin Krislov in April, he told me that many students gave Karega high ratings. From a marketing perspective, favorable student evaluations may help justify annual tuition above $51,000 – costs above $66,000 including room and board. But if students give high ratings to a predilection for bigotry and conspiracy theories (and lack of scholarly accomplishment) then something has gone wrong with their education.

Bruni’s essay asked, “But what does the customer model [of college students] do to their actual education?” One Oberlin graduate responding to The Atlantic in December 2015 wrote: “There is now an atmosphere of close-mindedness, intellectual submission, conformity and fear.”

College and university emphasis on marketing to customers likely is linked to cost.

Tuition – and every other post-secondary education expense – has increased at a pace beyond general inflation (or household income gains). Consequently, total student debt in the United States now is about $1.2 trillion, according to the August Forbes – exceeding total credit card debt or the total of automobile financing in the entire American population.

This precarious state of affairs may be a response to reported correlation between higher education and greater lifetime earnings or lower unemployment; but correlation does not indicate cause and effect. Bruni refers to “an expectation among many students that their purchase of a college education should be automatically redeemable for a job….” But, as Kreuter wrote, “A post-secondary education is not a guarantee of success. It is not the straightforward purchase of a better future. It never has been.”

At Oberlin, in fact, the student newspaper published an article in March 2014 stating that “40% of [our] 2013 graduates are unemployed, and one-third of graduates are working in positions that do not require a degree.”

Of course, many Oberlin students and graduates have priorities other than high-income jobs; but one unidentified correspondent, writing to The Atlantic in December 2015, stated: “Oberlin students [do] want what other college students are asking for, whether they phrase it this way or not: better control of the college’s money.”

Oberlin, unlike most American campuses, has no fraternities or sororities. Historically, students lived in residences supervised by the administration, which also oversees most meals. So, students see what Oberlin does with funds for their food. But why have many top-tier media published articles discussing campus food complaints at the college?

The emphasis of complaints has not been that the food tastes bad, has dubious nutritional value, etc. Oberlin food complaints instead focus on meals that particular students deem to be culturally inappropriate or disrespectful. Mainstream media regard Oberlin’s food criticisms as curiosities sufficiently ludicrous to entertain a wide range of readers; but these cultural food fights are quite logical outcomes when the student-as-customer model meets racial and identity politics at the topic of food.

Likewise, identity issues can lead students to denounce “cultural appropriation,” not only in meals, but also in other aspects of life – clothing, terminology, music, books, even the curriculum. Novelist Lionel Shriver says that, if she did not reject criticisms of “cultural appropriation” in literature, then “all I could write about would be smart-alecky 59-year-old, five-foot-two-inch white women from North Carolina.”

And, as customers, students can demand not to take certain courses. At Oberlin, one of the “unmalleable” demands in December 2015 was that, in the Oberlin Conservatory, “seeing as how most jazz students are of the Africana community they should not be forced to take courses rooted in whiteness” of classical music.

In the New York Times, Krislov wrote: “American higher education is at a crossroads, as it was in the 1960s when college students were galvanized by the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.”

But I do not accept that anti-Zionist petitions or Africana demands for specific foods and segregated “safe spaces” in Oberlin buildings somehow are comparable to my classmates’ efforts in the 1960s civil rights movement and later protests against U.S. war policy in Vietnam. (On the campus of Kent State, one of Oberlin’s neighbors, U.S. National Guard troops shot and killed unarmed students during anti-war protests in May 1970.)

In spring of 2016, one student on the cusp of graduation said, “I’m going home, back to the ’hood of Chicago, to be exactly who I was before I came to Oberlin.”

Marc Chafetz explained – in the New York Times – why that remark disturbed him: “I graduated 41 years ago…. Oberlin changed me profoundly. I found out how little I actually knew about the world, and it unleashed a hunger to learn that has never dissipated.”

No matter what identities students bring or what paths they follow afterward, higher education should involve them in exploration and intellectual discovery – and civil encounters with one another.

Ned Glick lives in Vancouver. His baccalaureate is from Oberlin College and his PhD is from Stanford. After teaching at the University of Chicago, he had University of British Columbia appointments in mathematics, in statistics and in the faculty of medicine. He retired to emeritus faculty status in 1992.

Talking about Israel as a family

Sixty-eight years ago, when Israel was born and became the state of the Jewish people, a family was created. As with any other family that has a complex history, there is love and arguing, support and fallings out in the Israel mishpacha. To make things trickier, Israel is what we would call a blended family, whose members come from wildly varying geopolitical, socio-cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds.

This variety makes for a richness you would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere – the intensity and vigor of which those visiting or missing Israel so often speak. However, the blended Israeli family is fraught with tensions brought about by both the baggage each member has and the difficult neighborhood in which they live. Because Israel is the only Jewish state in the world – our only “family home” – each discussion about it feels of utmost consequence, even to Israel’s extended family of Diaspora Jews, who feel strongly about their connection to that familial home and the relatives living in it.

