Without Apology—Academic Freedom and Campus Speech Rights for Anti-Zionist Students and Faculty

Professional-Palestinian protest, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace, at New York’s Grand Central Station on October 27, 2023. Photograph by Zachary Schulman.

BY DANIEL SEGAL

The assault on educational freedom and campus-speech rights for pro-Palestinian college students and college has been so quick and livid within the wake of October 7 that one hardly is aware of the place to start. Certainly, even to write down that easy—even apparent—sentence feels dangerous: a voice in my head asks, Can I write that with out first assuring readers that I don’t now assist, nor have I ever supported, Hamas?

And provided that there isn’t any apparent start line amid this new scare, I’ll start by leaping into the deep finish: by defending educational freedom protections and speech rights for anti-Zionist college and college students. The oft-repeated cost in opposition to us—I’m anti-Zionist—is that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, a declare that makes anti-Zionist speech hate speech and thus speech that exams the bounds of protected speech.

An necessary instance of this view in current weeks comes from the well-known champion of First Modification protections, Erwin Chemerinsky, at the moment the dean of the UC Berkeley College of Legislation. In an October 24 Los Angeles Instances opinion piece, “Nothing Has Ready Me for the Antisemitism I See on Faculty Campuses Now,” Chemerinsky states that whereas “criticism of the Israeli authorities is just not antisemitism,” anti-Zionism is “blatant antisemitism.” Put in any other case, for Chemerinsky, assaults on Zionism and on the legitimacy of Israel’s existence as a Zionist state are the equal of such self-evidently repugnant speech acts because the chants of “Jews is not going to substitute us” heard in Charlottesville in 2019.

Importantly, Chemerinsky sticks to his longstanding dedication to First Modification rights. Referring to anti-Zionist college students on his and different campuses, he writes: “College students have the precise to say very offensive and even hateful issues.” But at the same time as Chemerinsky affords this safety to anti-Zionist college students, we should acknowledge that his fervent declare that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is an occasion of counter-speech that chills anti-Zionist speech—which might be deserved if it had been certainly antisemitic speech.

Given this, we should transcend content-neutral arguments for speech protections and grapple with this vexed query: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? Right here you will need to outline our phrases.

Zionism names the challenge of making a sovereign state for Jews, and never for Jews amongst others, however a sovereign state particularly for Jews. To be clear what this logically implies: Zionism seeks to create a sovereign state that privileges Jews and discriminates in opposition to non-Jews. By this definition, Israel is definitely a Zionist state.

Contemplate that regardless that roughly two of the seven million Palestinians who dwell below Israeli rule have the authorized standing of Israeli residents (the 2 million who dwell contained in the 1948 borders), Israel’s fundamental nationality legislation declares that Israel is just not a state for all its residents however a state for the Jewish individuals in all places, even Jews who’re noncitizens. In step with this, Israel’s Palestinian residents are unambiguously second-class residents, as was the case for non-white US residents below Jim Crow. As well as, the roughly 5 million noncitizen Palestinians who dwell below Israeli rule (in Gaza, the West Financial institution, and East Jerusalem) are denied even essentially the most fundamental human rights.

In its earliest moments, within the late 1800s, Zionism thought of a number of geographic websites for the longer term Zionist state that it aimed to determine. However on the First Zionist Congress of 1897 in Switzerland, with no Palestinians current, Palestine was chosen as the positioning for the Zionist state that the motion sought to create. Since then, Zionism has been a challenge of building its state on the expense of Palestinians, participating in settler colonialism, ethnic cleaning, and apartheid (see Stated’s 1979 essay, “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims”).

Given that truly current Zionism has been and is a challenge of building a Zionist state on the expense of Palestinians, it thus makes as a lot sense for Palestinians to be anti-Zionists because it does for Jews to oppose antisemitism. So, too, we additionally count on and perceive that Black Individuals and Latinx Individuals abhor white racism. There may be, then, merely no sound foundation for claiming and even suspecting that the Palestinian rejection of Zionism is antisemitic. Certainly, to carry to this view is a travesty of parsimony and an expression of bigotry. And its objective is simple to discern.

Antisemitism is an occasion of hate. The conceptually flawed declare that anti-Zionism is antisemitism thus tells us that being anti-Zionist is hateful—which is to insist, in impact, that the pursuit of freedom and equality by Palestinians is itself one thing hateful. Think about a historical past by which white individuals represented the African American pursuit of emancipation as hateful; as ingratitude to white Christian “benefactors” who had unburdened them of “savagery” and “heathenism”; or as a menace to the very existence of white individuals. Besides we wouldn’t have to think about any of this; it’s historical past. Put merely, the false declare that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is a weaponization of antisemitism, not a wrestle in opposition to it. That declare would possibly depart some house for Palestinians to pursue some amelioration of the worst of their oppression (Chemerinsky’s allowable criticisms of the Israeli authorities and its “insurance policies”), however its objective is nothing lower than to close down Palestinian efforts to pursue full liberation from Israeli state oppression.

Lastly, Jews are a individuals and Judaism is a faith. Israel, nonetheless, is a state—the state that’s the challenge of Zionism. However a state is neither a faith nor a individuals. To be in opposition to a state is to not be in opposition to a faith or a individuals. States are, amongst many issues, dense clots of energy, particularly concentrated somewhat than dispersed energy. All states needs to be criticized after they oppress individuals; and all states needs to be deemed illegitimate and made to vary if they’re ethno-supremacist. If this requires the top of the Israeli state in its present Zionist type, this isn’t an assault on Jews or Judaism; neither is it a name to expel Jewish Israelis from the land that’s at the moment Palestine and Israel. It’s a principled demand for equality and freedom for all—Palestinians, and Israelis alike—residing within the land from the river to the ocean (see Yousef Munayyer, “What Does ‘From the River to the Sea’ Actually Imply?)

Anti-Zionism is concerning the state and the oppression: it’s not concerning the Jews.

A counterargument that’s made is that what makes anti-Zionism antisemitic is that many Jews at the moment really feel that Israel is central to their id as Jews. The predicate is true, and we are able to definitely be involved that our Zionist Jewish college students subjectively really feel assaults on Zionism are assaults on them as Jews. However we’ve got already labored by means of this argument in a number of different circumstances. No matter what some southern whites say about symbols of the Confederacy, we all know that calling for elimination of those symbols is just not anti-white, however anti–white supremacy. Equally, some white individuals hear “Black Lives Matter” as that means white lives don’t. Such subjective emotions are price our consideration, and even our compassion, however they don’t trump the fabric actuality that the Zionist state exists on the expense of Palestinians.

In sum: antisemitism is hate in opposition to Jews and/or Judaism; anti-Zionism is opposition to an oppressive and supremacist state. To conflate them is a profound and materially dangerous conceptual error—an inexpensive however potent propaganda trick within the service of state oppression. We should contest this deceit to contest the oppression of Palestinians and to completely defend educational freedom and campus speech rights on our campuses at this perilous second.

Daniel Segal is Jean M. Pitzer Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and professor emeritus of historical past at Pitzer Faculty of the Claremont Faculties. His scholarship ranges from Jane Austen (with Richard Handler) to racial discourses to theorizing states and non-states in world historical past. He’s a previous president of the Claremont Faculties AAUP chapter, a member of the Tutorial Advisory Council of Jewish Voice for Peace, and a member of the coordinating committee of TIAA-Divest!, which organizes to rid college retirement funds of fossil gas investments.