Opinion: To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech

[mahatmakanejeeves]

A law professor calls for restrictions on speech. We might as well call off the election; Trump has already won.

This is her opinion, not mine.

Opinion | To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech

By Claire O. Finkelstein
December 10, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST

Claire O. Finkelstein is Algernon Biddle professor of law and professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the school’s Open Expression Committee and chair of the law school’s committee on academic freedom. The views expressed here are the author’s own.

The testimony of three university presidents before a House committee last week provoked outrage after they suggested that calls on their campuses for Jewish genocide might not have violated their schools’ free speech policies. One of them, Liz Magill, was forced to step down on Saturday as president of the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a faculty member.

But their statements shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Congress could have assembled two dozen university presidents and likely would have received the same answer from each of them. ... This is because the value of free speech has been elevated to a near-sacred level on university campuses. As a result, universities have had to tolerate hate speech — even hate speech calling for violence against ethnic or religious minorities. With the dramatic rise in antisemitism, we are discovering that this is a mistake: Antisemitism — and other forms of hate — cannot be fought on university campuses without restricting poisonous speech that targets Jews and other minorities.

University presidents are resisting this conclusion. Rather than confront the conflict between the commitment to free speech and the commitment to eliminating the hostile environment facing Jewish students on campus, many simply affirm their commitment to both or buy time by setting up task forces to study the problem. Some have attempted to split the difference by saying they are institutionally committed to free speech but personally offended by antisemitism. Others have said the answer to hate speech is education and more speech.

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