Not long ago, the announcement that singer Achinoam Nini (Noa) had been invited to perform at our community’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration on May 11 set in motion a heated debate about where we draw our red lines when it comes to criticizing Israel. The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver made a decision to welcome Noa despite the objections of individuals who disagree with the artist’s political views, and Ezra Shanken, JFGV’s chief executive officer, expressed his hope that our community would continue the Jewish tradition of welcoming diversity of opinion and embracing respectful debate. As we celebrate Israel’s 68th birthday, I think it would be worthwhile to take a look at how our blended family handles conflict and disagreements when they arise from within, and do a little cheshbon nefesh, soul searching, about how we each might be contributing both to the family’s well-being, as well as to internal friction and divisiveness.

With Israel, we so often focus on the external conflicts, sometimes at the expense of looking at what is happening in our own backyard, and this is something we cannot afford to do any longer. For our blended family to thrive and prosper, it is not enough anymore to stand united against enemies. The strength of a tight-knit family depends less on the extent to which its members agree on every issue, and more on how they communicate their disagreements and live with differing points of view under one roof. We all share a moral obligation to set an example for the children and youth in our community, and show them that the Israeli family of which they are a part is strong and confident enough to welcome and even encourage different opinions and points of view.

So, how do we have disagreements and important discussions without engaging in the kind of destructive behavior and accusations that tear at our familial fabric? Is it possible to have difficult conversations from a place of mutual respect, even when we don’t see eye to eye? I speak from experience when I say that, while not easy, it is, in fact, possible. I have friends from across the political, national and religious spectrums, and I cherish the ongoing, sometimes challenging, conversations I have with them about Israel. With those conversations in mind, I would like to offer a few points to consider and some basic strategies I have found helpful when discussing Israel.

We have something important in common. Whenever you engage in a discussion with a fellow member of the tribe who holds different opinions about Israel than you do, remember that you wouldn’t be having that difficult conversation if it weren’t for the fact that you both care enough about Israel to take the time and argue. If you are not sure this is the case, ask the person a simple question: Do you care about Israel? If they answer yes, then, as surprising as it may sound, you have some common ground – a starting point for a respectful exchange of ideas. It is not always comfortable to accept that someone who holds a political view we disagree with comes, as we do, from a place of caring about Israel. But that is a discomfort we should learn to lean into and work with if we want to help foster within our community the democratic value of free speech – the same value that sets Israel apart from other countries in the Middle East.

Respond rather than react. Yes, there is a difference between the two. When we react, we re-act specific lines, roles and dialogues, just as a well-rehearsed actor in a long-running play would do. Unsurprisingly, reaction-based discussions usually feel like rather irritating déjà vus. When we respond, we do so from a sense of responsibility (response-ability): we know that we are not merely actors with memorized lines, and that we have the freedom to improvise, to choose to keep an open mind in those conversations where our default mode is to be judgmental, get defensive or go on the offensive.

Next time someone says something about Israel that makes you want to yell at them, “You have no idea what you’re talking about!” or “How can you say something like that?!” ask instead “Can you tell me more about what you just said?” It won’t feel natural at first because improv moves us out of our comfort zone. Nevertheless, try it. Be curious. We all have a human need to be heard and we all know how unpleasant it feels when our words are ignored or dismissed. Really hearing someone out is a beautiful, positive way to practise what Rabbi Hillel believed to be the essence of the Torah: what is hateful to you, do not do unto your neighbor.

Respect the importance of our personal histories. So much of who we are, what and how we think and how we feel about any given issue is a result of our personal history. When and where we were born and raised, our family’s past, our religious background, the influential people and key experiences in our lives – all of these and more also contribute to how we relate to Israel. If we understand that each one of us has such a personal history that affects our worldviews and that these histories differ from person to person, we move a step closer to accepting that it is inevitable for a variety of opinions about Israel to exist within our community. Once we accept this truth, we can choose to find it in ourselves to treat with respect even those with whose opinions we disagree.

In Hebrew, the words kavod (respect), kibud (honoring/acknowledging) and koved (weight/difficulty) all stem from the same root. Truly respecting “the other” and acknowledging from where they come and their right to hold different opinions to ours can, indeed, feel difficult and burdensome at times. Yet, if we want to help create a strong community that honors the histories and diversity of all its members, we should view this effort to respect the other as a blessed weight that we choose to carry, like that of an unborn child.

If you are a regular reader of the Jewish Independent, it is safe to assume that you, too, care about Israel. As we celebrate Israel’s birthday this year, I invite you to envision the kind of legacy or family heirloom we want to leave for the next generations in our community. In my mind, I see a vibrant, warm, colorful, imperfect and unique patchwork quilt to which each of us can add a symbolic piece of ourselves as the dialogue about our beloved Israel continues to unfold. What is your vision? And what are you willing to do to make it a reality?

