The sad state of free speech on America’s college campuses has been well-documented. Now a controversy at a top California institution shines a light on how on one such effort to stifle opposing viewpoints has intersected with antisemitism.
In late August, as students were returning to the University of California, Berkeley, a group called Law Students for Justice in Palestine urged other campus organizations to support a bylaw condemning Israel and to pledge not to invite speakers who back the Jewish state. The move was in support of the woefully misguided Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement, now popular in some progressive circles, that seeks to blame Israel, the region’s only democracy and a staunch American ally, for all the problems in the Middle East.
This type of bylaw is common among today’s leftist campus authoritarians who, in the name of promoting diversity, seek to quash dissent and impose a mind-numbing conformity of thought. This is not only an affront to the mission of higher education, it also betrays the obvious intellectual cowardice at work among those who prefer censorship to robust debate.