Pirkei Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers) teaches us that “it is not upon us to complete the work, but that neither are we free to desist from it.” Our work as fellow members of the extended and blended Israeli family is to do tikkun olam (repair of the world). And tikkun olam begins with us, at home and in our community. So, in our conversations about Israel, let us all commit to being a bit more curious and a little less judgmental. Let’s treat one another with kavod and remember that the strength of our family is directly proportionate to our ability to be kind to one another.

Yael Heffer is an educator who has been working with children and families in the Vancouver Jewish community for close to 10 years. She is currently completing her master’s in child and youth care, is involved in social emotional learning research and is training as a clinical counselor. She grew up in South America, Germany and Israel and is a strong advocate of nonviolent communication.

Is it time to end IJV herem?

When Vancouver-based songwriter and musician Daniel Maté wrote on his public Facebook page that he had declined an invitation from Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver to accompany some singers on Yom Hazikaron, since he “couldn’t in conscience do that as long as we don’t honor the far more numerous victims of the terror ‘our’ side inflicts,” he received an invitation from an Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) member to get involved in their group.

Sarah Levine was that IJV member. “It’s important to me to stand with other Jews who are working for Palestinian human rights,” she told me. “I think we have a particular role as Jews to think critically about Zionism, since the state of Israel often claims that it does things ‘in our name’ and with our support.”

Along the political spectrum of Jewish groups in Canada devoted to matters pertaining to Israel and Palestine, IJV – which bills itself as a human rights organization – tries to carve out a space rejecting traditional Zionist principles. In an organized Jewish community where conservative positions on Israel prevail, this doesn’t make it many friends.

Writing in the Huffington Post, IJV campaigns coordinator Tyler Levitan cites the silent treatment he regularly receives from an array of Jewish institutions when he seeks to publicly debate issues including Jewish National Fund discriminatory land-lease policies and the boycott, divestment and sanction movement. IJV considers BDS “a last resort,” as the group’s website says, and, while most observers would characterize IJV as anti-Zionist, it says that it “does not define itself in terms of Zionism.”

I spoke with Levitan. “Eroding that support base [for political Zionism] would be weakening the glue that binds the community,” he said. “That’s the fear. But we at IJV feel that having difficult and honest conversations is what makes the community stronger.”

For several years, I’ve watched IJV operate from close quarters. As a self-defined progressive Zionist, I have not signed onto IJV’s platform. But, as someone who values serious debate within the Jewish community, I have twice participated in an IJV-hosted forum. Mostly, I find it a sign of community weakness that most of the engines of the Jewish community attempt to shut IJV out of the conversation entirely.

Some Jewish papers (namely this one and the Jewish Post & News in Winnipeg) are open to including IJV perspectives, but the Canadian Jewish News and the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin keep a wide berth around IJV. Yoni Goldstein, CJN’s editor, will not grant IJV editorial space. As Goldstein put it, “… even though we promote inclusion as a virtue, there are limits to how inclusive we’re willing to be. Abetting BDS and rejecting Israel’s future as a Jewish state crosses the line.” Goldstein added: “Independence has its benefits, but the comfort of community is not usually one of them.”

With the exception of the Peretz Centre in Vancouver and the Winchevsky Centre in Toronto, no Jewish community locale will host IJV events – or even rent space to them, according to Levitan. But they’re not giving up on trying to be heard within Jewish community walls. “We’re persistent,” he said.

To reject Zionism indeed does place IJV outside of the mainstream community tent. It is this way, but should it be?

Like all political “isms,” Zionism’s meaning comes from the effects of the policies with which it is associated. While the debate between statist Zionism and those who foresaw other possible arrangements for Jewish liberation in the early 20th century was robust and active, non-Zionist voices receded as Jewish statehood emerged. But now, almost seven decades later, Israel is in crisis. It may be time to ask whether Jewish privilege should be rolled back in favor of some more inclusive and democratic arrangement. A frightened community, however, may view this very question as akin to treason.

IJV’s adherence to the Palestinian right of return is the biggest stumbling block for those who support Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. But even here, consider the wording on IJV’s website: “Peace will only be possible when Israel acknowledges the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and negotiates a just and mutually agreed solution based on principles established in international law, including return, compensation and/or resettlement.”

Any solution – even a two-state one – will likely involve some return, some compensation and some resettlement. While IJV does speak in terms of “rights,” in practice we might see their call as somewhat more pragmatic than many assume.

The thing is, even reasoning out these complicated dilemmas as I’m trying to do here is well-nigh impossible as long as groups like IJV remain excluded by the sort of herem (excommunication) with which they’ve been saddled. One thing on which Levitan and mainstream Jewish community leaders seem to agree is that there’s a lot of fear. And, sadly, we know all too well the kinds of politics to which fear can give rise.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She is a columnist for Canadian Jewish News and contributes to Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward, among other publications.

In the UN, on campus

Canada’s foreign minister has called on the United Nations Human Rights Council to review the appointment of Canadian law professor Michael Lynk as its special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine.

Last week, Stéphane Dion tweeted (because that is how diplomacy happens these days): “We call on @UN_HRC President to review this appointment & ensure Special Rapporteur has track record that can advance peace in region #HRC.”

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs has denounced the appointment of the University of Western Ontario academic, who has been associated with anti-Israel activities in Canada. Lynk has said that Israel should be prosecuted for “war crimes,” he accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” has spoken at conferences that reject a two-state solution and serves as a leader in a group that promotes Israel Apartheid Week.

While Dion questioned the wisdom of appointing Lynk, CIJA went further, arguing that the position itself is illegitimate.

“It is ludicrous that this is the UN’s only special rapporteur focused on the human rights of a particular community,” said Shimon Koffler Fogel, CIJA’s chief executive officer. “It is likewise shameful that the special rapporteur refuses to investigate the abuse of Palestinian rights by the Palestinian leadership, particularly Hamas in Gaza. In so doing, the special rapporteur obscures genuine human rights violations in the Middle East and the underlying obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

A related conflict blew up in academia last week. Just as the appointment of an avowed anti-Zionist as UN rapporteur surely will not advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the complete disavowal of the existence of antisemitism on campuses will not promote intellectual discourse or peace.

In the wake of ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to boycott Israeli academics and force universities to divest from Israeli holdings, while occasionally nastily intimidating Jewish students on campuses across North America, the University of California board of regents recently passed a statement condemning antisemitism, along with 10 principles against intolerance as a whole. It is the result of several months’ research and consultation.

The statement that introduces the principles is an amended version of an earlier expression that would have condemned anti-Zionism. Instead, it condemns “antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism.” If the only state in the world targeted for elimination is the only Jewish one, it should be an uphill battle to continue the charade that anti-Zionism is not equivalent to antisemitism, or at least driven by it to a large degree. Nevertheless, the regents’ statement is a starting point for increased civility on campuses that have seen, they note, “an increase in incidents reflecting antisemitism…. These reported incidents included vandalism targeting property associated with Jewish people or Judaism; challenges to the candidacies of Jewish students seeking to assume representative positions within student government; political, intellectual and social dialogue that is antisemitic; and social exclusion and stereotyping.”

Some critics say the statement is designed to stifle opposition to Israeli policies. Others say it could harm free speech. Yet others say it didn’t go far enough, in that it didn’t condemn bigotry against other specific groups.

None of these objections holds water. While the working group’s report might have been initiated by concerns over antisemitism, the document speaks to many other forms of intolerance: “University policy prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender expression, gender identity, pregnancy, physical or mental disability, medical condition (cancer-related or genetic characteristics), genetic information (including family medical history), ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, or the intersection of any of these factors.”

As for free speech, including, presumably, that about Israel, the document stresses the importance of freedom of expression and of inquiry: “The university will vigorously defend the principles of the First Amendment and academic freedom against any efforts to subvert or abridge them.” And, it notes: “Each member of the university community is entitled to speak, to be heard and to be engaged based on the merits of their views, and unburdened by historical biases, stereotypes and prejudices.”

But: “Regardless of whether one has a legal right to speak in a manner that reflects bias, stereotypes, prejudice and intolerance, each member of the university community is expected to consider his or her responsibilities as well as his or her rights … mutual respect and civility within debate and dialogue advance the mission of the university, advance each of us as learners and teachers, and advance a democratic society.”

The UN – and many others – could learn a thing or two from UC’s regents.

Antisemitism’s blurry lines

Avi Benlolo, president of the Canadian Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre for Holocaust Studies, was recently quoted in the National Post saying that Jewish university-bound applicants should consider options other than Toronto’s York University. The reason? A faculty association executive proposal to divest from weapons manufacturers. The proposal didn’t mention Israel by name.

According to Benlolo, this is a “campaign of censorship against Israel and the Jewish people.” The organization also issued a statement declaring that, in the wake of the proposal, it was “concerned for the safety and security of [York’s] Jewish students and faculty.”

I recently combed through the 2015 report of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on antisemitism on American campuses, headlined: “A Clear and Present Danger.” Over the 26-page document, I discovered a few antisemitic incidents over the eight preceding years. (I selected an eight-year period to represent two generations of students at a four-year university or college.)

As the report detailed, at Harvard in 2013, to raise awareness of Palestinian home demolitions, activists slipped mock eviction notices into dorm rooms. There was no evidence to suggest whether Jewish students were targeted. And, in 2014-2015 at University of California-L.A., Rachel Beyda, a Jewish student, was barred admission to a judicial position by the student council following accusations that her Jewish heritage made her biased. After an uproar, the administration pressured the council to reverse itself. A similar dynamic played out at Stanford in 2014, when Molly Horwitz was asked, “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?”

The report also noted a “decade” of “increasing hostility” at the University of California-Berkeley in 2015, “including “vandalizing Jewish property, spitting at Jewish students, threatening violence, and physically assaulting Jewish supporters of Israel.”

Incidents like these should be called out strongly. But every other event chronicled since 2007 in the Simon Wiesenthal Centre report described political activity directed against Israel or its policies – not instances of antisemitism.

The latest mudslinging debate in the antisemitism wars is more nuanced. It concerns a talk by gender studies scholar Jasbir Puar at Vassar College, an event that authors of a Wall Street Journal op-ed described as antisemitic and a blood libel.

In the talk (of which I received a transcript), Puar made two particularly jarring claims. About the bodies of 17 Palestinian youth that Israel kept for two months at the end of 2015, Puar said, “Some speculate that the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.” (These youth, it is important to note, had been attacking Israelis. Puar described these Palestinian youth as having been involved in “stabbing” and as part of a “peoples’ rumble” but called their deaths “field assassinations.”)

Puar also suggested that Israel engages in “weaponized epigenetics, where the outcome is not so much about winning or losing nor a solution, but about needing body parts, not even whole bodies, for research and experimentation.”

Puar did not respond to my requests for comment or clarification regarding her accusations.

While academic freedom is a principle meant to protect scholarly speech from legal censure, there is an equally important norm requiring a scholar to provide evidence when making empirical claims. On this, Puar failed.

But is Puar’s scholarly breach antisemitic?

Joshua Schreier, an associate professor of history at Vassar and part of the steering committee of the Jewish studies program that was one of the co-sponsors of the talk, doesn’t think so. He attended the event. “It’s really important,” he told me, “to protect free speech and protect academic speech,” adding that “we have a responsibility, as academics, when we talk about speculation, to note … whether it’s substantiated, whether we’re trying to give new life to those rumors, or not, but none of that makes it antisemitic.”

Unfortunately, the unsubstantiated charge of using “body parts for experimentation” cuts close to the bone of blood libel myths. It is also uttered in the context of a cultural moment on campuses when most criticism of Israel is inappropriately being cast as antisemitic. This surely means that there will be fallout from the talk that will serve to distract debaters from the pressing issues around the ills of occupation. It also means that amid the hyperbolic rhetoric about antisemitism on campuses, actual antisemitism is becoming more difficult to spot when it does occur.

Meanwhile, hundreds of faculty members from across the United States have issued a statement to Vassar’s president asking her to “write a letter to the Wall Street Journal … condemning in no uncertain terms the unjustifiable attack on Vassar and on Professor Puar.”

For its part, the Anti-Defamation League had nothing more damning to say about Puar’s appearance at Vassar than that she has sometimes accused Israel of pinkwashing.

Ian S. Lustick, a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania, told me by email that he signed the statement “to show solidarity against the campaign to restrict the space of politically correct discussion on anything pertaining to Israel and Palestinians.” About the claim of organ harvesting, Lustick said that “the speculations about horrific

Israeli behavior with respect to organ harvesting from Palestinian bodies are as unlikely to be true as they are likely to be circulated as long as Israel refuses to quickly return bodies of dead Palestinians to their families.”

Debate over campus discourse on Israel (and even on things like armaments, weirdly perceived by some to represent Israel) will continue. Vassar’s president, for her part, invited parents and alumni to an online forum to discuss “current issues and tensions within our community related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

As for whether actions on campuses over the last decade constitute antisemitism, the ledger is mixed. Verbal or physical harassment directed at Jews for reasons related to their ethnic or religious identity is antisemitism. Same with leveling dual loyalty charges against Jewish students.

But consideration of divestment from weapons companies is not antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitism. Criticism of the occupation is not antisemitism. Criticism of violence – whether it is state-sponsored violence or violence carried out by individuals or groups – is not antisemitism.

Presenting unsubstantiated claims against agents of a state in a public lecture is irresponsible. And, if the symbolism chosen for these non-evidenced charges quacks like an infamous antisemitic myth, it will, not surprisingly, be heard by many as redolent of that scourge. But that does not necessarily make it, in and of itself, antisemitism.

BDS condemned

The House of Commons this month voted overwhelmingly to condemn BDS, the movement that aims to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

The motion, put forward by Conservative members of Parliament Tony Clement and Michelle Rempel, reads fairly simply: “That, given Canada and Israel share a long history of friendship as well as economic and diplomatic relations, the House reject the BDS movement, which promotes the demonization and delegitimization of the state of Israel, and call upon the government to condemn any and all attempts by Canadian organizations, groups or individuals to promote the BDS movement, both here at home and abroad.”

The Liberal government backed the motion while the New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois opposed it, leading to a lopsided 229-51 victory.

A handful of Liberal MPs abstained and two voted against, but the vast majority of government members backed the Conservative motion. Two NDP MPs abstained from their party’s otherwise monolithic opposition to the motion. Both are Vancouver-area MPs – Vancouver Kingsway’s Don Davies and Port Moody-Coquitlam’s Fin Donnelly.

Supporters of the motion expressed views that have been prominent in these pages in recent weeks: that BDS unfairly targets one side in a conflict, that it is counterproductive and possibly based on bigotry. Opponents of the motion took a more novel approach.

NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said, “This goes against the freedom of expression we hold so dear in our society … to call upon the government to condemn someone for having that opinion, that’s unheard of.” He said the motion “makes it a thought crime to express an opinion” and contended that it is fair to disagree with BDS and still debate its arguments.

We like to think that you would be hard-pressed to find a more thoroughgoing defence of free expression than has appeared in this space over the past 20 years, and even longer. We have routinely taken a stand for open expression when some readers and community leaders urged variations on censorship. Yet the NDP leader’s defence of free expression is confused at best.

The motion does not make it illegal to support BDS. If it did, we would be out with our figurative pitchforks and torches opposing it. What the motion does is condemn a despicable idea. And here is where so many people who claim to support free expression in principle actually screw it up in the execution.

Mulcair argued that we should be able to debate BDS. That is precisely what Parliament did through this motion. He argued that his party does not support BDS, merely free speech. Leaving aside that several unions that support the NDP also support BDS, and that the NDP is the natural home in Canadian politics for anyone else who believes in BDS, his circumlocution on our sacred freedoms provides a tidy cover for avoiding the real issue that could paint his party into a corner: some – a few? a lot? a majority? – of his party members and MPs do, in fact, support the BDS movement. So, to avoid condemning BDS and perhaps alienating party members and supporters, he cloaked himself in a non sequitur of free expression, debasing the very value he claimed to be defending.

Too often, when unpopular views are expressed, those who might be counted upon to contest them abdicate that responsibility, defaulting to the argument that bad ideas are protected by our values of free expression. Indeed, they are. But so, too, are good ideas!

Supporters of BDS absolutely have a right to express their views. And, although it seems difficult for Mulcair to comprehend, so do its opponents. Every Canadian has a right to express their opinion within limitations around which our society has largely developed a consensus. Elected officials not only have a right, but an obligation to do so. A parliamentary motion condemning a terrible idea does not detract from anyone’s right to express and support that bad idea. In fact, it is the embodiment of free speech in action.

Mein Kampf and free speech

Adolf Hitler’s manifesto of hatred against Jews, Mein Kampf, went on sale last week in Germany for the first time since 1945. The annotated edition proved a bestseller, we hope because people intend to take a critical look at the ideas that drove their country to apparent mass insanity.

The reissue has been controversial, not surprisingly, but, as a practical matter, banning material these days is impossible. Mein Kampf is available to anyone with an internet connection, so the act of banning it in recent years has been a statement of principle rather than an effective means of keeping it from interested eyes.

Nevertheless, the book is an historical document that should not be hidden away. The ideas it contains were the seeds of one of humankind’s greatest atrocities. This suggests it has a power that those who would ban it justifiably fear. Yet, again, since banning it is not feasible, better that the opportunity be welcomed to analyze it and try to understand, confront and negate the ideology it represents, which is clearly the intent of producing a heavily annotated edition.

In fact, news of the book’s reissue has already sparked some welcome, thoughtful reflections on the nature of antisemitism, ideological hatred and also the matter of free expression itself. One lesson is that words matter. They have power. This is certainly the undergirding reason the book has been banned in Germany for 70 years.

It may seem a conflicted philosophical principle we have taken on this page for many years to stand firmly in the court of free expression – the right of people to express themselves free of undue constraints by governments, mobs or the threat of violence – while contending at the same time that people should police their own self-expression. It is not conflicted; in fact, it is a primary tenet of democratic, pluralist societies. It is the axiomatic idea that with freedom comes responsibility.

The proof that words matter is evident every time a Jewish person is stabbed in Israel. Palestinian society is being saturated by calls to kill Jews, including publications that demonstrate the most effective means of stabbing a Jew. Of course, Palestine is not a democratic, pluralist society where freedom and responsibility are sides of a coin, so this may be one of the reasons Western voices have for decades given a pass to rampant incitement.

But, tragically, we see it far closer to home. Some of the language around the arrival of Syrian and Iraqi refugees to Canada has gone beyond the realm of what most Canadians probably like to imagine is our tolerant, liberal approach to “others.” At a welcoming event for Syrian refugees in Vancouver last week, an individual pepper-sprayed people milling about outside the venue. It seems an act of such deliberate cruelty to undermine the confidence and well-being of people seeking a better life. It is impossible to know the precise factors that motivated this attack, but we can be fairly certain that some of the language used recently about refugees and Muslims did little to dissuade a person inclined to violence that such behavior was unacceptable. Donald Trump, according to opinion polls one of the people most likely to be the next U.S. president, has made obscene, inexcusable statements about refugees and Muslims. Such words do not fall on deaf ears.

We are at a time in human history where the very nature of words seems to be changing. Everyone can send their opinions out into the world in ways never imaginable even two decades ago. At the same time, long-form reading seems to be declining precipitously and we, in Western societies at least, may be forming our opinions more on bite-sized slogans than on deep consideration.

It’s hard to pinpoint what it means that the erstwhile banned rantings of Mein Kampf flew off German bookshelves. Hopefully it means people aim to use this annotated version to critically assess their country’s history.

Limits to free speech

Last week, a Quesnel man was found guilty of criminal hate speech for anti-Jewish postings to his website.

Arthur Topham’s RadicalPress website is packed with the kind of “commentary” you have to read to disbelieve. Many of us imagine we know the sorts of slanders being purveyed in the dusty corners of the internet. You can’t imagine.

In addition to his own material, Topham has made it his side-business to repatriate from the crevices of discarded ideas and republish some of history’s forgotten anti-Jewish hate literature.

Topham was found guilty by a jury under Section 319 (2) of the Criminal Code, which pertains to “Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group.…” He will be sentenced next year.

The law does not go so far as to demand proof of incitement to injure or kill. Yet, among other gems, Topham’s postings call for “the extermination of Israel and all Jews.” In his defence, Topham’s lawyer insisted his client does not actually hate individual Jews. Indeed, he told court, Topham’s wife is Jewish.

Canada’s hate laws are controversial. Where to draw the line between fair comment in a free society and that which is to be criminalized is a very difficult balance. Generally, it is best to confront hateful ideas in the marketplace of ideas and to give them enough air that we can know they exist, and not drive them underground where they can corrode into even worse words and deeds.

This case was addressed under criminal law and not by the quasi-judicial human right apparatus, which is a far more dubious medium. Limitations on free expression should be limited to the most extreme and egregious offences. Indeed, this is the first criminal conviction for hate speech in British Columbia since 2006, so it is a rebuke that is reserved for the most heinous offences.

A democratic society expresses its values in its laws. Incidents like this, which meet the standard of intolerable expressions of hate, are a message from and to our society about what is fair comment and what is not.

On the whole, however, we prefer that our society express its commitment to equal treatment and cross-cultural respect in the context of our civil discourse – in our education system, in the free exploration of contentious issues, in the vocal condemnation by the many of any egregious offences by the hateful few. And that is what we do. In the most extreme instances, our society has agreed to a legal proscription.

Topham’s case will send a message, although it is already being rejected by his advocates as the demolition of free speech in Canada and as the manifestation of Jewish power.

As a society, we should accept the court’s verdict, but also rededicate ourselves to the promotion of intercultural respect. Comments under the story in the local Quesnel newspaper, almost unanimously of the “Jews control the world” variety, suggest we still have a long way to go.

Remain open to discussion

As hot as things have become in Israel and the West Bank over the last many weeks with escalating violence, here in North America a chill is palpable. It comes in the form of silencing within and across communities – in private homes, on university campuses and in community institutions. It’s coming from both sides: those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian” and those who call themselves “pro-Israel.” While the Palestinian solidarity side uses boycott and silencing, the Jewish community has its own internal conversation watchdogs.

Recently, a speaker at the University of Minnesota was shouted down, his talk delayed by 30 minutes. The invited scholar was Moshe Halbertal, a philosopher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a professor of law at New York University. It was a scholarly talk: the Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, sponsored by the university’s law school. Halbertal is also a noted military ethicist who helped draft a code of ethics for the Israel Defence Forces. The Minnesota Anti-War Committee took credit for the stunt; Students for Justice in Palestine endorsed it.

If you’re concerned by the extent to which civilians have born the brunt of violence and destruction in the Israeli-Palestinian context, Habertal is someone you’d want to speak with, especially in an academic context, where the point is the free exchange of ideas. But it’s hard to pose tough questions if you’re trying to silence the person.

This blocking of Halbertal’s speech is a trend that gets its fire from the academic and cultural boycott of Israel organized by the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, along with the more general push against what many Palestine solidarity activists call “normalization,” meaning ordinary engagement with Jews and Israelis and their ideas. Activists argue that the target is institutions, not individuals. But the effects on individuals and open speech, as they were at the University of Minnesota, are clear.

Continuing in this vein, producers of Dégradé, a film about Gaza told from the perspective of clients at a hair salon, pulled it from the Other Israel Film Festival sponsored by the JCC Manhattan because it’s a “Jewish” festival. While it seems that the producers’ decision was their own, it suggests a dangerous precedent: fortifying the silos between acceptable audiences and unacceptable ones in the world of art, ideas and culture.

Meanwhile, while the Jewish community doesn’t talk in terms of boycott and anti-normalization, it has its own troubling rules of engagement.

There are the narrow speaker guidelines for those with whom campus Jewish groups allow their members to publicly engage in dialogue. The guidelines for Hillel International, the world’s largest Jewish student organization, exclude anyone who “delegitimize[s], demonize[s] or appl[ies] a double standard to Israel, or supports the boycott, divestment and sanction movement.” While it’s natural that Israel supporters would bristle at those things, the rules effectively preclude Hillel students from inviting for debate and dialogue any Palestinian solidarity activists, almost all of whom, unfortunately, have jumped on the BDS bandwagon.

When my seven-year-long columnist post was cut from my local Jewish community paper last summer, I was told that it was to “make room for new voices.” Since then, it’s become clear that the publisher wanted only one angle on Israel. The columnist who focuses almost exclusively on the failings of Israel’s adversaries remained in place, while my replacement is steering clear of Israel altogether.

And then there are the corners of quiet shunning. I recently organized a Jewish community youth project involving rotating hosts. One of the participants pulled out, citing the fact that her husband “didn’t want me in his home.” He was appalled by my last Globe and Mail piece. When it comes to “support for Israel,” they said, “there is only one side.”

But some – young Jews in particular – are pushing back against this narrowing of discourse. First there was Open Hillel, a grassroots organization devoted to opposing the speaker guidelines mentioned above. (Disclosure: I am on the group’s academic advisory council.) And now there’s the Jewish People’s Assembly, which has launched in Washington. The group is demanding that Jewish federations – the main funding body of local Jewish communities – “not condition support for Jewish institutions and organizations on these institutions’ adherence to red lines around Israel.”

One might fantasize about casting all the silencers into a room where they can sit in silence with each other to their heart’s content. Meanwhile, the rest of us can continue to try to talk, to write and to publicly grapple with the dilemmas of the day, trying to search for bits of common ground wherever they might be.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published by the Globe and Mail.

Open Hillel raises questions

On the issue of Jewish belonging, I have always pushed for as wide a tent as is necessary to accommodate the range of Jewish experience. Inclusion, rather than ideational boundaries, has been my watchword.

But now, since the Open Hillel conference held at Harvard in October – which billed itself as helping create a “Jewish community that all Jews can feel included in, not just those who pass a political litmus test” – I’ve been feeling a little bit more prescriptive around what values should matter, especially around the centrality of Israel to Jewish life.

On one hand, I’m instinctively positively predisposed to a movement like Open Hillel. Previous reports of a Hillel student board member stating he was forced to step down because he sought to host a Palestinian solidarity activist speaker following the screening of a Palestinian documentary give me chills. And I find Hillel’s guidelines about rejecting speakers who hold Israel to a “double standard” frustratingly enigmatic. There is good conceptual reason to hold Israel, a democracy, to a different standard than Syria, for example. And there is an understandable reason to “single out” Israel when we, as Diaspora Jews, devote more emotional, financial and political resources to the Jewish state than to almost any other.

But, now, my doubts. First was LGBTQ and Palestine solidarity activist Sarah Schulman’s Facebook remarks about the conference. In her post, she railed against the “bullshit of LGBT Birthright,” accusing it of being a forum for “pinkwashing.” I’m partly sympathetic to the pinkwashing charge, awareness of which Schulman herself helped propel in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. There is much to be criticized in Israel’s hasbarah efforts, especially in light of the government’s apathy towards the morally corrosive occupation. But there is a gap: Where is the desired opportunity among Open Hillel activists and participants like Schulman to encourage a deep and textured cultural and political engagement with Israel? Birthright may not be the answer. But what is?

Echoing my thoughts were Steven M. Cohen’s reflections, also posted publicly on Facebook. There, Cohen praised the Open Hillel conference for opening up a much-needed debate on Israeli policies, including criticism of the occupation, but he lamented the apparent “abjuring of the primacy of Jewish or Israel attachment” among participants.

And then came an essay by Holly Bicerano in the Times of Israel, where she criticizes Hillel International’s “Vision for Israel,” which states that “Hillel desires that students are able to articulate why Israel plays an important role in their personal Jewish identities and how Israel continues to influence Jewish conversations, global Jewish peoplehood and the world.”

Bicerano is concerned that, “This particular vision is predicated on the supposition that having a Jewish state must be an integral part of every deserving Jew’s identity.”

My personal, liberal variant of Zionism abhors the occupation, desires to redress political inequalities among the state’s ethnic groups, and opposes the general trend towards illiberal legislation in the Knesset. But, at the very least, I see an important role for Israel’s existence in the life of the Jewish people. While theological commitments are subject to the debates of rationalists, Israel helps secure a sense of peoplehood. Where Jews now speak the languages of their host societies, Israel’s Hebrew revival reminds us of our shared heritage. Where Diaspora Jews must negotiate a minority identity within a majority culture, Israel enables a sense of collective Jewish autonomy.

It follows that were I to find myself in the position of coordinating a campus-based, non-denominational Jewish organization such as Hillel, I would surely encourage students’ right to wrestle with, criticize and protest the policies of Israel. But I would rue the day that the notion of Israel as a component of collective Jewish identity was simply left at the curb.

So, I support the diversity of political views around Israel that were given an airing at the Open Zion conference and I welcome a much-needed, on-the-record conversation about the indignities of the occupation. But if, like Cohen, I am troubled that some of the Open Hillel proponents reject the relevance of sensitive and textured Jewish cultural and political engagement with Israel writ large, what am I to conclude about the fledgling movement?

What I conclude is that we must encourage more Open Hillel gatherings to be held. We must convene discussion not only among the converted. In the marketplace of ideas and attachments, we must realize that the most compelling identity markers will win. Therefore, we must seek to understand how, if Israel is so central to the Jewish identity of so many, it is precisely not this way to so many others. And, if it happens to be decades of Israeli settlements and occupation that have helped push younger Jews away, we must double down – as if we needed a further reason – to do something about those policies too.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com.